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
December 29, 2019
My life is a small one among the lives John Lewis has touched, but I wanted to think through some of the ways he’s influenced me. I’m thankful he is still with us, and I want to keep him in my thoughts in his current struggle.
June 14, 2018
I recently finished reading Joanna Shenk’s book, The Movement Makes Us Human: An Interview with Dr. Vincent Harding on Mennonites, Vietnam, and MLK, in which she recounts an extensive interview with Harding on those topics.
I’ve known Joanna for several years now; her work with both Jesus Radicals and The Iconocast have been deeply formative for me, and I’ve been deeply fortunate to know her a little, and it’s out of that context that I read this book.
The interview falls into several sections: the Southern Freedom Movement, Mennonites, the black community, nonviolence, whiteness, and building community. It concludes with a couple of articles/presentations Harding wrote as appendixes, which I’d never read before and are themselves brilliant.
May 18, 2018
Every once in a while, the user experience design community has a conversation about what to call the people who interact with the things we design. Is it dehumanizing to call them users? Is it bad business? Should we use words like customer, human, person? It tends to go on for a bit, and then be set aside until the next round.
I mostly don’t devote a lot of time to the debate, but in recent years as I’ve been trying to introduce the process of user-centered design to people who are decidedly outside the world of design (ministers, activists, etc) I’ve come to realize that I do have an opinion, and that I think there’s value in referring to people who interact with our stuff as users.
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.