This is a post about making and offering accessible maps but, more fundamentally, it is about creating a space for people to put their dreams and fears. Humans create cognitive maps within themselves. They imagine, learn and perceive so much and need some way of creating patterns to find meaning and intention for action. This […]

This is quick post about wayfinding and FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) webpages. There is a lot wrong in the above diagram I drew during a BlueSky chat but, as with most of the artefacts I make, it’s an attempt to clarify to myself a few questions and to try and provoke some answers from people […]

This is a short post about a model for talking about design in the climate crisis. The complete diagram is complicated so I will work thru the elements and build up the meanings I am trying to communicate. Hope and Energy are critical themes. The underlying mechanism is Permaculture and having a sense of direction […]

It is the political party conference season in the UK. Each party gets a week to meet up and get media attention for their policies (especially important this year with a General Election due in 2024). The Conservative Party has spent some time preparing with announcements that cut back Climate Crisis policies and cancel pro-Net […]

It is IXDD (World Interaction Day) today. A day about interaction design and the theme this year is Ethics, Equity, +Responsibility. I have used some of the content from my talk at Accessibility Scotland a few weeks ago to talk about bias in models. The core issue is that we cannot enable equitable spaces if […]

After a few months of work for the Design Council on Systemic Design Thinking in the Climate Crisis, I am back on a museum wayfinding project. We are about to test a prototype scheme and I need to think about what questions to ask. As with Systemic Design Thinking, there are issues of choosing the […]

I was invited to speak at Accessibility Scotland last week. Someone had to drop out and they needed a quick replacement. I was glad to help out. Update You can watch the original talk now on Vimeo. I needed to write a new talk quickly tho. I prefer to run workshops to explore problems but […]

Acuity Design is starting to test new ways of designing and making tactile maps and diagrams. Now we have a ZyChem swell printer it is much easier to run short tests and make prototypes.  This test page is about 5 design elements.  Title and Key The need for a title and key to describe what […]

Why Design for Ritual? This is a post about the design of rituals. I will use a mostly negative framing to start with. This is because I live in the UK and there is new King’s Coronation next Saturday. It is an event lathered in ritual (most of which was invented in the 19th Century […]

The meaning of systemic worries me when talking about Systemic Design and I need to broaden it out in a few specific directions for Design Council Design For Planet workshops over the next two weeks. Systems as traps Design and designers can too often get trapped within systems and processes. The old Scientific Management ideas of […]