Neil Wehrle

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 [...]

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.

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 [...]

…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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]