Co-founder & Chief Learning Architect at Sealworks. 34+ years of turning ideas into prototypes, courses, apps, and platforms — from startups to Fortune 500's, reaching millions of learners every year.
The resources that are always open, a few highlights worth a look, and the products in the lab.
Tools, resources, bookshelf, search, and a My Apps list to share, track, and plan what to play with next.
coolappsforlearning.com ↗Methods, tools, and techniques for teams who'd rather sketch than spec.
prototypingforlearning.com ↗Small cohort workshops on Claude for L&D — brainstorm, prototype, and jumpstart ideas in days, not weeks.
Email to schedule ↗From amazing apps and AI-powered creativity to design thinking and learning trends — slides and field notes from all seven sessions in Las Vegas.
ATD Core4 ↗Two sessions in Indianapolis on using design thinking to create better learning, and how AI changed the way we build.
ATD ↗Everything we shared in Los Angeles — session slides and the full toolkit, all in one place.
Article ↗Behind-the-scenes from LA — sessions, sketches, and a side trip that pulled the whole conference together.
Sealworks' own task & project tool — reimagined, with a refreshed engine and a redesigned experience.
A new place to create, track, and connect learning — cohorts, content, and what people actually learned.
Resource notebooks built to share the tools, tech, and best practices we use every day — one obsession: making learning better.
A practical guide to designing learning experiences the right way — by sketching, prototyping, testing, and iterating before you ever write a line of code.
Visit ↗ mobileappsforlearning.comCreate, explore, experiment, share. Eight chapters of mobile tools that change how you learn and work — AI, collaboration, meetings, annotation, and content creation.
Visit ↗ coolappsforlearning.comApps, tools & resources to level up your skills — 200+ tools across 26 categories. Search by name or topic, save your own My Apps list, and look for my Nick’s Picks.
Visit ↗ aiforlearningnotebook.comA practical field guide to learning with AI — six strategies for content, feedback, design, code, analytics, and analysis, each with a real example and a prompt you can copy.
Visit ↗ brainstorminglearning.comA practical playbook for brainstorming better learning — how our team takes a project from a fuzzy idea to a tested concept, with Miro, Figma, and AI in the mix.
Visit ↗Three decades of speaking, teaching, and workshopping — from conference keynotes to deep-dive workshops to weekly classes. Always available to speak, share, or keynote your next event. Reach out →
34+ years, a studio, a lot of sketching, imagining, architecting, playing — and four ways I help teams launch new experiences.
I'm a co-founder and Chief Learning Architect at Sealworks Interactive Studios. 34 years in, still building learning experiences, apps, and web platforms.
I work where design meets technology — helping teams turn rough ideas into things people actually use.
Most days I'm teaching, sketching, or prototyping with teams. Our solutions have reached audiences from K–12 classrooms to enterprise organizations, and we are always on the hunt for the next idea.
My work has helped create learning experiences that reach millions of learners worldwide each year — from K–12 to enterprise.
Research, strategy, and interaction design. Start with the user, work backwards. Storyboards, journey maps, the whole kit.
From low-fi paper to working AI-built prototypes in hours. The fastest path from idea to "let's try it."
Web apps, mobile apps, and platforms built to grow with you. End-to-end, from architecture to ship.
Content, tools, apps, and platforms built around your audience first — then designed to scale as they grow.
A short list of the books I keep gifting, citing, or re-reading.
Still the clearest explanation of why doors confuse people — and how to design things that don't.
The five-day playbook that cured my "let's-have-another-meeting" addiction.
If you build learning experiences and haven't read this, stop everything.
A 90-minute read that fixes 90% of bad customer interviews.
100 design principles I keep within arm's reach. The kind of book you flip open mid-project to get unstuck.
Pixar's playbook on protecting fragile ideas from the people who'd kill them too early.
Lessons from 15 years running Disney — leadership, taste, and big bets.
The obsession that drove Apple — and a great primer on simplicity as a discipline.
Life in first person. A wild reminder of what small teams can ship.
An unorthodox guide to making things worth making — from the Nest & iPod creator.
How habit-forming products get built — and the ethics of using the model thoughtfully.
A craftsman's memoir on inhabiting a character — and the art of restraint.
Sega vs. Nintendo — the scrappy underdog playbook for taking on a giant.
Karen Hao's deep look inside OpenAI — how it grew, who got hurt along the way, and what it means for the rest of us building with this stuff.
A working journal from one of gaming's pivotal moments. Pure craft, pure honesty.
How to nurture the wild ideas that win wars, cure diseases, and transform industries.
Tiny changes, remarkable results. The clearest playbook I've found for designing systems that produce lasting behavior change.
A practical guide to designing learning for everyone. Sarah makes accessibility feel like a starting point, not a cleanup task.
The book I keep handing junior designers. Friendly, practical, and worth re-reading every couple of years.
Finally — an analytics book written for IDs, not data scientists. The piece I was missing when trying to prove learning actually worked.
L&D that fits how people actually work — learning in the flow, not pulled out of it. JD lays out a real model, not a wish list.
For anyone designing learning for the people actually doing the work. Practical plays you can run with on Monday.
An unflinching look at what happens when studios collapse — and what the people who keep building learn from the wreckage. Required reading for anyone running creative teams.
What I keep handing teams trying to get past the AI demo phase. Specific enough to actually use on Monday morning.
Honest about where AI helps in L&D and where it doesn't. Useful framing if you're trying to figure out where to start.
The studio I co-founded in 1992 — pairing design + technology to create amazing experiences that reach millions of learners each year.
Visit Sealworks ↗
Whether you're sketching out your first app, improving an existing learning platform, exploring a new AI idea, or scaling a solution to reach millions of users — I'd love to hear what you're working on.
Use the Let's Chat button to grab time on my calendar. Some of my favorite conversations start with someone saying "what if?"