Hi, I’m Jonathan. I live in Minneapolis, and I make websites. I’m into design, theology, justice, and grace.
You can read more about me, see what I do, or just say hi. Especially on Twitter.
A blog about design, faith, and how they work together. View All Posts
May 15, 2017
Recently the topic of diversity in conference speakers, specifically among radical Christian folk, came up on my Facebook when the website for [The Peace of the Gospel](https://thepeaceofthegospel.com/) was launched, and of the twenty speakers nineteen of them were white. I saw a few different things happening in the discussion, and I was reminded of some things I’ve learned.
April 25, 2017
While I’m a tech person – I’ve been working full-time on the web for more than a decade – I spend most of my time away from work (and these days, most of my coworkers aren’t tech people either) around non-tech people. Some of this is coincidental, of course, but it’s always fascinating. I can see how tech people, and the work we do, appears to activist friends, church friends, family, and so on. This, along with the best parts of the design field, which has its own way of looking at tech at the best of times, helps me look at my work with a more skeptical eye.
I’d like to take a look at one example of this, in the hopes that it can encourage folks to do so in their own way. This isn’t a thing that comes naturally to our society; we tend to put tech people on a pedestal and think they have the skills to do whatever they want in whatever industries they want.
April 3, 2017
One of the things I think is interesting about white people trying to do racial justice work is this: we have never, in all the centuries that whiteness has been doing racist stuff and some percentage of white people have wanted to resist that, learned how to do it in a way that isn’t problematic. Maybe it isn’t possible anyway, but we tend to assume that it is. Whether or not that’s the case, it should always give us pause when we think we’ve got the way, or even a way, to do it now.
Collecting amazing and interesting things on the web. View All Items
May 26, 2015
design / mobile / user experience
It’s time to recognise that this is the wrong approach. We shouldn’t try to compete with native apps in terms set by the native apps. Instead, we should concentrate on the unique web selling points: its reach, which, more or less by definition, encompasses all native platforms, URLs, which are fantastically useful and don’t work in a native environment, and its hassle-free quality.
May 9, 2015
Any portfolio is the start of a conversation. It needs to invite discussion, further questioning, and that all important call-back.
May 6, 2015
design / design research / journey map / user experience / user research
Every experience could blend into the aether and let me get on with life. Instead, video ads auto-play at full volume just when I thought I had my work computer muted, my “smart” coffee maker takes 10 steps to brew a new pot, and every new app download asks for information that I’m not sure I want to give up. I’m constantly bombarded with dumb experiences, but we can make them smarter with ultra-contextual design. Context-aware systems provide information and utilities to people based on the tasks they are trying to accomplish.
My work happens in my day job, and occasionally on interesting side projects. View My Work
I've spent the past several years in various roles at MinnPost, Emory University, AirWatch, and CareerBuilder.com in Minneapolis and Atlanta. I've consulted on projects locally and in other places across North America.
I do design strategy, design research, user interface design, and build responsive websites with HTML5 and CSS. I'm passionate about discovering and solving problems, learning about people to make things they like to use, and beautiful interfaces.