Author Archives: msallin

About msallin

Matty Sallin is the founder of Kinfo.com. Since 1999, Matty has worked to develop consumer products that manage everyday information and media in a satisfying, illuminating, and beautiful way. His professional and academic work has focused on social media, information design and information visualization. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Good Morning America, GQ, American Public Media, Make Magazine, Boing Boing, Engadget, Gizmodo, Coolhunting, ResFest, and others. Matty holds a Master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a Bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz.

Kinfo

Posted on June 5, 2009

Kinfo is a familial social network designed to allow users to discover and document their ancestral roots, explore their living family network, and share media together.

Posted in Interaction Design, Visual Design | 4 Comments

Wake n’ Bacon

Posted on March 20, 2009

Version 1 by Matty Sallin, Daniel Bartolini, Hsiao-huh Hsu Version 2 by Matty Sallin with engineering by Josh Myer WHAT: An alarm clock that wakes you up with the smell of cooking bacon instead of a buzzer.  The aroma wakes you … Continue reading →

Posted in Product Design | 314 Comments

the ATM: an interface redesign (sketch)

Posted on March 8, 2009

Even though ATMs are devices most of us use multiple times a week, if you watch people using them you can see that with each screen refresh the user is putting effort towards parsing the information before them and hesitating … Continue reading →

Posted in Interaction Design | 1 Comment

Apple OS X Spotlight: an interface redesign

Posted on June 7, 2006

* Note: This article was written in June 2006 and reflects the Spotlight interface at the time. Apple’s Spotlight technology is great for two primary reasons: first, it is so tightly integrated with the OS that it’s index is always … Continue reading →

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PulseLamp

Posted on March 20, 2006

by Matty Sallin and Greg Trefry WHAT: A biofeedback lamp that detects and “echos” your own heartbeat in realtime. Just place your hands on either side of the lamp base and wait for it to detect your pulse, then watch as … Continue reading →

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LandLord (sketch)

Posted on June 7, 2005

LandLord is an interface study for a web app that offers a comparative view of apartment rentals in San Francisco. Searching for an apartment is essentially a comparative process. While most people have a ballpark range of what they’d like … Continue reading →

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Chit Chat

Posted on March 21, 2005

by Matty Sallin with David Herman WHAT: ChitChat is an installation that projects a speech bubble above your head as you talk. The bubble swells with the text “blah bu blah blah” as you continue to talk. The output text … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Telepresence Picture Frames

Posted on March 21, 2005

WHAT: A pair of networked photo frames that indicate the remote presence of the person in the photo. For example, if my sister in California moves around in front of her photo of me, my photo frame of her will gently … Continue reading →

Posted in Product Design | 1 Comment

Email: an interface redesign (sketch)

Posted on June 7, 2004

All popular email clients share the same document-based metaphor, where each new message they received is added to the top of the stack of other messages. Users are expected to sift through their inbox, respond to incoming messages, and file … Continue reading →

Posted in Interaction Design | 4 Comments

Sogetsu

Posted on June 8, 2002

Sogetsu.or.jp is the first site I designed as a creative director. The Sogetsu Foundation is the most avant-garde school of Ikebana in Japan, Ikebana being the Japanese art of flower arrangement. The client was intentionally vague on the brief, only … Continue reading →

Posted in Interaction Design, Visual Design | 4 Comments