HibbittsDesign.org

Design Origins

The journey from Halifax to Vancouver that led here, and a small collection of screenshots from Paul's first few years (1990–1994) of Macintosh interactive media development and design.

Before Markdown and the Web, even before the term UX, there was HyperCard and SuperCard – early tools for building interactive, card-based media on the Macintosh. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a graduate of Acadia University, Paul built these early projects primarily during his time in Ontario and Vancouver in the early to mid 1990s – marking the start of a career path that led to two concurrent decades of teaching and running one of Vancouver's first human-centered design consultancies, and more recently the open education and publishing projects on this site.

Screenshots below are shown at their original size – early Macintosh displays measured 512×342 pixels and up, much smaller than today's screens.

Screenshot of Personal Profile, a 1991 interactive resume built in HyperCard, showing an icon menu with Introduction, Objective, Discography, Education, Letter Desk, and Overture
Personal Profile (HyperCard, 1991) – one of the first widely distributed interactive résumés in Canada, built entirely in HyperCard 1.2 on a Macintosh SE and distributed on an 800 KB floppy disk.
Screenshot of the colour version of Personal Profile, showing the same icon menu on a blue background
Personal Profile Colour (HyperCard) – a later colour edition of the same interactive résumé.
Screenshot of Stack Enhancers 1.0, showing a grid of HyperCard tool icons including Browser Palette, Search Palette, Bookmark System, and Travel Guide
Stack Enhancers (HyperCard, 1991) – lead designer of a commercial set of 10 HyperCard 2.0 tools, released by Cheshire Grin Productions. It premiered at the 1991 Boston MacWorld, where it was noted as one of the best new HyperCard utilities by many show attendees.
Screenshot of A Design Makeover, showing a Troubleshooting Your Macintosh title screen with a list of topics including Hard Disks, Viruses, and Error Codes
A Design Makeover (HyperCard, 1993) – a redesign of an Apple-authored Macintosh troubleshooting stack.
Screenshot of Ballantyne's Landscape Product Review, a SuperCard product catalog showing a CAD drawing of a carousel table
Ballantyne Landscape Products (SuperCard, 1994) – a product catalog converting promotional material into CAD drawings for architectural specification packages.
Screenshot of the Better By Design menu screen, showing icon links for Course Description, Outline, Objectives, Prerequisites, About the Instructor, and Registration Details Screenshot of Better By Design, a SuperCard course companion, showing a Course Description screen with a popup definition of Usability
Better By Design (SuperCard, 1994) – an interactive companion for Paul's UBC Continuing Studies course on developing interactive software projects, opening with the line “Discover why design by default is the enemy!” It was also used by Allegiant Technologies to showcase SuperCard at the 1994 Boston MacWorld.

Over thirty years on, that same love for design and instinct – make something complicated feel simple – still shapes the open-source tools on this site. See Paul's more recent work in About Paul.