The hard work of Civic Assembly projects is getting institutions to actually think about questions that are answerable and actionable. There is no point starting out on a project that will provide no additional clarity or which will never have any actual consequences. In setting the question(s), the institution must ask itself how it will […]
The Commons – Naming but not Owning
Since the Festival of Commoning in Stroud, I’ve been to events about community land ownership in the town and used community asset spaces for parties and group meetings, and yet I still can’t quite communicate the idea of Commons. The Stroud event still left a hole in my understanding. I understand corporate/community ownership. There is […]
Human Denying Design
These words from a talk by Marc Andreessen seem to summarise something about Silicon Valley and its core ideas of design. That he thinks that reality is a failure, that lived and embodied reality is privileged. It’s ghastly. It’s Human Denying Design (HDD). It’s ignores or obliterates the history of humanity. Humanity that has used […]
Horizontal or vertical perspectives on history?
It was lovely to meet Jason Mesut again at PaperCamp on Saturday. This is a quick diagram from our chat about how the tech industry orientates its sense of history. The horizontal view makes everything seem likes a coherent linear process. A timeline of development of tools and methods that pass from one generation to […]
Building a better relationship with AI?
I spoke yesterday at the Content Design Club meetup about accessibility and humane design. There is one part of the talk I want to highlight in this post. It is about borrowing and lending. Technologies borrow human capacities to create capabilities that they then present back to human users. Reciprocation as society Borrowing and lending […]
Human(e) Centred Content Design
I was invited to give a Pep Talk to the Content Design Club yesterday. I spoke about accessibility, gaps, kindness and agency. I also added a bit about Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the end. This video is a version of that talk. It has subtitles added using MixCaptions app. Happy to chat about the issues […]
The Imperialization of Maths
I just finished Kelly Clancy’s Playing With Reality. It is very good for many reasons but I want to just concentrate on the word Imperialization that occurs four times in the book. The book is concerned with the ideas of games and how we perceive and move thru reality. The ideas of Game Theory and […]
Post Normal and Dissent
After giving the latest version of my Post Normal Design talk at CampDigital this year, I made some new cards. This post is two videos explaining what they are for. Being loud and quiet Dissent and Mattering Contact me if you are interested Do contact me if you are interested in this subject and if […]
Icons of accessibility?
I encountered a couple of accessible information maps in Wolverhampton. The tactile and high contrast map of the railway station and the audio-tactile map of the bus station next door. There are always service design issues with these kind of maps. Having made many of them, I think I find that that they funded and […]
Prototypes anchor experiences
Prototyping matters to the design of new products and services because of the way prototypes anchor research and understanding to human experiences and perception. The prototype helps to solve research problems when dealing with the extraordinary vastness of humans. Human consciousness can move thru time and space. It can access the past thru memories and […]