NYC RUNS ON MASSIVE SYSTEMS I FIND THE GLITCHES AND FIX THE WASTE
Behind every city budget, every utility bill, or every family services case file, you'll find the same thing: everyday New Yorkers trying to navigate a complicated city. But as these massive agencies scale up, things fall through the cracks. The paperwork looks fine in an office downtown, but on the street, people deal with the friction.
I'm Jonathan Martinez. I'm a data analyst who focuses on how our city actually works. My background combines design problem-solving frameworks with deep-dive technical skills in Python, SQL, and AWS cloud architecture. I don't just stare at clean spreadsheets — I look for the anomalies, track down hidden operational costs, and build the clear, interactive dashboards teams need to stop bleeding resources.
The Interpretation Gap
As public and civic systems grow more complex, the gap between system logic and human interpretation widens. JM The Creative focuses on bridging this gap through structured analysis and persistent orientation, so that human intent stays the governing principle.
Power User Paradox
Heavy users collect more anomalies, not always worse systems.
Stability Tax
The hidden cost of systems becoming harder to trust or explain over time.
Habit Cliff
The point where broken routine or repeated friction makes return unlikely.
Faith Capital
Trust built through repeated reliability and depleted through unexplained strain.
Perception Gap
When explainable patterns still feel costly, unfair, confusing, or suspicious.
Signal Hunt
Looking for the records, behaviors, or moments where explanation comes first.
Public systems, hidden strain, perception gaps.
Three business-analysis studies examining how public systems become costly, trusted, misunderstood, or difficult to interpret.
The Bill Residents Don't See
NYCHA utility spending, resident opportunity cost, and hidden public housing burden.
The Illusion of Patterns
NYS Lottery outcomes studied through random patterns, suspicion, and trust erosion.
Aging Out Effect
NYC ACS youth-system data analyzed across intake, retention, and boundary effects.
Evidence objects.
The specific artifacts produced during analysis to make complex system issues legible — to clients, stakeholders, and the public.
Evidence Memos
Question, method, evidence, interpretation, limits, and reproducibility.
Diagnostic Scorecards
Prioritization layers for where explanation or deeper review should happen first.
Signal Tables
Compact views of exception shares, cost spread, and frequency variation.
Diagnostic Dashboards
Visual interfaces for inspecting friction, trust risk, and interpretation gaps.
Architecture Diagrams
System maps that show relationships, layers, and diagnostic logic.
Redacted Schemas
Partial technical views that prove structure safely without exposing PII.
The Orient UI Skill
Alongside my analysis practice, I develop and maintain Orient UI — a conversational design system built to keep humans oriented during complex AI interactions. Engineered around a strict rule: persistent orientation, progressive expansion.
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01
Foundational Principles
Purpose · Core Principle · HITL Protocol · Interaction Philosophy
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02
Conversational UX
UI Mode · Rendering Contract · One-Question Rule · State Honesty
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03
Visual Language
Adaptive Density · Symbolic ASCII · Markdown UI · Visual Persistence
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04
Surface Systems
GuidedDialogue · Chart · Diagram · Wireframe · Scorecard · DecisionReport
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05
Governance
Actionability · Anti-Patterns · Consistency · YAML Reference
For direct integration into Claude and other AI assistant runtimes — forces conversational models to abide by strict orientation, HITL checkpoints, and structured surface rendering.
For environmental and system configuration — clean, standardized interaction boundaries. Drop into any AI pipeline as a portable config.
Token-Optimized Object Notation — a lightweight data structure engineered to squeeze maximum context into minimal token spaces without UI bloat.
Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Protocol
Enforces strict state honesty — the AI surfaces trade-offs and options while leaving final interpretation and decision-making completely to the human operator.
Cognitive Surfaces
Maps complex data into compact visual tools — Scorecard, Diagram, and Decision Report surfaces — so users never lose their place in massive system data.
For business & data analyst roles.
A concise translation of the practice into role fit, tools, strengths, and proof.
Role Targets
- Business Analyst
- Data Analyst
- Product/Data Analyst
- Strategy/Ops Analyst
- Diagnostic Analyst
Toolkit
- Python
- SQL
- Tableau
- Excel / Sheets
- Diagnostic dashboards
- AI-assisted interpretation
Artifact Proof
- Diagnostic Scorecards
- Evidence Memos
- Signal Tables
- Architecture Maps
- Interpretation Frameworks
Analytical mindset. Civic focus.
JM The Creative is the business analysis practice of Jonathan Martinez. It represents a pivot from traditional product design to business analysis on public and civic data, applying design's problem-solving frameworks to the systems that shape public life.
The practice is also the development home of Orient UI (formerly Context OS), a side framework for building cognitively legible AI interactions that preserve human agency and orientation.