At the age of 18, I dropped out of Minneapolis College of Art + Design in only a few months--it was a low point. It didn't work for me for several reasons, so I moved back home feeling defeated. Soon after, however, I ran into a high school friend who said he wanted to start a web design business. He knew of my design skills and thought I'd make a valuable team member--I didn't qualify as a web designer yet, but I'd damn sure try. We worked together for a couple years--it didn't work out. But it was worth it--I had gained skills in UI art for the web, Macromedia Flash, and Actionscript--those were the hot new things. From that experience, I learned that if I wanted to make it as a web designer, I was going to have to rely on myself. I grew up self-taught and had all these skills and talent, so I could do it, right?

The unfortunate timing was such that my mom was fed up with me not having a real job for so long, especially after the fallout of my web design partnership, that she kicked me out. My always supportive brother said I could move in with him. He probably saved my life to some degree, maybe not from death, but possibly something worse--the edge of despair that I had made the wrong choices in life, and, would not be able to correct them. I needed support, and he always believed in me. He worked in video games and I admired how hard he had worked to get where he was. At that time I didn't want to work in the games industry; I didn't think my skills were up to snuff, and, I figured it'd be easier to get into professional web design since I had a couple years under my belt, and, I was passionate about it. There was time to get into video games later.

While living with him and playing tons of Metal Gear Solid, I taught myself HTML and CSS from online resources. I soon pushed out my website, applied to jobs on Monster, and after 6 months I was living in Newark, Delaware, working for one of the Big 3 U.S. car companies designing touchscreen interfaces, and earning a pretty penny as a contractor. The night I moved out of a hotel room I had been staying in for a couple weeks, and into my first studio apartment to live all on my own, I cried before falling asleep on the floor because I had no furniture. Have you ever had to talk and hype yourself up, like people do in the movies? I had that moment.

I was 21 at the time. It was my first dose of working with "customers" in this new role. I wasn't supposed to have to do that, I thought, because I work on computers and I design interfaces. In this role, however, I learned about that the factory workers who were on the floor that needed these touchscreens, and that there was no better way to get an understanding of their job, what their needs were, and how to build something that would work for them, unless I went and talked to them. I had never heard of user experience or user centered design, but, I was on that path of my own volition. Also, I was the youngest member of this contractor team, and I was in charge of a few others. I had the most years in CorelDraw, the program of choice, so I taught them everything I knew. No one else had a clue how to design these interfaces except me, so I started showing them by example, and coaching my team members in person. All those self-taught years had paid off, and I'm still teaching people to this day. It was my first experience in developing a style guide of sorts, without formerly putting it into documentation--I had to develop a design system that everyone could use. Never underestimate a former self-taught web designer with vast knowledge of paint and vector programs, and, the UI production pipeline.