From 2004 to 2009 Howard was president and director of interaction design at Tacitus, a company that applied game technology and 3D design to the problem of interacting with – and visualizing – very complex data.
Before founding Tacitus in 2004, Howard spent 10 years in website and Web software application design, specializing in interface and interaction design, user research and iterative prototyping.
From 2002 to 2004, he was Senior Vice President of Design & Technology at Medical Broadcasting (now Digitas Health) in Philadelphia, where he directed design and build of Web applications for AstraZeneca, Amgen, Pfizer, J&J, as well as other pharma/biotech companies.From 2000 to 2002, Howard was one of five Managing Directors of User Experience at Scient in New York, where he directed user experience strategy, user research, digital brand strategy, iterative prototyping and implementation on major Web projects for clients such as DuPont, The Museum of Modern Art, Johnson & Johnson and MetLife. Before Scient, Howard was Co-Executive Creative Director at Luminant Worldwide, and Lead Creative Director at Interactive 8, when the company won awards for work on projects for IBM, A&E Television and M&M/Mars.
In 2009, Howard served on a panel for the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC., focusing on assessing high-level applications for research grants in the field of digital interfaces as applied to biology, genetics and biological research.
Howard is also an Adjunct Professor at Drexel University, overseeing graduate thesis projects in new media.
Currently, he is consulting in user experience design, prototyping, complex data visualization and interface design and development for a variety of companies, among them OpenCrowd and Echelon Software, both in New York City.
Howard received a B.A. in English Literature from Cornell University and M.F.A. in Illustration as Journalism from The School of Visual Arts in New York.
He won the Dorothy Sugarmann Poetry Prize while at Cornell, and his novel, The Ouroboros, was published by Ticknor & Fields in 1991. His second novel, The Sand Men, is currently being reviewed for publication. He has started work on his third novel, The Lost City of Ants. His drawings have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines and books.
© Howard Coale. All rights reserved, 2010.