Andy Szybalski

Hi there, I'm Andy. I'm a senior user experience designer at Google. I led design for Google Street View (early days thru 2009), Google Earth iPhone app (#2 app of all time), and versions 4.1–5.0 of the Google Earth desktop app. Before that, I designed Google's products for newspaper and radio advertisers (2006). I attended Stanford University where I received a BS and MS in Computer Science with a concentration in human-computer interaction. My work experience also includes internships at Apple Computer and Firaxis Games, where I did programming and designed some maps for Civilization IV.

Current Stuff

My shared items on Google Reader
Pigeon District, where I occasionally blog about cities, design, and technology.

Old Projects

The Mooches is a webcomic I wrote with Max Doty. It chronicles the adventures of an oddly-shaped fellow named Sandbag and his three freewheeling housemates. We haven't updated it in years but you can check out the archive.
Arborius is a little experiment in Flash programming and tree-pruning (warning: this will probably crash your browser)

Reading List

Achewood, a great daily webcomic
SF Cityscape, a blog about Bay Area development and transportation issues
Snark Hunting, a blog about naming and branding
Orisinal, beautiful and fun Flash games

A Painting

Sutro Tower Inc (oil on canvas, 48 × 24 in., 2008)
Listerine (oil on canvas, 24 × 24 in., 2002)

Some Photos

My photos on flickr
Eagle Park at Night (digital, 2006)
West Wales (digital, 2005)
Hearst Castle (digital, 2004)
Moraga Creek (digital, 2004)
Staffa, Scotland (35 mm black and white, 2003)
Freeways (35 mm black and white, 2002)
Western United States (35 mm color, 2002)
Friends (35 mm & medium format, 2001–2003)

Web Design Work

Also see some miscellaneous design work.

Software for Mac OS X

Most of this stuff has probably succumbed to bitrot, but feel free to poke around...

Shellsilver is a little utility for launching shell scripts
Lunamoth (beta) is a fast-paced 3D arcade game
Pyper (experimental) is a musical development environment for Python

Papers, Research, etc.

I gave a talk called "Maps Give You Superpowers: Lessons from Street View" at NACIS 2009; one of these days I'll get around to putting up slides from that talk.
"Why it's not a wiki world (yet)", 2005 (PDF). Suggests technological and social reasons for the slow adoption of wikis, and examines the future course of the technology.
Clara Shih, Armando Fox, Terry Winograd, Andy Szybalski, Maria Crone. Teamspace: A Simple, Low-Cost and Self-Sufficient Workspace for Small-Group Collaborative Computing. Proceedings of CSCW 2004. (PDF)
Rafael Ballagas, Andy Szybalski, and Armando Fox. Patch Panel: Enabling Control-Flow Interoperability in Ubicomp Environments. Proceedings of PerCom 2004. (PDF 2.6 MB)
Balancing Zero-Admin and Incremental Intergration in Ubicomp Environments, Undergraduate Honors Thesis, May 2004 (PDF paper 4.2 MB, or PDF slides 2.5 MB)
Using Depth from Focus to Create Composite Images with Arbitrary Focus, 2004 (PDF, 8.5 MB) Removed due to space constraints

Photo at left: 101/280, by Andy Szybalski, 35mm black and white, 2002. Part of the Freeways collection.


	Andy Szybalski Hi there, I'm Andy. I'm a senior user experience designer at Google. I led design for Google Street View (early days thru 2009), Google Earth iPhone app (#2 app of all time), and versions 4.1–5.0 of the Google Earth desktop app. Before that, I designed Google's products for newspaper and radio advertisers (2006). I attended Stanford University where I received a BS and MS in Computer Science with a concentration in human-computer interaction. My work experience also includes internships at Apple Computer and Firaxis Games, where I did programming and designed some maps for Civilization IV. Current Stuff My shared items on Google Reader Pigeon District, where I occasionally blog about cities, design, and technology. Old Projects The Mooches is a webcomic I wrote with Max Doty. It chronicles the adventures of an oddly-shaped fellow named Sandbag and his three freewheeling housemates. We haven't updated it in years but you can check out the archive. Arborius is a little experiment in Flash programming and tree-pruning (warning: this will probably crash your browser) Reading List Achewood, a great daily webcomic SF Cityscape, a blog about Bay Area development and transportation issues Snark Hunting, a blog about naming and branding Orisinal, beautiful and fun Flash games A Painting Sutro Tower Inc (oil on canvas, 48 × 24 in., 2008) Listerine (oil on canvas, 24 × 24 in., 2002) Some Photos My photos on flickr Eagle Park at Night (digital, 2006) West Wales (digital, 2005) Hearst Castle (digital, 2004) Moraga Creek (digital, 2004) Staffa, Scotland (35 mm black and white, 2003) Freeways (35 mm black and white, 2002) Western United States (35 mm color, 2002) Friends (35 mm & medium format, 2001–2003) Web Design Work Pigeon District The Annalog The Mooches Also see some miscellaneous design work. Software for Mac OS X Most of this stuff has probably succumbed to bitrot, but feel free to poke around... Shellsilver is a little utility for launching shell scripts Lunamoth (beta) is a fast-paced 3D arcade game Pyper (experimental) is a musical development environment for Python Papers, Research, etc. I gave a talk called "Maps Give You Superpowers: Lessons from Street View" at NACIS 2009; one of these days I'll get around to putting up slides from that talk. "Why it's not a wiki world (yet)", 2005 (PDF). Suggests technological and social reasons for the slow adoption of wikis, and examines the future course of the technology. Clara Shih, Armando Fox, Terry Winograd, Andy Szybalski, Maria Crone. Teamspace: A Simple, Low-Cost and Self-Sufficient Workspace for Small-Group Collaborative Computing. Proceedings of CSCW 2004. (PDF) Rafael Ballagas, Andy Szybalski, and Armando Fox. Patch Panel: Enabling Control-Flow Interoperability in Ubicomp Environments. Proceedings of PerCom 2004. (PDF 2.6 MB) Balancing Zero-Admin and Incremental Intergration in Ubicomp Environments, Undergraduate Honors Thesis, May 2004 (PDF paper 4.2 MB, or PDF slides 2.5 MB) Using Depth from Focus to Create Composite Images with Arbitrary Focus, 2004 (PDF, 8.5 MB) Removed due to space constraints Photo at left: 101/280, by Andy Szybalski, 35mm black and white, 2002. Part of the Freeways collection.