Detroit, MI

Jason
Newman

Hey there, I'm Jason. I like to build things that both expose and solve problems, and hopefully teach us something along the way. I'm mostly drawn to patterns that don't have instruments yet. This almost always means I'm reading a data story, recognizing an issue, and producing an artifact to address said issue. I always create what makes the most sense for the nature of the problem. Sometimes that means a commercial product, sometimes it's a body of work, and sometimes it's just a thing that exists.

This method has a name: Research through Design. Building is an integral part in the process of unearthing a pattern or testing a hypothesis. That, and Research through Design sounds a lot fancier than Prototyping.

jason@hellonewman.me · Read on ↓
/01

Method

The reason I like Research through Design (beyond it sounding fancier than “prototyping”) is that it doesn't force me to build a better mousetrap every time. Sometimes the better mousetrap is the right answer, and I do enjoy that. But sometimes the right answer is a measurement system or a body of work, and sometimes it's an artifact whose only job is to make something legible. That way, the method is formed to fit the problem, not the other way around.


Underneath each instrument sits the same piece of scaffolding: a confidence matrix. Every claim gets a grade covering what's measured, what's inferred, and what's still a hunch, with the evidence attached to the grade. Aquadrio wears this on its sleeve, grading each hour against what the basin can afford instead of rounding everything up to “sustainable.” The others carry it more quietly because confidence should be earned in public.


And just between you and me: if I'm not creatively solving real problems, my brain tends to creatively invent them. I'd rather stay in the real world.

/02

Instruments

Aquadrio

Independent water accounting · Hourly graded record

Exists to keep an independent count of the water hiding inside compute. The real draw is often a hundred miles from the data center, at the power plant boiling off water to make the electricity. Aquadrio watches the grid hour by hour, prices the water baked into each hour, grades that hour against what the basin can afford, and publishes the record whether or not anyone pays. The rare hour that clears every gate mints a credit; the rest get counted anyway. It runs now on live grid data.

aquadrio.com →

file.
productions

Boxed software · Browser workbenches · No subscriptions

Exists to highlight “death by subscription.” There are plenty of things that don't need a subscription or AI, like a one-off job search. So file.productions sells boxed software like it's the 90s again, and we're even sprucing it up by calling it a workbench. Each workbench is a single file you buy once, use in your browser, and own outright. No account attached, and no AI bolted on to make it sound cooler. The first product, Job Seeker Workbench, covers the job hunt just mentioned. Fun fact: if you're a recruiter reading this, that workbench is how I landed on your radar. And who knows, maybe this will actually start a trend and we'll have to produce a whole line of boxed software products!

file.productions →

Redline
Station

Pattern Library · Incident reports · Risk advisories

Exists to help AI users learn to recognize harmful behavior patterns: the slow, hard-to-name stuff that doesn't trip the “this is bad” alarm until it's already shifted you. It's a pattern library, a behavioral methodology, witness reports from people who've encountered something worth naming, and advisories on what to watch for. Built to feel like a place you pull into, not a dashboard you log into.

redlinestation.com →

Credit
Classer

SR&ED claim assembly · Sealed audit trail · By invitation

Exists to make SR&ED claims defensible by construction. Tax practitioners run guided interviews with the people who did the work, and CreditClasser assembles the technical write-up and hour allocations straight from those recorded answers: assembled by rule, not by guess. Every figure traces to a source, the record is sealed and sequential, and the practitioner holds the judgment on every number before signing. Of everything here, it's the confidence matrix at its most literal.

creditclasser.com →
/03

Reach

I'm open to conversations with researchers, designers, operators, and builders working on questions that don't fit neatly into one field: what it means to measure things that aren't being measured, what the right artifact for a problem actually is, what it looks like to investigate a pattern most people can feel but can't name. You know, that sort of thing.

If you're working on a not-so-straightforward problem in the Detroit area, let's grab a coffee! Outside of Detroit? I like virtual coffees just as much!

Email jason@hellonewman.me Network LinkedIn