Cris cares about technology, creativity and love
My work has featured in The Verge, Fast Co Design, and The Atlantic. I'm a Top 50 writer in Technology and Relationships for Medium. You may subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or by searching Embodied Reality anywhere podcasts are found.
Creator of the Love Lock card deck to unlock shadow emotions
Speaker
Speaking about product and design leadership, AI and emerging technology in Stockholm, Barcelona, New York, Clinton Presidential Library, Portland, San Francisco and more
AUGUST 2019, San Francisco
Talk TBD
Presenting the Love Lock card deck and doing live readings for audience members
SEPTEMBER 2017, Stockholm
Deeper States of Reality
Did you know they heart has 40,000 neurons in it? Recent neuroscience and psychology shows the mind is made up of not just the brain but also the body. I spoke about the top 10 incoming hardware and software technologies that will change how we interact with computing.
MARCH 2017, Sun Valley
I Feel, Therefore I Am
Since Descartes uttered the immortal words “I think therefore I am” philosophers and scientists alike have conceived of brain and body as separate. Recent cognitive science and developmental psychology shows how wrong that is.
Founder & CEO – QCUT
Qcut's path to making women's premium denim jeans in 400 sizes began with an 'aha' moment. In speaking to dozens of women we heard the same thing – "My body is weird, so nothing fits me." After a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign and a seed round of funding, Qcut took off, fitting over 500 women in their jeans and opening a retail store in downtown Portland, OR.
Store clerks used tablet-friendly UIs to do take detailed data about each jean fitting. The tablets fit nicely into their apron pockets and allowed them to easily transition between handling the jeans and interacting with the customer.
DATA-DRIVEN FIT
Finding a jean that fits in today's retail environment is a disaster. Our experience of shopping for jeans was designed to be quick and painless. The Qcut dressing room had tears, but they were tears of happiness.
1) Five-question survey
Women filled out a quick survey on their phones or laptop. No special equipment like tape measure or body scanner was needed.
2) Size was selected by the Qcut algorithm
For 1 in 5 women we put them in the best-fitting pair of jeans in their wardrobe on the very first try. Qcut used statistical analysis and machine learning to develop its proprietary algorithm.
3) Client rated the fit of the garment
We took detailed feedback on each area of the body to make sure the jean fit not only in the hips, but also the waist, thigh and inseam.
4) Jeans were made to order
Making jeans in 400 sizes means each jean gets made to order in the leg style and exact inseam that the client desired.
Qcut created a custom internal tool for tracking the order through manufacturing, shipping and collecting detailed feedback from customers.
CEO Founder UX Design Product Management Writer
Product Manager and UX Designer – MOZILLA
The support site was suffering from information overload. There was no information hierarchy. Unhappy users were clogging up the forums because they couldn't find answers on their own, even though there was frequently an article that would've solved their issue.
7 MILLION
That's how many more users per year were helped after our three-month information architecture and redesign project launched.
The first version of the paper prototype for the Mozilla Support homepage: Users could start with a task (1), a product or service (2), or choose a hot topic (3).
A later-iteration design for the Support homepage: People could choose a task (2) or expand the software row (1) to choose a product or service first. When someone clicked the question in the middle, we showed them another piece of paper like this, but with the middle section expanded (compare with the previous screenshot).
The prototypes progressed through 7 versions during 2 weeks. Testing with users before even breaking out the HTML was cheap, and it showed which alternative designs worked best.
Founder – PIELAB
Back when Kickstarter was little more than a gleam in a New Yorker's eye in 2009, I successfully raised my goal to create a behavioral lab cleverly disguised as a pie cart.
With lines of customers sometimes wrapping around the block, I sold out cherry, buttermilk whiskey, and jumbleberry pies and landed on the local news. I took all these findings and the actual cart itself to a standing-room only talk at WebVisions in Portland in 2011.
I learned that people mostly played the game for the pure joy of it, even when it went against their self-interest. One man said "I know I want cherry, but I can't *not* spin the wheel." The changing weekly game brought back loyal customers each Friday and there was more chatter in the line that I've ever seen at any other food cart. The experienced customers explained the situation to the unsuspecting. The community this created was beyond my wildest expectations.
