Hey there, I'm Jason. I like to build things that both expose and solve problems, and hopefully teach us something along the way. I'm mostly drawn to patterns that don't have instruments yet. This almost always means I'm reading a data story, recognizing an issue, and producing an artifact to address said issue. I always create what makes the most sense for the nature of the problem. Sometimes that means a commercial product, sometimes it's a body of work, and sometimes it's just a thing that exists.
This method has a name: Research through Design. Building is an integral part in the process of unearthing a pattern or testing a hypothesis. That, and Research through Design sounds a lot fancier than Prototyping.
The reason I like Research through Design (beyond it sounding fancier than “prototyping”) is that it doesn't force me to build a better mousetrap every time. Sometimes the better mousetrap is the right answer, and I do enjoy that. But sometimes the right answer is a measurement system or a body of work, and sometimes it's an artifact whose only job is to make something legible. That way, the method is formed to fit the problem, not the other way around.
And just between you and me: if I'm not creatively solving real problems, my brain tends to creatively invent them. I'd rather stay in the real world.
Exists to help AI users learn to recognize harmful behavior patterns: the slow, hard-to-name stuff that doesn't trip the “this is bad” alarm until it's already shifted you. It's a pattern library, a behavioral methodology, witness reports from people who've encountered something worth naming, and advisories on what to watch for. Built to feel like a place you pull into, not a dashboard you log into.
redlinestation.com →Exists to show that data centers and compute can be used as a type of currency in renewable energy. The project is built. It's also in the middle of a release that emerged from the building itself. Compute executed on verified clean energy carries a certifiable environmental signature: energy mix, carbon intensity, water usage, all provable at the job level. That signature is its own kind of instrument, which conceptually and functionally creates a Renewable Energy Credit (REC) for compute, a Renewable Compute Credit (RCC).
Not an instrument, exactly. This is where I talk about Research through Design, building weird stuff, and sense-making writ large on Substack. The idea is to make the stories that show up in data legible to the experience economy world.
experienceeconomy.substack.com →I'm looking to connect with writers, researchers, designers, and builders working on questions that don't fit neatly into one field: what it means to measure things that aren't being measured, what the right artifact for a problem actually is, what it looks like to investigate a pattern most people can feel but can't name.