Client/Server Road Map Poster
This diagram marks a pivotal point in my career. I was doing research for Jeff Tash (a prominent technology guru) and came up with the idea that we should produce a "map" depicting what was happening in the industry. The goal was to use a visual context to simplify what would otherwise be complex subject matter. The result proved to be amazingly successful, with more than one million copies being distributed worldwide. (Click on image to see enlarged version.)
Skills Matrix
Recently I jottend down a list of what I considered to be some of my marketable skills so that I could do a quick assessment. After coming up with the initial list I started to rank the items in order of proficiency. Then I added a timeline for each skill so that I could track not only how much experience I have but also in what time period these skills were developed. And then to finish it off I color coded the timelines so that it would show the intensity of the skill in practice at any given point in time. Voila! What started as a simple list transformed into a rather interesting multi-dimensional visualization.
Work History Timeline
The notion of tracking information based on time has always fascinated me because it's such an obvious characteristic of how we think about things that have happened. This example is a timeline I built to depict events that have taken place in my work history. The timeline itself is an open source project called Simile that was developed at MIT. (Click on image to access interactive version.)
Reference Library
This is an example of taking something difficult and making it simple. Everyone understands a library metaphor. When a user clicks on one of the cases, it pivots to reveal a set of books. The books are neatly arranged on shelves that are labeled by topic. A selected book can be opened to reveal a table of contents. The result is that a user coming into this environment with no prior training is able to easily navigate and research the site, even though the scope of the underlying content is extensive and complex.