My name is Jonathan C. Hall. I am a sometime designer, a one-time inventor, and an incurable generalist. I’ve created a handful of products (physical and digital) over the years. Some were modestly successful and others were total failures or non-starters. Healthkick.com was acquired in 2013 and aims to keep small private care providers thriving through kick-ass digital marketing. Sensecast was fun but not profitable, making it easy to build interfaces and collect data using 3D cameras like the Kinect. Emotibles were a microfad that let you personalize those ubiquitous white Apple earbuds. I’m working on something new.

I have been a beat reporter, a researcher for the smartest person in the world, a technology consultant to the likes of Rob Jarvik and King Abdullah II of Jordan, and a student of science and the humanities. I’ve spent an obscene portion of my adult life drawing smiley faces.
I hold a BA from Harvard University, where I studied languages and religion, and about half a PhD (Communications) from Columbia University. I’m easily distracted by problems and opportunities outside my limited expertise. “Creative Distraction” was born when I started writing about them.

creative distraction (krē-’ā-tĭv dĭ-’străk-shən) the incessant process by which new ideas, projects, problems and opportunities are generated and attended to in the mind, often at the expense of older ones