Neil Wehrle

…the screens in jets can be so packed with data that some pilots call them “drool buckets” because, they say, they can get lost staring into them.
It appears the military is bumping up against the limits of peoples ability to absorb and make sense of the streams of data they encounter in their rapidly digitizing [...]

A nice roundup of some interface design concepts over at the Fast Company design blog: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662959/12-of-the-years-best-ideas-in-interface-design-slideshow
I’m particularly taken with both the DJ turntable concept because it doesn’t shy away from expecting users to develop a knowledge of how the system works, and isn’t a slavish replication of both the appearance and interactions of a real-world [...]

I recently (December 8th) gave a talk at the betaday 2010 – a small private conference put on by my company, betaworks – covering the history of product development there. I was excited to present because of the occasion, but also since I got to talk about product development.
Betaday2010 neil
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John [...]

I recently gave a talk at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference here in New York. It doesn’t contain my speaking notes, but here are the slides I presented:
Designing for a real-time data dashboard
View more presentations from Neil Wehrle.

An interesting series of articles appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this past week covering technology in education. Interesting to me because of the variety of approaches discussed, from drill-based learning to home schooling.
One of the pieces discussed the use of video games as learning aids, and covered a new middle school here [...]

A couple of articles I came across provide insight into the development of our ability to read. Not only are some novel explanations put forward, but it comes at a time when one of my daughters has experienced what is described. Examples of how evolution can explain seemingly impossible developments in human are always interesting [...]

Visiting my Dad in Illinois, we were driving around in his Prius and I took a shot of (one of) the dashboards. I’m not a daily user of this car, so I’m biased, but I found it incredibly difficult to believe this is an effective in-car driving experience. The layout and typography are poor, and [...]

I saw this infographic at a rest stop that attempted to communicate the superiority of hand dryers over paper towels. The amount of chart junk dedicated showing manufacturing transport vs. the ecological impact I thought was ironic given the location at a rest stop. I’d be curious to follow up and see what the true [...]

The new bit.ly launched today, which I designed the UI for (I did the old one too, but this time I had the incredible talents of Gregory Tomlinson available). Check out the tour for more information. On a related note, there was a nice writeup in the New York Times today about betaworks – great [...]

The chartbeat dashboard recently underwent its first major revision since launching a year ago. Below is a copy of a post I wrote for the chartbeat blog giving some background into the redesign.
The team has a strong vision for chartbeat, and to bolster our vision I led some quick-and-clean research into how current [...]