Considering working with me? May I suggest you read what others I’ve worked with have had to say…
Projects
Edenworks Indoor Farming: A Crop of Data
How do we harvest the right insights as we harvest our products?
Open Sesame
Just love your password and PINs? No? What if pleasurable security wasn’t an oxymoron?
Somaware: Visceral, wearable data
Why stop at just 5 senses? Eyes-free, ears-free, hands-free information that you feel.
Fidget Widgets
What if doodling, fidgeting, and fiddling while you work helped you get your work done?
Spectators as Game Actors
Spectators very nearly will their teams to win. What if in a video game they actually could?
Embedded GUI Simulation Framework
Can’t we develop this software a whole lot faster?
Embedded Systems Code Testing Tools
What do you mean it’s impossible to test that?
Weather Balloon Data System Upgrade
Can the developed world’s digital make sense of stormy developing world analog?
High Precision Targeting Research
Can a single pixel captured in-flight yield precise ground coordinates in real time?
AIMe: Advanced Immediate Messaging
You want always-on Internet in your home but broadband service doesn’t exist yet? No problem.
Sofa Real: New Old Television
Can new technology married to old advertising rebirth local television?
The Glove and the Groundbreaking Robot
What’s the key to creating a groundbreaking experience?
Automated Manufacturing Lab
How do we provide students distance learning — with big expensive real-world equipment?
Atomic Object Website UX, IA & Branding Redesign
How do we communicate a high-tech company’s geek value minus the geek user experience?
Publications & Writing
- New Widgets Let You Snap, Crackle… and Think
Live Science. July 15, 2014. - Who You Are by way of What You Are: Behavioral Biometric Approaches to Authentication
SOUPS 2014: Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security. Menlo Park, California. July, 2014.
Who are you?! Adventures in Authentication: WAY Workshop - Designing for the Physical Margins of Digital Workspaces: Fidget Widgets in Support of Productivity and Creativity
TEI '14: 8th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. Munich, Germany. February, 2014. - Open Sesame: Re-envisioning the Design of a Gesture-based Access Control System
Extended Abstract, ACM SIGCHI Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2013 - Fidget Widgets: Secondary Playful Interactions in Support of Primary Serious Tasks
Extended Abstract, ACM SIGCHI Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2013 - Scoop! A Movement-based Math Game Designed to Reduce Math Anxiety
Interactivity, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2012 - Scoop! Using Movement to Reduce Math Anxiety and Affect Confidence
Work in Progress, Foundations of Digital Games, 2012 - Way Better Error Handling in C Using CException [Presentation]
Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference, 2011 - Mocking the Embedded World: Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration & Design Patterns
Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley, 2007 - Effective TDD for Embedded Software
IEEE 2006 Electro/Information Technology Conference, 2006 - Agile Project Management. Or, Burning Your Gantt Charts.
Embedded Systems Conference Boston, 2008. - A Virtual Manufacturing Laboratory
ASEE National Conference Proceedings. Seattle, WA. July 1998 - A Virtual Reality Robot
ASEE North Central Section Conference Proceedings. Lansing, MI. April 2000
- Note the Smile
My writing on the ideas and promise of playful technology. This blog was connected to a component of my doctoral work. It is no longer active. - Helmus Brothers Building
Extensive history of the building, its architect, and its neighborhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids was my home for many years, and I worked in this historic building for many years. - PresenterFirst
Wikipedia entry for the software design pattern and programming approach. - Super Developers Are Also Mild-Mannered Reporters
Want to be a super developer? Get your Clark Kent on. - Mysteries and Puzzles
Success in software is not only solving puzzles, it’s seeing the bigger mystery. - The end of software engineering and the start of economic-cooperative gaming
Once upon a time software was seen as a craft and then as engineering discipline — perhaps it’s really a game. - Financial Analysis in Software Development
Bridging the financial gap between software decisions and management decisions. - A Moral Obligation to Marketing
Nerd, engineering culture often looks down at “marketing” — instead maybe it is, in fact, virtuous. - Testing and Legacy Code, A Primer
A practical guide to working with living, working code without breaking it. - Surviving and Thriving as an Inshoring Software Company
Defining and making the case for Inshoring in an offshoring world.
Open Source Contributions & More
Tools & Libraries
- Unity :: Lightweight unit test framework for C
- CMock :: Ruby-based mocking framework for C
- Ceedling :: Ruby/Rake-based test suite build environment for C incorporating Unity & CMock (source)
- C# BK-Tree :: Burkhard-Keller tree for fuzzy matching in discrete metric spaces
Education
- Throw the Switch is the evil mad scientist programming site for taking over the world with well-tested C projects.
- Unit Testing & Other Embedded Software Catalysts is a paid set of online courses I co-created and co-teach. Class roster is over 500 students. These courses teach Test-Driven Development in C using the tools listed above with an eye towards embedded systems.
Scholarships, Fellowships & Awards
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
- National Science Foundation IGERT — INSPIRE: Interdisciplinary Information Security and Privacy Traineeship (2011–2013)
- NYU Lean Launchpad $10,000 Entrepreneurial Fellowship (2014)
Grand Valley State University
- Presidential Scholarship (1994–1998)
- Kirkhof Engineering Scholarship (1994–1999)
- Top Program Graduate Engineering Faculty Award (1999)
- Top Program Graduate Computer Science Faculty Award (1999)
- Computer Science Departmental Scholarship (1997)
Michigan Space Grant Consortium
- Undergraduate Fellowship (1997)
Solar Splash Solar Electric Boat Collegiate World Championship
- Outstanding Electrical System Design (1996)
- Second Place Overall (1996)
“Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”