David's work encompasses a range of methods, subject matter, and scale. Here are a few recent projects he's been involved in.

The DMM Transformation Project

Design Department, Carnegie Mellon University

As part of an ongoing Transformation Plan, the United States Post Office (USPS) contracted with Carnegie Mellon University's Design Department to redesign their core legal document, the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM).

David joined the project in Fall 2004, near the middle of its third year. There was a great deal of role overlap and collaboration on this team. In addition to his roles as technical coordinator, FrameMaker/WebWorks expert, resident programmer, and Section 508 consultant, David worked with others to sketch print and textual materials, conduct tests of the old and new DMM with USPS customers and employees, analyze and critique results, develop quality assurance tools, and write extensive documentation.

In total, over 40 graduate students and full-time staff from Carnegie-Mellon worked in collaboration with the USPS to rethink, restructure, and reinvent the DMM as a modular system of audience-specific publications.

Infotropism: Living Plants as a Display

Human-Computer Interaction Institute, CMU

The Infotropism Project was an inquiry into the special affordances of living materials.

David and three colleagues from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute compared changes in recycling behavior caused by a public, dynamic, informational display made out of (1) living plants and (2) a robotic plant analogue, using a motion-sensitive light display as a control.

This kind of research activity sets the stage for further explorations of the unique interactions that take place between human beings and hybrid living & electromechanical forms. It may be that such interactions are more compelling, or more memorable, than interactions with "pure" machines. At the very least, living materials, unlike screens, provide an immediately intuitive mechanism from which inferences can be drawn.

The group published results, methods, and design process in a conference paper for DIS2004. They designed an informational poster to debrief participants (many of whom were unwitting) after the project ended.