Everythingability is Tom Smith's consultancy. He helps makes web sites better with usability, marketing, search engine optimisation, social media/online communities and information design.
If you are asking "What exactly do you do Tom Smith?", this may help you.
He finds speaking in the third person almost impossible ( it makes me feel very uncomfortable! )
What Makes Me Tick?
I passionately believe in the power that making things easier to use has to transform ourselves and society. Apple made the computer easier to use which gave millions of people the opportunity to use a computer. Making things easier to use is democratic, giving more people access to the means of expression and creation. It's the right thing to do.
The Hypercard team made programming easier to use and had a similar effect happened, where people who weren't programmers were suddenly able to create software that resulted in an avalanche of educational tools that otherwise would not have been created. This creative revolution had similarities with the open source movement, giving away tools and content for free. I am proud to have been part of it.
A desire to make things better lead me into HCI, usability and educational research and I started developing using visual programming tools, a paradigm that I believe will eventually replace most textual programming languages, because it's easier to use.
General Interests
Usability, Information Architecture, Facetted Classification, Pattern Languages, Visual Programming, Online Communities, Communities of Practice, End User Programming, Authoring Tools, Visualisation, Interface Design (particularly zoomable interfaces), Virtual Learning Environments, Persuasive Design and Hypnotic marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Branding, Social Media, Web2.0
Software I Use To Get My Job Done
Python, Omnigraffle, Eclipse, Django, MySQL, Photoshop, AppleScript, VoodooPad, Subversion, Illustrator, Firefox, MAMP, TextWrangler, Alias Sketchbook, NetNewsWire, Terminal, Dreamweaver, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Advanced Web Ranking, Mind Jet Mind Manager, iCal, Unix, Adium, Wordpress, MoinMoin, MediaWiki, Drupal, Gregarius.
History
Tom created Everythingability in 2006. Before that he spent 6 years at the OTHER media as head of research and development, mainly looking at how to improve the usability of ecommerce sites such as Paul Smith, Virgin Books, Delia Smith.
Prior to that Tom was a researcher at ULTRALAB, Anglia Ruskin University's educational technology research dept. Tom collaborated closely with many blue chip clients, such as Apple, Oracle and Nortel.
Take a look at his Past Projects page to find out more.
Contact
Email: <tom AT everythingability DOT com>
Mobile: 07720 288 285
Blog: The OTHER Blog
IM: everythingability
Twitter: everythingability
Delicious: theotherblog
Last FM: theotherblog