Neil Wehrle

I was thinking last night about all the different jobs i’ve had over the years, and how many were “relevant” to what I do now. I suppose they were all relevant, since they got me to and are a part of what I am now, but there are a few that I consider to be [...]

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the inaugural Agile UX New York conference here in New York. The roster of speakers was excellent and I learned quite a bit. I spoke about some of what I’ve learned at betaworks over the last four years working in an early stage startup environment. I [...]

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the upcoming Agile UX conference here in New York. I’ll be talking about the how the relationship of design to the world of startups has recently shifted from a question of necessity to a position of criticality. To succeed in this new environment, designers need to adapt [...]

The share of automobile miles driven by people aged 21 to 30 in the U.S. fell to 13.7% in 2009 from 18.3% in 2001 and 20.8% in 1995, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey released earlier this year. Meanwhile, Census data show the proportion of people aged 21-30 increased from [...]

Like many in my field, I’m always amazed when poorly conceived or executed products find their way to market. While every case study of failure is unique, starting with a great product team is a variable we’d like to have under control. Finding people who work in product development with a compatible outlook and skillset is difficult, [...]

Chartbeat is often displayed on large screens inside newsrooms and offices, usually in a static mode. In this shot, John Borthwick is using it on a giant touchscreen (an 82″ Perceptive Pixel LCD Multi-Touch Display) at the Gizmodo Gallery (there are some Betaworks folks at the 22 second mark in the video). I think it’s still [...]

Ok, so its a bit of a puff piece, but I was interviewed by Mashable about the origins of the Bitly mascot.
How did the pufferfish develop?
We started looking at renderings of pufferfish, and one of the things that I hit on was why not show two pufferfish and show them in the states you would [...]

I gave an opening talk for Brooklyn Alpha, a conference in Brooklyn that was a companion to Brooklyn Beta.
Bk alpha3.ppt
View more presentations from Neil Wehrle.

A couple quick quotes on the meaning of design:
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive [...]

In the 15 or so years I’ve been designing interactive products, I have always tried to involve the intended audience (users) in the course of product development. A recent article by Jared Spool on UIE.com articulates something different that I’ve felt but rarely had the data to support: involve the rest of the team in [...]