A bit about me

I am an interaction designer and software engineer, living and working in London, England.

I grew up in Germany and began my career there in the IT department of the Heart and Diabetes Center North-Rhine Westphalia, Europe's largest cardiological clinic, and possibly Europe's most undersized IT department. During my two years there, I learned software development on the Macintosh, using mainly HyperCard, FileMaker and later REALbasic, and focusing in particular on user interaction. I also did some graphic design on posters advertising the Heart Center's conferences.

I moved to the UK to study Computer Science at King's College London, and went on to work for Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (now part of BlackRock) for three years, designing and building solutions using VisualBasic, Oracle, Sybase and Perl.

In 2005/06, I did an MSc in Human–Computer Interaction with Ergonomics at the UCL Interaction Centre, followed by three months in the Socio–Digital Systems group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. I now work at BlackRock Solutions as a user interface engineer and interaction designer.

In parallel with all this, I've been an independent Mac (and now iPhone) developer since 1998.

Although most of my jobs have been fairly technical, my passion lies with conceptual design and interface design, that is, the what aspect of software, rather than the how. I'm particularly interested in how to represent functionality and information in a way that makes them easy to understand, and in natural and efficient techniques for interacting with content.

Too much work is bad for you, so I also like to go rollerblading and climbing, to dance Tango and to play the classical guitar.

Your feedback about any of my work is very welcome.

Amar