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Dave CurbowPrincipal EngineerSilicon Valley, CA 
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If you're interested in a resume click here. To see my portfolio click here.
I have always been interested in how things work, how to make them better, how combining technologies in unusual ways can produce interesting and useful solutions to problems that users have. I really like understanding complex problems and creating elegant and "simple" solutions. I've been able to work on some very interesting problems in my career -- primarily as a software engineer and User Interface Designer.
Right now I'm working on Cisco Telepresence -- the best Video Conference system you've ever seen! Before that I was part of a startup in stealth mode doing some very cool work but our funding never came thru. Before that I worked at NASA, Sun Microsystems, Apple and Xerox.
- Understand the big picture from user perspective and create solutions to match.
- Design human interfaces and software architectures -- client and server.
- Deliver products, designs and patents.
- Build and lead teams doing product and advanced development.
- Deliver presentations to groups from 3-2000, in-house and at technical conferences.
Lead User Experience Designer for Cisco Telepresence
In late 2005 I joined former colleagues from Sun Labs on a wonderful adventure. I can't say more.
From mid-2003 to mid-2005 I explored new ways of building software used in space exploration. Unfortunately NASA cancelled many projects in order to find money to build a manned mission to Mars as directed by President Bush.
As a kid I loved watching the space missions and so was very flattered to be recruited three years ago by NASA Ames to help redesign the software used by Mission Control to manage space missions. I discovered a large set of enterprise apps that didn't work well together and were difficult to use -- the kind of problem I love solving.
I began by observing the Mars Exploration Rover team at JPL at work. It quickly became clear that there were many problems that we could solve by just using more state-of-the-art software. For example, currently there was very poor support for collaboration or workflow management. There was also no way to track a scientist's request on Monday that the Rover take a particular photo on Tuesday and know that the photo was taken, whe it would be sent back to Earth, when it would be available for the scientist to study. And, perhaps worst of all, the scientist was expected to manually search thru many layers of nested folder to find their data -- once it was back. These were problems worth solving! My portfolio goes into more details about this work.
From 2001 to 2003, I managed a small product team that delivered a product that allowed users to sync their PDAs with the Sun ONE Calendar server. I was also a member of member of the Advanced Development team. One of my projects was to look at how an interesting conceptual search technology from SunLabs could make our products more powerful. A recent term,"Googling Email", is one way to describe this work.
From 1999 to 2001 I did advanced development work with the Sun ONE Portal team. Their product provided secure access to personalized data aggregated from a number of sources and was aimed at delivering webpages to users of web browsers. I recognized that desktops were only a small portion of the devices users would use to access internet services. Another colleague was working on WAP phones, so when I realized users spend an average of 80 minutes a day in their automobiles I decided to work understanding how we could meet those users' needs.
I found a group in Sun Labs that was building some devices to understand mobile computing, including the Java Car. This car has several computers, subnets and off-car network connections. These allow us to explore what it means to have access to services (e.g. navigation, web browsing, entertainment) in the automobile.
Java Car, a SMART brand car outfitted with our experimental systems.
I focused on understanding problems the Sun ONE collaboration services (Portal, Email, Calendar, Awareness/Presence) could be used to solve beyond the current release. For example, how we could use the portal server as a platform for delivering audio content (Podcasting).
The first step was to discover what kinds of services/information dirvers and passengers valued. My team conducted a careful investigation and discovered, despite the hype at the time, that browsing the internet while driving, or playing games wasn't what drivers wanted. They wanted driving directions, weather and traffic information appropriate for their location, and news and entertainment they were interested in. My team then successfully designed an architecture, built the software and working hardware prototype of an internet appliance for the automobile to meet these needs.
This work was presented at the ACM CHI 2001 conference (slides) and at the August 2001 BayCHI meeting. Rob Mori and I also did a BayCHI presentation that has a very good report..
Internet Radio installed in Smart car.
Screen shows logo of Fresh Air, a radio program that inspired
this work.
From 1990 until 1997 I was a member of the Human Interface Design Center at Apple Computer. During that time I worked in product development on various aspects of System 7.0 thru 8.6, including AppleScript and OpenDoc -- a component software system. I also contributed to the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines book -- the foundation on which today's Apple, Windows and Java guidelines are based.
My largest project was as HI Architect and team lead for the Human Interface team on the OpenDoc project, a component software system. You might be interested in some of the Lessons Learned from this project. I think they are applicable to other large software projects.
During this project I did a lot of writing, including much of the OpenDoc Human Interface Specification, the Human Interface Guidelines found in theOpenDoc Programmers Guide and a number of articles for developers.
During my last year at Apple I worked in the Discourse Architecture Lab within Apple's Advanced Technology Group (aka Apple Labs). Our work was described in this ACM CHI article. We formed Pliant Research Group to continue some of this work, now dormant.
Before joining Apple in 1990, I worked for several years as a software engineer, then software architect and user interface designer at Xerox Corporation on the Xerox Star project -- the first GUI desktop shipped as a product.
5,669,005 System for automatically embedding or incorporating contents added to a document ('97)
5,812,862 Computer-human interface system for compound documents ('98)
5,835,919 Computer-human interface system which manipulates parts between a desktop and a document ('98)
6,636,801 Delivering location-dependent services to automobiles
6,694,259 System and method for delivering parking information to motorists
7,076,043 System and method of using presence information to delay dialing phone calls initiated by a caller to a callee
Additional patents pending
2001 D. Curbow. "User Benefits of Connecting Automobiles to the Internet", ACM CHI Conference Proceedings, 2001
1997 D. Curbow and E.A. Dykstra-Erickson. "Designing the OpenDoc® Human Interface," ACM Designing Interactive Systems '97.
1997 E.A. Dykstra-Erickson and D. Curbow. "Role of User Studies in Design of OpenDoc®," ACM Designing Interactive Systems '97.
1996 E.A. Dykstra-Erickson and D. Curbow, G. Schuller and K. Piersol, "Collaborative Aspects of OpenDoc®", ACM CHI Conference 1996
1996 T. Çelik and D. Curbow, "OD Container Interface" MacTech, The Journal of Macintosh Technology, Vol.12, Issue 5.
1996 Tantek Çelik and Dave Curbow, "Working With OpenDoc Park Kinds" develop, The Apple Technical Journal, Sept 1996.
1995 D. Curbow and E. Dykstra-Erickson, "The OpenDoc User Experience", develop, The Apple Technical Journal, pp. 93-97, June 1995.
1995 Human Interface Guidelines chapters within OpenDoc Programmers Guide, Apple Computer.
1992 Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, Apple Computer.
1990 CHI '90 Special Issue #57 video, "All the Widgets", Brad Myers (ed.), SIGGRAPH Video
I received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Continuing education via conference tutorials, Stanford telecourses, etc.
I love film, so here's a list of some of my favorites.
