Post originally written on November 13th For World Kindness Day, sharing a tool developed for professionals involved in User Research and CoDesign workshops. Take time to value yourself so you can understand the value you can give away to others. This tool was developed in terms of CoDesign as a method of sharing skills and […]
Author: Alastair Somerville
We can be heroes
Post originally written 27th April The Hero is an important character in stories. Storytelling is now recognised as meaningful to communication to all kinds of audiences. This post is about its meaning in organisations and with staff. I am designing a workshop at the moment on divergence and dissent and these are notes from work […]
Designing hybrid workshops: sharing wonder
I may be giving a workshop on designing hybrid workshops in late September. This post just collects some fragments together that may go into it. The main themes of this workshop are Clarity and Confidence. Clarity to know what you want to communicate thru a workshop (as opposed to a talk). Confidence to deliver that […]
On Listening and the dangers of Empathy
Listening is a skill that is disregarded too much in a modern society that thinks speaking is paramount. I ran a workshop at EuroIA18 on structured conversation and listening. The workshop changed radically in terms of content due to counselling training I received. The professional counsellor’s view on sympathy and listening was very different to […]
HypoReality — designing UI for less
I have been doing some work in mixed reality design lately (virtual and augmented realities) and some issues of what the User Interface (UI) for HypoReality could be have come up. HypoReality is the idea that, instead of augmenting and adding more and more detail to real and/or digital environments, we enable users to strip […]
Emotional Design – abusive or sense-making language?
Emotion in design is mostly discussed in terms of inducing or guiding it to form a positive experience. How content is formatted is to drive towards a peak emotional state (normally happiness and joy with playful detours through fear and anxiety). Healthcare however, has different goals. Strong emotions are in play at the start. The […]
On the emotional design of doing the washing up
Emotional design is an issue in User Experience (UX) but is mostly framed by extremes. Design in terms of joy and delight or anger and disappointment. It’s hard to talk about design when it’s at these boundaries. Lately in sensory/emotional workshops I have been taking a different approach to emotional design. A lot of this […]
Talk Maker: a template for making your own talk
Structuring narratives A lot of conferences say they’re open to new speakers but having the confidence to speak depends on many factors. Trying to transfer your knowledge and experience into a structured talk is one barrier. This post is just about one way I write 15–30 minute talks for professional audiences, mostly in user experience […]
Autonomy and the problem of efficient living
Living in the future that stopped The Southgate Estate in Runcorn New Town (pictured above) was designed by James Stirling (the British excellence in architecture prize is named after him) and was finished in 1977. The estate was demolished in 1990–1992. The estate was filmed in the mid-1980’s for a pan-European TV series called “Architecture […]
Prototypes as gifts of trust : how one prototype helped Britain win World War 2
We met some old friends at Croome Park in Worcestershire lately. It is a National Trust property with a big mansion and a Capability Brown designed landscape. However, this property is not like the normal “aristocrats and cream teas” ideal of the National Trust. Croome Park was the centre of a Royal Air Force scientific […]