Exploring new and renewed ideas for how personal computing and the interfaces with which we think can better serve people’s lives – expanding opportunity, agency, curiosity, and creativity.
Essays & Experiments
The Interfaces With Which We Think
An introduction to my research — why it is what it is, why it matters, and what it’ll take to get right. Presented in multiple parts, discussing today’s mainstream interfaces, malleable software, and more.
Designing User Environments
A choose-your-own-adventure course on designing user environments in operating systems and large user programs.
With collaborator Paul Rony.
OLLOS
An itemized personal computing environment that uses time as its organizing principle — organizing all your things in one unified timeline. Demo video with an essay on insights from living in this environment for several years.
Itemized personal computing timeline
From 2021 to 2023, I worked on and in an experimental personal computing environment that was organized into one interface construct: the timeline.
Embark
Dynamic documents for making plans; a reaction to the rigid interfaces and data silos in today’s modern app landscape.
With industrial research lab Ink & Switch.
Breadboard
A small demo — of widgets which can donate data to the overall environment, and react to others’ donations — made in pursuit of the project that eventually became Embark, above.
With industrial research lab Ink & Switch.
Jasper
Members only A recreation of the user environment found on 1987’s Canon Cat, with an essay exploring the emergence of user conventions in a minimal system, and the merits of a document user environment.
Lab notes
Gestural view construction
What if interfaces were as easy to construct as queries, letting you spin up views “from scratch” as needed? Demo of such an environment for extemporaneous interfaces.
Gestural view construction
The Graph OS
What if the entire operating system were to work like a notes graph? What if every individual digital thing could be linked or backlinked in your overall digital graph?
Tag Navigator
A demonstration of cross-reference navigation, an idea for the automated organization of items based on user references or tags. Implemented as a plugin for Obsidian.
Tag Navigator
More
Little Lab
Recreating the Canon Cat document interface
New! Exploring the emergence of user conventions in a minimal system. Observations on living in the system, plus a demo you can try out yourself. Members only
The lab is open: a behind-the-scenes tour
A quick tour of the little lab’s websites (including tech stacks and designs), and our research notebooks. Members only
Towards a graphics stack for personal software
An exploration of what makes personal software unique, and how a graphics stack might support its creation and use. Members only
Adding to the corpus of ideas, some observations on process
In this member essay, I share some observations and reflections on process. Members only
Experimenting with spaced review in OLLOS
A first look at a new experiment, and how it could be improved. Members only
Reflections and updates after the first year of a membership program
And how the core work is evolving in its next year.
Reflections after a year of publishing lab notes
For 2021, I tried an experiment: publishing all of my thoughts and ideas on the future of the operating system.
How I approach my core work
My core work is independent research in computing, here’s the how and why.
These essays are published for Members of the Little Lab, occasionally made publicly available.
I think of my practice as a “little lab” — an indie research lab-of-one.
My work is graciously made possible thanks to funding from the community. You can support my work by becoming a Member of the Little Lab. Your membership helps me publish more lab notes, experiments, essays, and other work.
Plus, you’ll get access to the members’ portal with early demos, experiments, member essays, the field notes, and more.
Join 50+ Members of the Little Lab →Already a Member?
Enter the Little Lab →Lab Notes
As I explore the operating system of the future, I publish Lab Notes to “work with the lab door open,” inviting others’ thoughts along the way.
Open the Lab Notes
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Getting started
Latest
Items
LN 002: Universal data portability
LN 003: Universal reference containers
Item views
Item graphs
LN 012: References box & Topics
LN 013: Why is our thinking on computers so restrained?
Item services
Item networks & devices
Item systems
Item interfaces
Space & Time
About
I run Buddy Bindery & Press together with Sarah, my wife. We publish, and make by hand, archival-quality books. Our first few titles are our own works as we get familiar with the whole process.
We live on a ten acre homestead in New Hampshire. Before that, we lived on the road for several years in a 2016 Fleetwood Bounder while traveling around America, and for several other years in Tennessee, after graduating from our alma mater, Virginia Tech.
My work focuses on the future of personal computing. Some is done independently, and some in collaboration with others (e.g. Animist OS, Embark). I publish essays and experiments, some publicly, and some just for members, whose support makes my work possible.
Past
Songs I’m Made Of was a radio-style show with songwriters, where we discuss and play their songs and the ones that inspired them.
1997.chat was a faithful remake of AOL Instant Messenger — the sounds, away messages, animated buddy icons, et al. — made available during 2020’s early lockdowns to connect the world’s socially isolated with one other, and a little nostalgia. You can read my article or the Nylon article for more context.
Acquired by a new owner in 2021.
Simple Habits is a simple habit tracker with widgets for iPhone. You can read my Twitter thread for more context.
Products from earlier phases of my career:
Mail Pilot was an email client that introduced new ideas to email which have since become common in most email apps. It reached the #1 top paid app spot in the Mac App Store, and was featured in The New York Times (David Pogue: “an ingenious new email service”), TWiT (Leo Laporte: “a good app, and well worth it.”), and numerous Macworld reviews over the years (Nathan Alderman: “a clean, impressive, often beautiful way to manage unruly email”).
Throttle is a service that is the home for emails which shouldn’t be in your inbox, using unique email addresses per sender.
Misc
Conversation on Betaworks’ Tools for Thinking podcast · Interview on The Stack Overflow Podcast · Computer Science at Virginia Tech 50th Anniversary profile · Interview on Digital Crafters · Talk at Tools for Thought Rocks · Nylon: AIM is back to get you through quarantine · Want to chat? Get in touch.
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