Contact & Elsewhere
Email me at tpoor@cmu.edu. Unless you’re a spammer. In that case, shoo.
I can also be found on LinkedIn and the HCII. And you can follow me on Twitter, too – even if you are a spammer.
I love to create experiences.
I study human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon,
and am currently looking for a user experience internship.
My Background
I’m a humanist, designer, and developer (in that order).
I’ve worked in web development since I was a wee little sixth-grader, so my biggest influences include Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug. My background also means that I’m a designer who can develop too, though I make a conscious effort not to allow my knowledge of implementation affect what I design.
I love sunshine and billiards, and probably need a twelve-step program for bacon.
My Design Philosophy
My goal is to design experiences, not just products. A product is only a means to an end – they are simply tools by which we support a person’s life or workflow. Thus, I don’t design interfaces just for the sake of it. I design them in order to achieve a wonderful experience supported by an invisible and unthanked design.
I believe empathy is crucial to achieving this. As Richard Saul Wurman puts it, “the key to making things understandable is to understand what it’s like not to understand.” This is awfully convenient, because it’s why I design in the first place: to understand and improve people’s lives.
…and they actually pay me. It’s like winning the lottery.