Bio

I've been fortunate in my career to work on a broad array of projects, from studying in-vehicle navigation displays back in 1993, well before they became commonplace in cars, to studying situation awareness in US Navy submarine commanders, to studying and creating a cognitive model that instantiates a theory of how users come to learn the locations of items in a Graphical User Interface (Dissertation PDF). The recent projects have been more conventional in nature, but not without their challenges, and the challenges are the interesting part.

I've also been fortunate to work with some extremely talented and intelligent interaction designers, visual designers, user researchers, developers and system architects. Building an effective UI requires a lot of collaboration and when you have the luxury of interacting with and learning from smart people, it's truly a pleasure.

I'm currently based in Boulder, Colorado, which I've concluded is a nice place to be. I say this after bouncing around from Ohio, where I grew up, to Northern Virginia, where I went to graduate school, to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I got my first real job. I love being able to work from a home office here so I can head out onto Boulder's trails with my crazy boxer to clear my head and break up the day.

If you want to get in touch, the best ways to contact me are via LinkedIn or email.

FAQ

FAQ, seriously? What is this, 1997?

Yes, and no, not anymore.

Fine, but is this one of those FAQ's with questions nobody actually ever asked, only ones you feel like answering?

Yes

What's the deal with the name? What's Cognacy supposed to mean?

It's an attempt to include "cognition" in the name since my background is in cognitive psychology and designing UI is an exercise in understanding human cognition and problem solving. Unfortunately, all of the cool variants containing "cog-" had already been registered by 2008, so I rolled with this. It isn't supposed to mean anything particular, but apparently it has some meaning in theoretical linguistics. I could probably attempt some post hoc connection there, but it doesn't seem worthwhile at this point. I could have used my last name in the company, like Ehret Consulting Services or somesuch, but I find most people have trouble pronouncing and spelling my name, so elected not to go that route.

OK, what's the deal with the logo?

It's an abstraction of a sign my advisor at George Mason University, Wayne Gray, put on the door of our first research lab, the C-A-T lab. The 3 elements are Cognition - Artifact - Task and the idea is that we study how those elements interact during human problem solving. The original sign actually has a drawing of a cat on it, but I'm a dog person so I didn't incorporate it into the logo.

Do you have a design philosophy? Maybe something pithy?

Basically, it's just figure out what needs to get done and then do it. Every team is different. Requirements run the gamut from wildly nebulous to overly specific. Time lines are sometimes realistic, mostly not. Data about target users is sometimes available, sometimes not. Once I get a handle on the various dependencies and constraints, I can propose deliverables and process.

What's your favorite part of this job?

Building stuff. Part of the reason I like building interactive mockups in html and css is that I've created something tangible, something that someone can interact with.

What's your least favorite part of this job?

Marketing and self-promotion. I like to just do a good job and have that work speak for itself.

I'd like to know more about the photos used on your site, what can you tell me?

Thanks, I appreciate your interest! I took the photos with any one of DSLR's I've owned over the years. I've always had a thing for cool textures and patterns, which I attribute to an early appreciation for the work of Ansel Adams and M.C. Escher. To prep the images for the site, I used Photoshop to desaturate, apply a photo filter and artfully crop.

The photo at the top of the home page is a sideways close-up shot I took of the outer wall of Newgrange, an amazing neolithic-era (~5,000 year old) passage tomb in Ireland. It was oriented and structured to only allow sunlight to reach its center on Winter Solstice - cool, huh? Other photos on that page are blue cobblestones in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, lava rock on Kauai, and a close up of a gnarled Pinyon Pine at Colorado National Monument National Park. The photo at the top of the portfolio page was taken at Ruby Beach in Olympic National Park - there were rock cairns stacked everywhere on the beach. The photo at the top of this page was taken at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, which I think is an under-appreciated formation in the park. The picture of me in the Bio section above was taken as I was climbing out of a lava tunnel on Genovesa Island in Galapagos National Park.