Derek Vaz

Experience Lead at Huge. I help create meaningful digital products.
Apr 30, 2013

Today marks the 20th anniversary since this webpage went live:

The first website - The Project

We've come a long way since then.

I made my first website in 1995 – a small, 3 page site that described my family's hometown of Goa, India. (I wish I had archived it.) I was drawn to the magic of what a few lines of code, copy and images could produce. It is that same feeling that drives me to do what I do today.

Thanks to CERN and the genius and graciousness of Tim Berners-Lee, for gifting us an ever burgeoning medium to connect and progress our world at an unbelievable rate.

Feb 12, 2013

I had a great time visiting Toronto to talk at Interaction 13. It was especially an honor because it was my hometown and it was the 10th anniversary of IxDA.

Along with great talks from the usual suspects, cough Dan Saffer, this year featured some new blood giving very inspiring presentations which is great news for the future of the organization.

For those interested, my talk on Prototyping is available on SlideShare. If you're in New York, I've been asked to represent it at the local IxDA Redux. If and when that happens, I'll post details here and on Twitter.

Update: For those that missed the talk I'll be presenting it again at the IxDA LA Redux on April 13th and the IxDA Big Apple Redux on May 18th.

If you can't attend either event, you can watch the talk on Vimeo.

Dec 12, 2012

My former agency is having an awesome, honest and open conversation on their blog about what to do with Image Spark, a social tool for creative inspiration that I helped create over 4 years ago.

The idea behind Image Spark was beautifully simple: Create a place where people can share, gather and organise inspiring images on any topic from automobiles to weddings. Obviously since that time there have been some formidable competitors that have entered the space and done a great job.

However, with Teehan+Lax focused on their primary goal as a service firm defining great digital experiences, Image Spark has become what Jon Lax appropriately refers to as the "zombie" in their office (still living, but a liability). Discussing the need to decide what to do with Image Spark, he describes how "disruptive" businesses can't thrive inside "incumbent" ones.

In our example, the incumbent business, Teehan+Lax, which gets its revenue from charging clients, was too powerful for Image Spark. As soon as Image Spark launched, the people who worked on it (the resources) went right back on to the work that paid the bills. In the spring, Greg [Washington] (a driving force behind Image Spark) left for an opportunity on the west coast. Image Spark became the Christmas toy that sat neglected in the corner.

Personally, I won't be too sad to see it go because Image Spark was always at its heart a big experiment for a small group of agency designers and technologists taking their first shot creating a product in our limited free time. (The first version of Image Spark which represents about 97% of the current functionality was conceptualized, created and launched in a matter of 3 months.) Whatever the verdict is, the experience of building a successful product and watching a community form and foster around it has been awesome and something I encourage all designers to be involved with in their career.

Oct 31, 2012

Nom, an app I was thrilled to help design, is now available in the App Store. More details below...

Nom by Salt

About Nom

Over the last year at Huge my team has been working with American Student Assistance, a non-profit that helps facilitate and manage federal student loans. Our role is to help ASA create and evolve Salt, a new financial education ecosystem of tools, content and support for college and beyond.

Nom is one of the first tools in this ecosystem. As with Salt, the goal is to help students solve a common problem while introducing them to basic financial management concepts. In this case, finding cheap eats while understanding the basics of budgeting. As students discover dishes and 'Nom' them, the app tracks their spending and refines it's recommendations for the user. The results and recommendations are powered by the Food Genius API.

I'm really proud of our team's efforts here so I encourage you to download Nom for free and give it a try. As with every 1.0, we'd would love to hear feedback to make improvements to the app.

Oct 29, 2012

Nothing provides perspective like the force of Mother Nature.

As New York braces for Hurricane Sandy, a chief concern is access to power. Of course when the power goes out and batteries wear down, nothing digital is accessible. This thought reminded me of one of my favorite tenets at Huge...

Don't be precious.

That core value is meant to remind us as designers not to be obsessed with our creations. Nothing is permanent and that's especially true in what we do. Embracing this belief is empowering. It allows us to be open to all possibilities, which encourages you take risks and create some truly meaningful experiences.

Most importantly, not being precious allows you to focus us on what really matters. Like preparing for the effects of a hurricaine.

Oct 26, 2012

I mentioned Writer in a previous post as an integral part of my blog posting process. If you haven't come across it before, it's definitely worth a look.

Developed by the outstanding team at iA, Writer is a beautifully simple but powerful text editor built to do one thing - let you focus on writing. I've used it many times prior to creating this blog, including writing my wedding speech. With built-in Dropbox (and iCloud) integration, 'Focus Mode' for text editing and subtle details like displaying the reading time of your post, I find it is the perfect accessory to scriptogram's beautifully simple setup.

Download Writer from the iTunes Store or Mac App Store for less than $10.

Oct 25, 2012

Update: The complete program is now live on the Interaction 13 site including full details of my talk.

I'm excited to announce that I'll be talking at the upcoming IxDA Interaction13 Conference in my hometown of Toronto, in January.

Although January isn't the ideal time to be visiting Canada, I hope to see you there. I will post more details as they become available here. You can also check out the Interaction13 site for more information about the conference, including dates and tickets.

In the meantime, watch this synopsis of my talk, Bury the Wireframe: A Primer in Interaction Prototyping.

Oct 24, 2012

I've been looking at a few options for a simple blog platform and I've decided upon the simplicity of scriptogr.am.

Since it is based on Dropbox, it is reliable, easily scalable and natively supports version control. Also I can use a Dropbox connected editor, like iA's beautiful Writer, to draft articles. Finally, because each of the articles are created in plain text, I won't have to worry if I decide to make a change and need to export my articles.

Scriptogram also comes built with a dead simple dashboard and editor that includes a lovely full-screen mode to focus on writing (just like Writer).

I'll publish my complete thoughts once I've posted a few articles but I have feeling this is the tool I'm going to be using for a while.