I was an early employee at Yahoo! and was very fortunate to have been part of a team that produced products for millions of people worldwide. Throughout those years, I was given the chance to create and design products such as Companion, Messenger, Search, Local, etc.

Overall, it was my pleasure to have worked with some of the most creative people in the business. I’m very thankful for the opportunity to have been their teammates.

Example Projects:

SBC Yahoo Internet Browser
  

In 2000, SBC (AT&T) and Yahoo signed an agreement to jointly offer broadband internet services. As part of that agreement, a family of products were created. I was the lead designer for the team that developed the new SBC Yahoo! portal and internet browser.

Links:
• Sketches & Wireframes
• Flash Wireframe Pages
• Flash Mockups Used for Field Studies

Messenger Maps Integration
Here’s an idea I came up with many years ago for integrating Yahoo! Maps with Instant Messenger. It was an easy visual way for giving people directions while text chatting.Situation:
Imagine how many times you’ve tried to give directions to someone over the phone or tried to agree on a place to meet but didn’t know the exact address. Or sometimes you might know a secret shortcut that you take during the morning commute but don’t know all the street names. Sometimes it’s easier to just draw a person a map on paper or better yet write some notes on top of a map.

Concept:
The idea was very simple. Basically it let two people who are chatting via Instant Messenger IM, search for a map, give each other directions, agree on a place to meet, and share notes on the map in REAL TIME. When one person wrote notes on the map, the notes were displayed in both person’s IM windows. Afterwards, they could print, save, and email the map & notes.

Link:
• Initial Wireframe Concept for Yahoo! Maps

Product Design Research
U-Life is a company focused on using ubiquitous computing to connect communities and create public innovation in Songdo City, Korea. While leading U-Life, my approach was to view public needs from a micro and macro view. Our team explored everyday interactions of residents with public services such as riding the bus, visiting museums, paying for parking, and so forth. Then we explored how these interactions could be improved by the use of emerging technologies such as RFID cards, cloud computing, and social networks. Then taking a macro approach, we focused on designing an organization and infrastructure that could interweave the people, government, and businesses into a connected community.

LG Homnet and Cisco Smart+Connected Communities
U-Life is the nucleus of LG Homnet intelligent home products and Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities program. Currently, Songdo City has a population of 100,000 and is expected to grow to 300,000 in the next five years. U-Life is well underway and LG Homnet products are in use by the residents, the businesses, and the schools throughout Songdo. Further advanced technologies will be rolled out during various phases of construction. Also, the U-Life Digital Management Center is now Cisco’s global center for Smart+Connected Communities which is a major initiative within Cisco.

Examples & Presentations
U-Life Promotional Video (2003)	U-Life Presentation Slides (pdf, 1.1mb)
Dynamic Bus Scheduling (Designer: Tan Nyugen)	RFID Recycle Containers (Designer: Joel Perez)

Links:
• Songdo City Overview
• Songdo U-Life Marketing Website
• Songdo U-Life Corporate Website
• LG HomNet Website
• Cisco Smart+Connected Communities

The Need for U-Life: Korea’s Brain Drain
South Korea is a country dominated by family owned oligopolies called chaebols. The economic structure heavily favors these oligopolies to the detriment of smaller companies and entrepreneurs. As a result, average Koreans have very few career options outside of the chaebols. Therefore, there is tremendous career pressure to favor job safety over risk taking. Also, each year thousands of Korea’s best scientists and engineers leave the country in pursuit of career opportunities.

Establishing U-Life
In order to help stem this brain drain, seven years ago I wrote a proposal for creating U-Life as a way to foster economic growth and establish an innovation hub in Songdo City Korea similar to Silicon Valley. U-Life is short for Ubiquitous Life, which is a consortium company that is creating the world’s first citywide ubiquitous computing infrastructure.

The main idea is to build a public ubiquitous computing infrastructure that companies, startups, the government, and individuals can use to create new businesses and services. By making the infrastructure public, the possibilities of a corporate monopoly are eliminated. More importantly with a public infrastructure, opportunities become open to everyone and industry innovations endless.

Our idea is similar to Eisenhower’s interstate highways project which created the US interstate highway system in the 1950s and subsequently kick started numerous new industries such as nationwide shipping, fast food, travel lodging, etc. However in order for innovation like that to happen, all companies involved must resist the urge to push technologies from the research lab to the user. Instead U-Life must stay focused on allowing user needs to drive the technologies that are developed.

While leading the Songdo City development strategy team, we pitched the idea for U-Life to countless company executives and government ministers. The biggest obstacle was overcoming the chaebol culture of smothering out smaller companies. However, we focused on the positive side of having an innovation hub in Korea. It would help spur regional growth and create career opportunities for all Koreans. At the same time, it would help chaebols by creating smaller tech companies worth acquiring.

After toiling for over 18 months, we were able to pull a consortium together. Participating are two of Korea’s largest companies, LG and POSCO Steel, as well as foreign companies such as Cisco Systems.

I wrote this application in Flash/Actionscript to help people learn dance and sports skills. It allows the user to view a sports technique from multiple angles concurrently. The user can select which view to load in the main window and view & scan at any speed. It’s very helpful for learning skills that are difficult to demonstrate in slow motion. The application is designed to be quickly embedded into a blog or any webpage.

Features:
• You Select the Camera Angle
• Full play controls
• Drag to scan playback
• Super slow motion
• Synchronized multiple views
• Simple to embed in existing webpages

Link:
Shadow Boxing Demo (5.1mb)

The New York Times wrote an article about a ubiquitous computing company I started in Korea called U-Life. The reporter dug deep for a couple of months. Not a week went by without a call from a friend or old professor telling me that a NY Times reporter called them. Overall, the article turned out well. As a result we got a lot of investment from several companies including LG and Cisco, who eventually bought U-life two years later.

Links:
• NY Times Article Download (pdf, 74kb)
• NY Times Article (NY Times Website)
• Songdo City Overview
• U-Life Overview

Wink is a citywide digital sign system that makes use of a city-wide wireless network to post dynamic advertising and public service announcements throughout a city. Wink is undergoing feasibility studies in Songdo, South Korea.

Presentation:
• Wink Concept (pdf slides)

Keynote Speaker:
I was the keynote speaker at an architecture & design symposium at Tecnológico de Monterrey Mexico. They were interested mostly in how architecture and urban planning will be affected by emerging technologies, specifically innovations in ubiquitous computing infrastructure. The main theme of my presentation was “Information Technology Development as a Catalyst for Regional Economic Growth”.

I got the impression that my presentation was mostly attended by architecture and urban planning students. I was later told by a professor that most of these students were from the wealthy elite in Mexico and through family connections will most likely be running the country in a couple of decades. Hopefully some of the examples I talked about will help them in the future to use technology as a catalyst for starting regional economic hubs in Mexico in the same way Frederick Terman did at Stanford.

“Hands-on Heart” was an interactive online application that I created while I was a graduate student at Stanford University. I was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to build an application that helped students learn about the complexities of the human cardiac cycle. It allowed students to explore cause & effect relationships between the various factors that influence heart function and to form an accurate mental model of how the heart worked. What made it unique when compared to conventional classroom teaching at the time (1998) was that students learned by self guided exploration and through interaction with a virtual online heart.

Link:
• Presentation Slides (pdf, 3.9mb)

DVD Cover	Interactive Map with US National Archive Reports

“WWII and the World It Made” was a documentary and multimedia package published by Stanford University Press. It was based on a series of lectures from Pulitzer Price winning historian, David Kennedy. The package used interactive multimedia applications created in Flash, video lectures, online text chats with David Kennedy, and documents from the US National Archives to teach David Kennedy’s interpretation of WWII.

I was the multimedia lead for this project responsible for the development of the package and interactive applications. It was an enjoyable project and gave me a taste for working with camera operators, sound crew, and editors.