But I never wanted a career. I simply wanted to do something enjoyable in order to make money so that I could support my true passions (making art and someday raising a family).

When the World Wide Web surfaced I was back in university studying art, and supporting myself as the secretary of a multi-media lab. I became interested in the internet as an artistic medium. So I taught myself the necessary tools.

Knowing web coding in early 1996 made you sought-after, and I landed my first start-up job through a friend. I was hired as an HTML programmer, and took it upon myself to look after the structure and layout and flow of the screens, since no one else did. I read About Face by Alan Cooper, signed up for Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, and taught myself Interaction Design and Usability Engineering.

In Seattle, I worked for three startups, spending about 2 years at each company. Throughout, I made sure to balance my jobs and my art, working four days a week and spending the rest on art projects, such as Circus Contraption (http://www.circuscontraption.com/home.html), an avant-garde adult variety theater. No career yet. Work and art had equal weight. Though I loved both, I quit it all, to travel with my wife for eight months in Asia and move to Berlin.

It was only after I was settled in Berlin for some time, and while designing a dating website, that it dawned on me that I had been doing user-centered design of digital experiences for almost 10 years. Without aiming to, I had a career.