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Who I am
I am an independent consultant located in the Seattle area. While my primary expertise is digital color, I also have experience in interactive graphics, information visualization, human-computer interaction, and experimental design (more). Email or phone are the best ways to contact me.
Background
Before starting StoneSoup in 1998, I worked twenty years at Xerox PARC on color printing, digital color, interactive computer graphics, illustration and design systems. (publications)
My book
A Field Guide to Digital Color was published by A.K. Peters in August of 2003. Intended for a broad audience, it provides an overview of the many "fields" that are a part of digital color, including basic vision and psychophysics, color reproduction, computer graphics, and color design. (more).
Current projects

I'm working with NIST on a set of guidelines for using color in voting kiosks. The primary motivation is to make color encoding accessible for people with color vision deficiency (aka colorblindness). However, the guidelines will more broadly encode good color design practice. Of primary concern is maintaining legibility even for users with less than perfect vision..

Polle Zellweger and I taught a class on Information Visualization and Aesthetics (INFO 424) at the University of Washington Information School (iSchool). We also taught it in 2006.

Summer 2007: I've been thinking and talking about my work in the context of design, stimulated by a couple of invited talks. (see Talks below)

Together with Lyn Bartram and Diane Gromala, I am exploring the design, perceptual and cognitive characteristics of subtle visualization elements such as grids. We have published a poster at the Vis2007, which won the best poster award (abstract, slides). Previously, we had a poster at APGV06 and SIGGRAPH 2006 (abstract). I am an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, School for Interactive Arts and Technology (SFU/SIAT).

At the request of Stephen Few, data visualization consultant and author of Show Me the Numbers, I've written an article about using color effectively to display data. Written for the business intelligence community, has been published as an online newsletter by B-EYE-NETWORK (archived in PDF form)

I have done several color and UI projects for Tableau Software. Tableau's award-winning product is a visual analysis and reporting solution that allows people to explore and analyze databases with simple drag and drop operations.

Together with a large panel of contributors, I helped write the R&D Agenda for the National Visual Analytics Center. This has been published as a book, Illuminating the Path, which is available through IEEE Press.

Prior to our move to the Seattle area in 2003, I worked with the Interactive Workspaces project at Stanford University on a variety of projects, from creating large format displays using projectors to Ubicomp interaction techniques.

Starting January 2007, I became Editor in Chief of Computer Graphics and Applications. I regularly review papers for magazines, journals and conferences.
Recent talks and short courses

(10/28/2007) Half-day course at the IEEE Visualization Conference, on Color in Information Display. (Course notes and slides)

(09/4/2007) Invited industry talk and course presentation in the series on Visual Storytelling and Data Visualization at the AIM Institute in Omaha, NB. Color Design: From Seeing Red to Feeling Blue (slides)

(06/22/2007) Invited talk on Designing Color for Data at the Computational Aesthetics symposium in Banff, Alberta, Canada. (slides)

(10/31/2006) Half-day course at the IEEE Visualization Conference, on Color in Information Display. (Course notes and slides)

(01/18/2006) Graduate colloquium at SIAT, the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, on Color in Information Display.

(10/28/2005) Half-day course at the IEEE Visualization Conference, on Color in Information Display. (Course notes and slides)

(10/05/2005) Seminar on Color in Information Display at the Rochester Institute of Technology. (slides)
Teaching Flash
I taught a class on Flash animation to a small class of 8th and 9th graders at the Woodinville Montessori School. Student websites: 2004-2005, 2005-2006. For today's students, I believe literacy in the web and digital media is crucial. Here's why.
Color resources
I have found the web a rich resource for color information (good and bad). Here are some of my favorite links.
Music
I play oboe and English horn with the Eastside Symphony, and other groups in the Puget Sound area.