3 ways of thinking about accessibility

3 concepts There are multiple ways of thinking about designing for accessibility from a person-centred perspective. This post is about 3 of them. There is this slidedeck on Dropbox for a workshop to discuss them. All the images in this post are from it. I’ll use examples from a workshop this week about communication impairments. […]

Human-centered prototyping starts with respect for human capacities

When working on accessible design projects, people often centre their discussions on defining impairments and how to use technologies and services to bridge the gap between such impaired capacities and “normal” capacities. This is a deficit model of design. Design fixing human failings. What this model fails to notice is that the gap is not […]

Value Yourself: start with kindness to self

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]