Design thinking, visual articulation and a love for learning guide my actions as a graphic and interactive designer, a design educator, a cross disciplinarian, and a digital conceptualist. This is a selection of my projects, essays and experiences. To learn more about me please email me or download my design & teaching philosophy and my curriculum vitae. design research »Digital Collecting: Thesis »Shareables: File Sharing »The Living Library »Divers' Language System »Visual Noise Experience »Patterns & Chickens »Book Design »Softwear: Digital Textile professional practice teaching experience The following thesis was submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Graphic Design, Department of Graphic Design, College of Design, North Carolina State University, Spring 06. Digital Collecting: Designing Tools for Online Collecting Behaviors »View the Project website »Selected Bibliography (pdf) In my Graphic Design Master’s research, I define the term “Digital Collecting” by identifying the behaviors and attributes of users in networked virtual spaces. I recognized Digital Collecting as a thoroughly modern phenomenon in need of a considered, designed experience. Subsequently I developed a set of graphic user interface tools, as prototypes, that both elucidate the term and exemplify my particular position of what a designed digital collecting experience can be. I found the best way to demonstrate and test my ideas was to create visual prototypes (named Re/collection, Clustr, NoteSpace and Digital Quilt). These four distinct conceptual GUI demonstrations address specific issues and behaviors of the digital collector, such as serendipitous discovery, the accumulation of experiences, the subjectivity of categorization and recognition, and collaborative sharing. The interaction design and aesthetic of each tool is informed by collecting behaviors in the analog world, and although an understanding of physical collecting behaviors guides my design research, it is the advancements of online technology, such as non-hierarchical tagging, remix culture, and virtual communities that truly catalyzed my research into Digital Collecting. Committee: Professor Meredith Davis, Associate Professor Denise Gonzales Crisp, Assistant Professor Will Temple All content (including design, writing and research) copyright Jamie E. Gray, 2007, unless otherwise attributed. Technical advisement provided by agrayspace creative.