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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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
View more presentations from Neil Wehrle.

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.

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 [...]

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 [...]

In grad school, we talked a lot about invention. Invention is distinct from discovery and the scientific method in that it is a process of combination rather than unique observation or singular insight. This helps mark the distinction between designers and scientists – the latter is about finding a single truth, while the former can [...]

Some wonderful friends just departed our home after spending part of a week with us here in Brooklyn, and a few days in Washington, DC. It seems they had a nice time (besides the cool weather), and were pleasantly surprised how livable (dare I say, European) New York is. But one complaint they had really [...]