Back to the Future

The time has come for a change and it is with some sadness to tell you that next week is my last at Provoke.

It has been an invaluable experience over the past 4+ years, but for numerous little reasons it is time for me to move on.

It’s especially difficult to leave behind my exceptionally talented team of Interaction Designers, Information Architects, Visual Designers and Web Developers.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been successful in building one of the top interaction design teams in New Zealand. Provoke now competes squarely with the best New Zealand has to offer in the IT industry. I’m leaving the team in good hands and I look forward to seeing them evolve and continue their success.

My move will be to join the Information Design team at Click Suite.

I’m looking forward to it, especially to the change my role (I’ll be managed, not a manager!), and surroundings (character building, above the Lido cafe), and working with some people more experienced than myself.

In many ways it will be a return to the sort of work and environment I had worked in for many years prior to my abduction by the corporate sector when Spunk Media sold to Innvovus which then subsequently sold to Synergy (Fronde).

When I joined Provoke I told Mason, the Managing Director, “on average I tend to stick around for about 5 years”. Well, it’s not far off that. Maybe I’d already mapped out my destiny back in 2004.

So what is it with my 5-year itch?

My Career Pathways

It seems that as soon as my occupation becomes mainstream I like to reinvent myself. This time it’s not so much a reinvention, but a realisation that I need to go back to my past – “new media”.

In the mid 1990s (at Vidmark, CWA and Synergy) I was designing interactive stories on CD-Roms, 3D visualisations, kiosks and mixed-media environments for dance-parties.

Back in the 90s I liked to humour my clients with ‘Concept C’. This concept was for the Royal Society homepage – a simple search box. The MRI scan of the head followed the mouse around the screen.Working within the web for the past ten years has had some of that richness of experience, but not quite enough to truly excite me.

Fact is, I’ve been finding the web a bit boring.

But that’s about to change…

After years of hype and fringe activity I believe we are on a tipping-point. The internet is finally moving from a point-and-click/keyboard environment to a sensory “touch and feel” environment which isn’t restricted to a personal computer.

The iphone is one such device which is a taste of things to come. The location-aware Snapper cards (being launched for public transport micropayments in Wellington) is another. The advent of realtime data, calculations and visualisations to better understand and manage climate change (and other stuff) is another.

And all these devices will need User Experience Designers to make them compelling, useful and fun.

This is part of the reason I’m moving to Click Suite. They are recognised as pioneers within the interactive industry and create not only websites, but games and interactive spaces.

And in 5 more years where will I go next?

Someone said yesterday I should write a book…

…maybe. But maybe I’ll surprise you.

Stay posted!