Having operated a successful digital product design and development consultancy (Devise) for the past 4 years, the time has come for me to seek a fabulous new professional challenge in the form of a full-time position. (My Devise co-founder and I are moving in different directions.) 

Being a respected design practitioner and community leader for the past 12+ years, I aim to work in a strategic & managerial capacity while continuing to stay involved in hands-on research and design activities. In crafting my professional future, it’s helpful for me to write up a description of my ideal role. Here’s what I want to do:

• Make the world a better place by improving people’s experiences with medical devices and healthcare-related technology (and if not having a medical/healthcare angle, then designing for touchscreen/mobile devices, complex systems, gestural interfaces and/or immersive environments is most appealing to me)
• Help identify business opportunities and solve complex product definition challenges through strategic application of the most appropriate research and design activities 
• Creatively direct people and manage product design activities in order to help define and deliver delightful products and services
• Collaborate with a cross-disciplinary team of highly intelligent and talented people to get the work done right, helping to ensure that all constituent stakeholders come together as seamlessly as possible to reconcile the viable, feasible and desirable in equal measure
• Lead and help to build a team of user experience designers, including hiring, training and mentoring
• Conduct original user research as needed to understand people’s real-world behaviors and needs
• Deliver innovative design solutions as needed in the fields of interaction design, information design, visual design and information architecture
• Instill user-centered design techniques and approaches to improve product development processes throughout the organization
• Be respected for bringing passion, commitment and creativity to my work
• Have internal authority within the organization commensurate with my level of responsibility in providing the business with great design solutions
• Be supported in keeping up with professional trends by attending industry conferences as well as personally speaking & writing about interaction design
• Remain based in Portland, Oregon with up to 10-25% travel to support activities such as user research, team collaboration and professional development

Please feel free to get in touch with me to discuss opportunities, via email to liz(at)devise(dot)com, Twitter @ebacon, or via the web form at http://www.devise.com/contact . Cheers! 

I spoke these poems into my iPhone’s iTalk app, each paragraph being a continguous spoken section, and the paragraph breaks being a pause or gap in time. Poetry is inherently an aural art form and I hope that hearing them spoken adds to the experience for you, my dear reader. There are a couple on-the-spot edits in there as well, with the transcription being the final shape of the words. Choosing line breaks in the final written version was occasionally challenging. Enjoy if you might… (Note: I can’t get the audio files to play in Firefox but they work fine in Safari and likely other browsers.)

 

    Travel to Thunderhill (March 5, 2011)

The clouds hang in the valley

around the green

The trucks smoke in the rain

I will not investigate

the weeping in the bathroom

I will believe

I can stick to the road

I will believe

I can love again

The exit is open

but I do not take it

I travel forward

with a new destination

There is no moss growing on this tree

The confused geese fly east

and I wonder if they know something

I don’t

The thorny quilt of pine trees

blankets the hills

and it warms me

even as I pass them by

And now the fields are full

of flowering trees

and I shiver for the potential of the buds

The road is open,

I am free

I pull forward,

I spread my wings

I fly into the distance,

approaching I don’t know what 

    Return from Thunderhill (March 7, 2011)

I travel through

the regional highway

well-tended walnut trees

crouch and reach

and the cemetery — 

every gravestone has flowers!

pink, yellow, white

golden signs of love enduring

I am floored, I am flummoxed

I want to live here

I want to die here

The goat lies peacefully

and watches me pass

As I practice the warrior

in a rest stop

a man approaches

tells me he and his friend

don’t have enough money 

to get where they need to go

I tell him I’m broke

He walks away

I realized how relative it all is

The sound of a clarinet

floats through the beautiful, cold air

I ask the man

if his friend is playing 

the clarinet

and he says yes

Five dollars goes in the hat

Eyelashes are tiny veils

over the inner soul

and I think the flutter

must appeal 

the way a kimono

can be opened

A huge barn 

in the middle of the golden fields

is filled to the rafters with hay

and I am filled with hope 

up to my ears

Across the freeway 

I gape

at a metal cow, disemboweled,

lying on the ground,

bigger than life-size,

a testament to the land

Hope and death 

on either side of the road

Raindrops fall from the sunny sky

and I laugh

I see the clouds gather

on the other side of the hills

Their shadows darken the curves ahead

but I am not afraid

The sign says 

watch for snow

The road is strangely 

quiet and empty

The raindrops and sun

appear again

I wonder where the road travels

between the hills

It doesn’t look frightening

I am nervous 

but collected

I proceed,

verily

The fattest rainbow greets me at eye-level

as I crest the peak,

descend from snow to wet

Relieved, I think I know

what the rainbow means

I say goodbye to California,

golden land of opportunity

and shitty pavement

A small woman trudges beside the road

and I wonder what’s in her bag

A factory chimney belches the whitest smoke 

into the sky

I don’t believe it

I pass the truck carrying huge, dead trees

and I feel great sorrow,

sick inside

Jacob’s ladders shoot through the clouds

and I lift, warmed