This year is one that I’d consider the best in my life. Like every other, it had its shares of ups and downs, but ultimately I’m feeling way up coming out of 2009. Here are my most memorable moments of the year.

1. Benny: Earlier this year I got a phone call from my neighbour who was taking care of my family’s dog, Benny, while my parents were on vacation. “I think it’s time,” he said reluctantly, referring to the pretty rough road Benny was going down with his body giving out on him at 15 years of age. When my brother Jason and I made out way out to our family’s home east of Toronto, Benny was happy to see us, wagging his tail, but couldn’t climb a single step on his own.

Not an hour or so later, I was in a small room at the vet’s office with my Brother and Benny between us. I don’t think I’ve ever lost it so much emotionally before, petting my dog, telling him he was a good boy and he ate ice cream the vet gave him to keep him calm just before giving him the injection. He slumped over a few seconds later in my arms and let out a short sigh. I’d never had to say goodbye to anyone that I loved before, much less make the call that it was time for them to go. It was awful, and is still heart-wrenching to this day.

2. SpinTO: Mark and I are born on the same day (several years apart, he likes to add) and wanted to do something special this year for our birthdays. SpringFlingTO (later dubbed SpinTO) was the result of that idea, in which we brought together Toronto’s tech, cycling and queer communities on a single night in May to party and raise money for the Friends for Life Bike Rally (which Mark and I were both taking part in) and Toronto People with AIDS Foundation (PWA). With the generous support of these communities, SpinTO brought in over $12,000 to PWA, and we hope to do it again next year, bigger and better than before! (Photo by Andrew Louis)

3. The Bike Rally: Late last year a group of relatively new friends arrived in Montreal by bike from Toronto, where I happened to be for the city’s Pride weekend. After hearing the many amazing stories and experiencing the powerful bonds they’d formed with one another, I decided to take the plunge this year and try the Rally for myself.

Training was challenging, made a little easier by the spinning I had done last winter, and after a long spring and summer of several 100+ km training rides, we hit the road on our 600 km journey from Toronto to Montreal in August. A physically and mentally challenging experience, I made some incredible friends and learned a lot about myself and the many others with me on the journey. The Bike Rally is something I hope to turn into an annual tradition, and would recommend you do the same!

4. Teehan+Lax: I wrote a lot about my move from IBM to experience design agency Teehan+Lax here on the blog last month, and things seem to be getting better & more exciting at T+L all the time. The work is challenging, the people inspiring, the clients a joy to work with, and most importantly, I really just love my job now. I’m learning a great deal at Teehan+Lax, and look forward to another exciting year there in 2010. Who knew that leaving your perfectly good job could work out so well?

5. The New Hausmates: Towards the end of this year I realized that my condo (and bachelor life) were getting tiresome. My neighbourhood didn’t provide a lot in terms of community, and I knew that more than anything I wanted to have more close people in my life. The stars aligned pretty well, and through a long house hunting process, I moved in with the fabulous Pamela Quiroga and Jaime Woo. My new hausmates make the new place feel more than just somewhere to sleep at night; They make it feel like a home, and I’m truly grateful to have them both in my life. (Photo by Rannie)

Reflection and It’s not always the happiest of activities. It can bring up painful memories and old wounds, and it’s often easy just to try and forget about the past and keep moving forward as fast as possible. However, it can also help you grow immensely by looking back on the memories you truly cherish, and appreciating the obstacles you overcame in those you’d rather not think about. I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and reflect on all the amazing things you took on and succeed at this year, and hope you have a wonderful, vibrant and happy New Year in 2010!

It’s been a few months since my last post, and for good reason. My personal and professional life have both been turned upside down (in a good way) and I’m finding myself busier and more content than ever. First, I decided to leave IBM’s User Experience group and pursue working at a smaller, experience-focused agency.

Since I attended a few choice sessions at South by Southwest earlier this year, I knew my time at IBM was almost up and that this year would bring about a career change. Fortune favoured me and I’ve recently started up at Toronto-based experience design agency, Teehan+Lax, who I’ve always admired and am humbled by all the talented folks I get to work with here. Their visual aesthetic very much aligns with my own and am feeling really inspired here.

The next thing is my living situation – last year I moved into a my new condo in the East end of Toronto, and while I really loved the place after putting a ton of design work into it, a number of factors led me to the decision to sell the condo and move in with some friends. Just last week I moved in to a beautiful house in the West end with two amazing friends, and I’m really loving it. There’s something about living in a house that makes it much more comfortable than a box in the sky, and living with people certainly adds to that as well.

So this year has seen no shortage of change and transformation for me. I’m looking forward to an amazing 2010 and hope to be doing lots of travel and learning along the way!

It’s been an exciting week as the Air Canada for iPhone [iTunes link] hit the App Store! This is the first iPhone app that I designed with IBM Interactive for Air Canada, and I’m really happy to see it finally available for Air Canada’s customers.

In putting together this application, we wanted to design an experience that would allow an Air Canada passenger to find their flights, keep track of it using e-mail/SMS notifications, and check-in when available, having their boarding pass available right on the phone.

We also wanted to think about experiences beyond just flying; When you land, what do you typically look for? The rent a car service is an example of this type of thinking. This is just the first version and Air Canada has many great plans for this app, so give it a try and keep and eye out for improvements and more features to make your flying experience better down the road.

Since its release, the app has already become the #1 most popular Travel app on the iTunes App Store, and is currently sitting at the #3 most popular free app overall. It’s great to see all the feedback people are leaving, good and bad. Air Canada most definitely wants to see more of that and are open to ideas and suggestions. You can get a hold of them directly regarding the iPhone app at iphone@aircanada.ca as well.

This will hopefully be the first of many iPhone apps that I have a hand in releasing for my clients in the coming months. I’ve really become interested in designing mobile applications across a variety of platforms including BlackBerry, Android, and of course iPhone. I’d love to get my hands on a Palm Pre in the near future, too. My portfolio has a few other examples of conceptual designs I’ve taken on in the mobile space.

In an effort to highlight some of my skills and the work I do, I’ve finally got around to putting together my Portfolio. This was the last remaining piece that was incomplete up until now on the site so I’m happy to be able to share some of what pays my bills with you all. I’ll be updating it from time-to-time as the type of work I do and projects I’m on change.

The craziness that was SpinTO is mostly behind me after having helped organize the party that raised $15,000 for the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation. It was a heck of a lot of work to organize this project, but also a lot of fun.

Designing Projected Visuals
On top of the time I put into the project co-ordinating a large chunk of the Web property and the event itself, I had my hand at designing the visuals over the course of a few days that would be projected at the Mod Club throughout the night to promote our sponsors, illuminate the amazing work the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation does for this city and some interesting facts about the Friends for Life Bike Rally.

Channel and Theme
I typically design for desktop displays, mobile phones and occasionally service kiosks, so the idea of designing for 20-foot wide screens at a club was new territory for me. The visuals needed to be easily readable and visible from any part of the club, so that meant big font size and high-contrast, vibrant graphics.

Keeping with the feel of SpinTO and the brilliant design produced by Phouphet Sihavong, the visuals also needed to have a bit of an urban retro-modern feel to them with heavy emphasis on cycling as a central theme. I re-used many graphics and elements from the SpinTO web site in order to maintain a consistent look and feel in the physical space as we had in the virtual.

Audience
The ‘users’ in this case are also an interesting set of people to design for – I by no means wanted to create distractions that would take focus away from the performances happening on stage, or slow down the momentum of the night in any way.

It was also important to keep in mind that people were there to have a good time – mingle, talk, dance, and (of course) drink. This meant that I was going to use primarily dark backgrounds for the slides, positive messaging and tone, and fast transitions and builds between slides. I also felt it was important to design the graphics with the philosophy of a billboard in mind, assuming each would get a glance at most and needed to be fairly easily understood right away.

Promotion and Persuasion
The event was a fundraiser first, as well as a party, so I dedicated quite a few screens to promoting the fundraising opportunities around the Mod Club. We wanted to maximize the potential for attendees to drop cash as they saw fit, so the visuals let them know that by buying our specialty drink called the ‘Cause-Mo’, we’d dedicate a portion of the sales directly to the charity. We also advertised items for auction and raffle, the opportunity to get your photo taken by Rannie, and took the opportunity to present personal quotes from our many sponsors for the project.

Constraints and Conclusions
As many of you who were at SpinTO can probably attest to, the display of these visuals didn’t quite go off without a hitch. We were limited to a projected resolution of 800×600 pixels, which I was well aware of, but didn’t realize that the way in which the projectors were setup cut off around 25-50 pixels on each side of the graphic.

This resulted in some unfortunate clipping of text that made some slides difficult to read, and I learned a valuable lesson – when designing for screens in an unusual environment, ensure the majority of the information is concentrated near the center of the screen.

Ultimately I’m really happy with how the visuals turned out at SpinTO and hope that some of the amazing facts about what the Bike Rally riders and Toronto People with AIDS Foundation accomplish in a given year were gleaned by party-goers!

You can see the full set of visuals projected at SpinTO below courtesy of Slideshare. I excluded a few that were heavy in animation since they didn’t translate well to static content:

You can also see the full-length projected version that was run on-site at the Mod Club. It’s about 15 minutes in length and runs each slide for about 15 seconds:

Design shop AREAWARE has a wonderful selection of several bikes I’ve had my eye on for some time now. I picked up a new road bike since starting my training for the Friends for Life Bike Rally earlier this year and ever since I’ve been wishing I had a practical, comfortable bike for commuting around the city to compliment my speed-hungry Trek 2.1.

Above, the Amsterdam-designed Vanmoof features dual solar-powered lights for front and rear, and a beautiful, no-nonsense powder-coated aluminum frame with leather saddle and grips. The chain-guard and fenders make it uber practical for city riding but weighing in at 28 pounds, I wouldn’t plan on lugging this one up and down stairs at all.

The Strida bike has been on my radar for a long time. Featuring a unique triangular geometry, it has a grease-free kevlar belt and gives the rider a nice upright seating position. I saw someone using this thing on a trip to Boston and it looks super practical for a mixed-transport (subway/riding) commute.

The IF MODE folding bike looks like something from a sci-fi flick with a very minimalist design by Mark Sanders, the same guy who made the Strida, above. As opposed to most folding bikes which make for a very inefficient and awkward ride, the IF MODE is full-size with 26-inch three spoke sport tires and disc brakes in the front and rear. It’s a bit of a beast at 32 pounds, but it folds up in about 5 seconds flat as shown in a demo video from Taipei to make for very easy transport and storage:

Today my friend Mark Kuznicki and I launched SpinTO! SpinTO is a fundraising project that kicks off with a party on May 15 celebrating the Friends for Life Bike Rally from Toronto to Montreal in support of the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation. Tickets are now on sale for the event and we’re also looking for sponsors.

Speaking of the Bike Rally, I’m riding this year to Montreal! I’ve already completed a 40km training ride last week, and will be doing many more leading up to the Rally at the end of July. I’d be thrilled if you’d sponsor me.

My first spring in the new place! The condo has finally gone through the closing process which officially makes me a property owner as of this week. It’s a great feeling, made all the more better by the beautiful weather hitting the city.

The Presets put an amazing show at the Mod Club earlier tonight. Packed into the club and ready to get their dance on, I was thrilled to see a crowd with so much energy. Some photos are up on my Flickr stream captured with my iPhone.

It’s said that CityTV once called Dangerous Dan’s burgers in Toronto, “probably the most unhealthy restaurant in Canada.” What better place than to spend some quality time having dinner with my family? See more photos of Dangerous Dan’s on Flickr.