Accomplish Your Dreams : Helsinki, Finland
My time in Helsinki and at Fjord have been quite amazing. At times its been quite both personally and professionally very challenging but in the end in, challenges are a part of life and its how you but deal with them, what you learn from then and continue on your growth as a person which really matter. I can really say that I have really matured both as a person and as a designer during my time in Finland and for that I will always be grateful.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Creative Inspiration In Bergen : June 2009
Being in the midst of the Naeroyfjorden fjords allows me to feel a sense of calmness and peace, which I have not felt in years. After months and months of traveling throughout all these Scandinavian cities, it refreshing to my mind and soul to be surrounded by the majesty beauty of the fjords. I hope everyone can get a chance to experience this breathtaking natural beauty.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Creative Inspiration In Oslo : June 2009
I arrived in Oslo yesterday and my first and most important destination will be the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. The well-known Norwegian architecture Snohetta has an exhibition entitled Architecture, Landscapes and Interiors, which I am looking forward to viewing.

I understand that Snohetta is exhibiting some of the conceptualization models that they used for some of their projects. I am looking forward to seeing this exhibition, especially to better understand how they approached the King Feisal Center of Knowledge and Library in Saudi Arabia. I also want to better understand how they create and use interactive mediums to not only enhance the overall atmosphere within their projects, but to also inform the public of their vision and direction.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Creative Inspiration In Helsinki : June 2009
I'm looking forward to seeing the Kunst Art Museum, especially to view their collection of expressionist paintings. I've decided that I'm only going to spend at least two days in Helsinki in order to have more time to spend in Bergen and Oslo. Talin and Rega is also out of the question, since I just don't have enough time.

Scandinavian Design Tour: Creative Inspiration in Stockholm: June 2009
I arrived in Stockholm and am looking forward to meeting up with some old college friends from Brown who now head up their own small but growing boutique design agency. I think out of all the cities I have visited so far, I can honestly say that Stockholm is my favorite city. I'm not sure if I can quite put my finger on it, but there something truly captivating about Stockholm.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Presenting My Projects at TripleCPH : May 2009
I presented my 35 page Radisson Blu future inspirational website exploration today to my team and it went over very well. I received some great constructive criticism regarding the city-landing page from Sandra, which was very accurate. Lars then showed me how I could better surface the virtual hotel concierge onto the Global landing page. Lars also pointed out that my Radisson Blu iPhone application wireframes exploration was missing a user authentication point, which I quickly added into the final version of my wireframes. Overall I'm very happy with the quality of work and effort I put into it and it was worth the few late nights that I spent working on it.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Working At TripleCPH : May 2009
I'm working as a Freelance Lead User Interface Designer at TripleCPH in Copenhagen. I'm leading the user experience research, creative and wireframe conceptualization for a inspirational online exploration for the hotel chain Radisson Blu. I have also been helping in implement a more cohesive navigation user experience for the Hotel Missoni Chain. I'm really enjoying working alongside Sandra, Lars, Oliver, Christian and the rest of TripleCPH team.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Creative Inspiration In Arhus : April 2009
My first destination, beside visiting and spending some time with my family will be the world famous ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum. The current exhibition entitled "Interactive Play" explores the various forms of digital art media, which reminds me a lot of the projects I worked on during my graduate degree at NYU's ITP program. I'm sure it will be quite an interesting exhibition to check out and know I will probably take a million pictures.

Scandinavian Design Tour : Creative Inspiration In Copenhagen : April 2009
My first destination will be the harbor and then the Danish Design Center which is located just across the street from the world famous Tivoli Amusement park . The Danish Design Center is currently showing an exhibition on the OLED lighting technology and its various economical and environmental implications, which should be very interesting. I am also planning to visit all the typical tourist sites and really enjoy my time in Copenhagen.

Scandinavian Design Tour 2009: The Overall Goal : 2009
The overall goal is to travel throughout Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland from April to July, while researching and trying to better understand how Scandinavian firms approach and continue to innovate the overall concept of user experience. I'm also looking forward to taking on some freelance user experience projects, which I hope will allow me to learn from and better understand how Scandinavian firms approach and attempt to enhance the overall user experiences on either web based or mobile based projects. I’m also looking forward to visiting my family in Arhus, Copenhagen, and Stockholm.

Frog Design Update 2009:
I can't believe its been almost two years since I joined Frog Design. I've learned, contributed and grown both as a person and as a creative here at Frog Dsign but I know that I need to move on and take on and take on new creative challenges in order to refine my creative talents.

With that said, I'm leaving Frog Design to spend the next five months traveling throughout Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland in order to learn from and work with some of the most innovative Scandinavian interaction design firms as a freelance lead UX designer.

I am grateful to Robert Fabricant, who is the Executive Creative Director at Frog Design and one of my professors at NYU's ITP program for believing in me and allowing me to be part of such a amazing and brilliant team. I would like to thank my dear friends and fellow froggers Carlos Gomez, Micheal Jefferson, Meredith Nyguen, Piper Darley, and Radis Jensethawat for all their support and friendship throughout my time at Frog Design.

Network Traffic Visualization Display Exploration:
I am co-leading the user research, design and implemention of a network traffic visulatization project for one of the worlds most trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services.

Cable Network Mobile GUI Exploration:
I am working on a two month long project, which involves me and my team researching, designing and helping develop a innovative mobile GUI for one of the nations leading cable service providers.

4G Internet Tablet User Experience Research & Design:
I am researching various user interactions experiences for both mobile devices, PDAs and Internet tablets, with the overall goal of better understanding how to design a innovative user experience for users of the flasgship internet tablet device which will serve as the focal point of the 4G rollout by a one of the nations larget celluarl provider.

I am still reporting a great Principal Designer by the name of Carlos Gomez, who has been teaching me how to become a better creative and insightful UX designer.

4G Multi-Platform Widget User Experience Research & Design:
I am leading the user research, design and implemention of the various partners widgets for the 4G online website for one of nations largest cellular providers.

Hospital For Special Surgery Web Site Goes Live!!
Hospital For Special Surgery

Top Three Consulting Web Site Re-design:
I'm redesigning the website for a nationally recognized consulting firm, with emphasis being placed on the ease of users to create communities around certain topics and the easy access and distribution of information.

In Car Multimedia Entertainment System GUI Exploration:
I'm redesigning the overall user experience for a nationally recognized in car multimedia entertainment system. The end result will be a interactive pdf prototype which will address some of the key concerns raised by my team and by the users.

Specialized Hospital Web Site:
I'm helping design the web site for a nationally recognized hospital. I'm looking forward to re-desiging the site to match the overall core needs of the prospetive users and the overall core principles of the hospital.

Project Masiluleke:
Project Masiluleke is a pro-bono project in which I am helping research, design, and implement an innovative overall mobile user experiences in South Africa, which is geared towards the overall goal of sending out a million free text message a day, urging mobile phone users to call into existing HIV and TB Health call centers.

Project Masiluleke is collaboration between frog design, Nokia, MTN, a host of South African tech firms and health NGO's. Its pro-bono projects, such as Project M which have a social impact on our world, that helped decide to join Frog Design after getting my Masters from the ITP. that have a social impact which helped me chose frog design as my

4G Multi-Platform User Experience Research & Design:
I am working on a year long project, which involves me and my team researching, designing and helping develop a multi-platform user experience (web, mobile device, and kiosk design) for a 4G service, which will be launched by one of the nations largest cellular providers. I am very excited to join the team and look forward to helping create the best 4G user experiences for all the prospective users on the various platforms.

Joined Frog Design As A Interaction Designer:
I have accepted the opportunity to join the Frog Design team in New York as a Interaction Designer. I am extremely excited about this opportunity and look forward to learning, contributing and taking on more responsibilities within the team. I will be reporting to a well respected Principal Designer by the name of Carlos Gomez, who is also a alumni of ITP.

Projects:
Here are a recap of the few notable projects I have been involved with this past year.
My Thesis: MobileVoices [MobileVoices.pdf]
Video / Presentations on Yahoo Video
The Young Investigators Forum In Culture Technology In South Korea [freeFormed.pdf]
eParole Presentation at Microsoft Research Expo [eParole PDF]
freeFormed.net
Witness Videohub Mobile Section
Witness/Globalvoices Video Hub
Open Shutters

New York University Commencement 2007
Its been amazing two years here at the ITP Program at NYU and I am truly blessed to have meet so many friends and in the opportunity to see myself mature as a Individual and as a creative. Congratulations to all my dear classmates and my eternal thanks for the support and encouragement of my family, friends, professors and of course Dean Red Burns, who is the head of the ITP program, for allowing me the opportunity to be awarded a Tisch Deans Fellowship at ITP. I'm looking forward to the next great adventure in this thing called life :-)

Here are a few pictures of myself with both my family and friends, the rest of the pics are on Flickr

NYU 2007 Commencement Flickr PIctures

NYU/ Xavier University Digital Storytelling Collaboration in New Orleans
I was selected with ten fellow classmates, to take part in the NYU/ Xavier University Digital Storytelling Collaboration over spring break in New Orleans. I spent one week in New Orleans at Xavier University, and visited the 7th and 9th Ward, as other areas which were effected by the failure of the levees.

I had the chance to teach five classes ranging from Intro to Video Editing, Compression and Audio Issues to undergraduate students at the Art Center in Xavier University. I also worked with community organizations in helping them understand how to use and creating wordpress blogs so that their stories can be heard by the world.

The research collaboration was made possible by the efforts of Marianne Petit and Shawn Van Every in securing a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant and the support of our program (Interactive Telecommunications Program) at NYU. I know that this will not be my last trip to help in anyway I can in the rebuilding of this beautiful city.

NYU/Xaiver University NY2NO Blog
My Personal NY2NO Blog
My Mobile Video and Images From New Orleans
My Flickr Pictures From New Orleans

Freeformed.net™
Freeformed.net™ Official Launch
I proud to announce that with the combined effort of my fellow Freeformed.net™ teamates, Catherine Colman, Megan Macmurry, Jungmin Oh, Nanna Halinen, Freeformed.net has been officially launched, so please check it out and tell your friends about and I'm looking foward to seeing how it will be used by various users.

Presented The Witness.org Human Rights Video Hub Pilot and Mobile Component
at the NYU ITP Wintershow
I interned with WITNESS.org, which is a human rights organization for the past semester in researching as well as developing additional aspects for their online presence in hopes that it will help them in accomplishing their overall goals of using technology to document abuse and create change.

In order to make the information accessible to everyone who might have interest in further researching the the social, political and economical impact that mobile technology can have on developing nations, I created the following http://del.icio.us/yonatan.kelib section on del.icio.us.

Beside research, my teamates Catherine Colman, Megan Macmurry, Jungmin Oh, Nanna Halinen and I also created the online admin section for the Witness.org Video Hub which is now in pilot phase and will officially be launched during the summer of 2007. We also built out the mobile application which would allow users to post video form their cell phones.

Here are some links which give you more detailed information about the Witness Video Hub Pilot

Witness Human Rights Video Hub Pilot
Gloabl Voices/ Witness Video Hub
NYU Wintershow Witness Video Hub Pilot Info
Final Witness Informational Presentation PDF
A blog article about the Video Hub from textually.org/

Presented The Social Implications of Mobile Technology
In Developing Nations and Freeformed.org at KAIST/ GSCT University In Daejeon, South Korea.
I had wonderful time presenting at Young Investigators Forum In Culture Technology at KAIST University's Graduate School Of Culture Technology and met some trully wonderful and brilliant new friends and got some amazing feedback about Freeformed.org and the potential impact it can have on society. I thank my amazing teamatesCatherine Colman, Megan Macmurry, Jungmin Oh, Nanna Halinen for all their hard work and effort in helping me prepare the research paper.

This has been my second opportunity to present before Bill Buxton who is the Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. I presented EParole™ at the Microsoft Research Expo Summit over last summer and I had the chance to speak with him to some length and was simply amazed at his clarity,insight and as always his constructive criticism on my ideas.

A special thanks to my dear friend and classmate Won Sup Shin for introducing me to the Prof. Kwang-Yun Wohn who is the Dean of the Graduate School of Culture Technology as well as encouraging me to submit the research paper for the research symposium.

Kaist/ GSCT Tech Fourm/ Korea Pictures

Young Investigators Forum in Culture Technology(Young CT)
In Daejeon, South Korea Research Paper Submissiom
I recently submitted the following research paper, which details the need and conception of Freeformed.org to the Young Investigators Forum in Culture Technology. The forum, will be held at the Graduate School of Culture Technologyin South Korea. This forum is held once a year and they invite graduate students from all over the world to submit their research paper on how technology will affect society. From all of these submissions twelve students are selected and invited to their projects in Daejeon, South Korea for three days.

Freeformed.org is the mobile application group that I am joined over this summer and am helping research and develop with Catherine Colman, Megan Macmurry, Jungmin Oh, Nanna Halinen

My friend Won, who is also a classmate at ITP, introduced me to Prof. Kwang-Yun Wohn who is the Dean of the Graduate School of Culture Technology when he was visiting ITP last week. I spoke with Pro.Wohn about Freeformed.org and my overall ideas on the future implications of mobile technology withhin a digital society and he wished me luck with my group submisson. I’m hoping for the opportunity to attend this forum and get another chance to present Freeformed.org and get some amazing feedback.

Mopod™ Update
I knew my team and I were on the right track with the Mopod™ and just wish we had the time and resources to make it a commercially viable prouduct because Jansports just released their LiveWire™ bookbag line. Their LiveWire™ book bag line includes a integrated ipod menu control system very much like the one we had conceptualized, designed, prototyped and built for the Mopod.

Well if you would like to compare the Mopod™ and the LiveWire™ please do so, and even though one is a graduate student project and the another is a professionally designed bookbag but if you ask me, they sure seem to share some similar traits in purpose and design.

EParole™ has been presented at the Microsoft Reseach Design Expo in Redmond, Washington.
eParole™ is our winning entry for the 2006 Microsoft Research Design Expo. This is the only competative class at ITP, and I'm proud of my teammates and their hard work. My team and I spent a week at Microsoft to present our proposed suite of devices and applications to enhance the deterrent and rehabilitative aspects of the parole system. I will link to the full presentation within the next few days and the overall response from the researchers and professors we spoke to were very supportive and we were given some great advice on some issues we did not extensively speak about.

One of the Senior VP at Microsoft, who I was not aware had spent several years working with prison rights groups questioned me on the effectiveness of the mobile pda device, if such a large percentage group of these parolees are currently illiterate. I informed him I were aware of this issue to some degree which is why there is a integrated cell phone in the mobile pad device and that we would design the graphical user interface in such a way to meet the needs of this specific user group. We still have a lot of research to do in addressing some of the issues expressed by several members of the audience such as privacy concerns, target market usage, efficiency in comparison to cost of implementation and so forth.

Overall it was a truly amazing opportunity and I was truly impressed with the feedback we were given as well as the brilliant ideas presented from all the other research groups such as Stanford University, Delft University (Denmark), National Institute of Design (India), RISD, Carnegie Mellon, and ESDI (Brazil).

I thank everyone who was involved in this truly amazing research summit and look forward to establishing and maintaining the friendships I have made there. Some pictures from the expo can be viewed on the following link.

Design Expo/ EParole™ Info
EParole Final Presentation PDF
Pics from the Microsoft Design Expo

FreeFormed™ has been presented at the Identity and Identification Symposium at NYU's Law School
I have been iformed that our paper and project FreeFormed.org™ has been accepted in the graduate student Indentity and Indentification Symposium being held at NYU in September. For our presentation, we plan to discuss some of the more relevant topics and research outlined in our paper as well as the reasons why we created FreeFormed. Hopefully, we will also have a completely redesigned version of the site to present as well by that time. I am very proud of my teammates, Catherine Colman, Nanna Halinen, Jadie Oh, and Megan McMurray. I also thank them for allowing me to be part of such an amazing group with an idea that truly can change the way people tell and share the stories or events which are important to them.

Identity within Social Networks: The Creation of FreeFormed
Freeformed.org Info

Introduction To Physical Computing
Under Prof.Hollenck and working alongside my amazing friends Joshua Dickens, Suzan Eraslan, David Shulman, and Anil Banskota we came up with the idea of the Mopod™ and with enough caffeine fueled late nights and Suzan's selection of early English punk rock music to help us stay awake we were able to make it into a reality. I'm really proud of Team Awesome for their hard work and look foward to launching a commerical version of the Mopod™ before the end of the year.

The Creation of The Mopod™
Mopod™ Pictures From The NYU Winter Show 2005;

Introduction To Computational Media FInal Project
Under Dan O'Sullivan, I worked on the following processing projects and have to admit this is was the one class that truly caused me to lose weight and spend many sleepless nights at ITP. In the long run it was worth it and I was able with the help and advise of some of my fellow classmates to create the final icm project dealing with the issue of a Free Press in Africa. Please note that these are not actual figures but merely generated to give you a better understanding about the lack of a free press in African nations.

Final Project: Free Press In Africa
ICM Projects

Methods In Motion FInal Projects
Working with Fiona we created a animated short in After Effects based on a story told by Fiona's father about the violent period in Belfast that his father lived through in Belfast in the 60's and 70's. Scuba Dagger was submitted to the The Ottawa International Animation Festival

Scuba Dagger: Memories Of Belfast

Working with Anh we created an animated short movie based on his character creation called Mang whom we constructed around a USB memory stick and and it was featured at the ITP Spring Show Screening and we exploring several commercial endeavors for this creation.

USB Mang

Spatial Design Final Projects
Under Prof.Jean-Marc Gauthier, I truly immersed myself in the creation of tangible and virtual products from our many assigned projects. I truly thank Pro.Jean Marc for all of his support and advice in allowing me to truly explore my creative capabilities as well as in the final psychical forms some of my idea took.

Spatial Design Projects

Non-Fiction Media Final Projects
This digital short was created in order to understand how I felt about New York City as a child growing up in Asmara, Eritrea. The piece is in the format of a personal autoethnographical documentary and I hope to work on it further and eventually it was featured at the ITP Spring Video Show.

Lost: Memories From My Past: New York

Here are my first full edits of my final short titled "Lost". I have edited two versions one, which is within the traditional narrative form and one that is a bit more experimental and to me, engages the audience more. The short attempts to visualize the sense of loss and confusion that is felt when moving into a country through the metaphor of the labyrinth like metro system in NYC. The short was also featured in the ITP Spring Video Show.

Lost: Traditional version
Lost: Abstract Version

Digital Imaging Final Project
This is my final collection of pictures taken throughout this past semester. I have submitted some pictures to several photo contests and will be creating a separate gallery site for the collection.

Final Gallery