At some point while reading the following you’re going to think that what I’m really trying to do here is expand the market for my services. For the record, I’m not currently looking for work.

This essay is going to be a bit of a departure for me because I’ll be referencing (albeit anonymously) some people I’ve been contacted by or worked with. For most of you that won’t mean much, but there may be some readers who can connect the dots, so I want to make a few things clear. I have no reason to believe that the people I’m referencing are anything but decent, and they have never treated me less than professionally. If they owed me money they paid me, and they always took my calls. As a rule I don’t talk about my relationships with clients, but I need to make a craft point that springs directly from the business context of my work, so I’m going to bend that rule just a bit.

In January of this year I was asked to participate in high-level design meetings on a fascinating R&D project. Given the parameters of the project and my interest in emotional involvement it seemed a dream assignment, and I readily agreed to participate. The meetings were held in NYC, and were led by two people – one a biz-side producer, the other a design-side creative director. Although the premise was flawed, all the pieces were in place to do something truly exciting, and I had every reason to believe that we might truly raise the bar of emotional involvement in interactive works.  [ Read more ]