Robert Fabricant of frog design — with whom I had a great discussion a couple of weeks ago in London — has an insightful new article up at frog’s Design Mind, titled, oddly enough, ‘Design with Intent: how designers can influence behaviour’ — which tackles […]
All posts filed under “Designers”
‘Smart meters’: some thoughts from a design point of view
Here’s my (rather verbose) response to the three most design-related questions in DECC’s smart meter consultation that I mentioned earlier today. Please do get involved in the discussion that Jamie Young’s started on the Design & Behaviour group and on his blog at the RSA. […]
Deliberately creating worry
Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén mentions an interesting architecture of control anecdote in his The Idea Book: One of the cafés in an international European airport was often full. The problem was that people sat nursing their coffees for a long time as they waited […]
The Anti-Sit Archives
Transfer has an amazing collection of images of ‘Anti-Sit’ devices, mostly in New York but also internationally.
An interlock example
It’s been a while since I posted about an architecture of control designed to assist/protect the user rather than to frustrate or intimidate, but just reading a great article about the MG SV-R supercar formerly produced by MG Sports & Racing*, a very simple interlock […]
‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’
Via Boing Boing, ‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’, news from Georgia Tech of a system that scans and finds the CCDs of digital imaging equipment and shines bright light (or a laser) into them in order to flood them […]
Shaping behaviour: Part 2
Speedometer, rev counter and fuel and temperature gauges on the dashboard of my 1992 Reliant Scimitar SST. Photo taken on B1098 alongside Sixteen Foot Drain, Isle of Ely, England. In part 1 of ‘Shaping behaviour’, we took a look at ‘sticks and carrots’ as approaches […]
Enforcing reverence & increasing mental acuity?
The steep steps with tall risers and shallow treads at Ta Keo, Angkor, Cambodia. Photos by Casual Chin and Sarin Va Simon Crilley, designer and author of the Future Thinking blog, left a very interesting comment on the recent ‘Architecture & Security‘ post: “These architectures […]
Locking out IE users
UPDATE: The code being used is from the Explorer Destroyer project, which has an explanation of its rationale here. It’s worth noting that it’s not just ‘Get Firefox’, but ‘Get Firefox with the Google Toolbar’, hence the $1 referral fee… I’d much rather have Firefox […]
Teaching customers a lesson
Seth Godin talks about companies that try to teach their customers a lesson: “Either you’re going to make someone happy or you’re not… Here’s the short version: If you try to teach a customer a lesson, you’ve just done two things: a. failed at teaching […]
No photography allowed
A couple of recent stories on photography of certain items being ‘banned’ – Cory Doctorow on a Magritte exhibition’s hypocrisy, and Jen Graves on a sculpture of which “photography is prohibited” – highlight what makes me tense up and want to scream about so much […]
What I’ve learned so far as a freelance designer/engineer/maker: Part 2
In part 1 of ‘What I’ve learned so far…’ I looked mostly at being a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ and the idea of ‘Wexelblat’s scheduling algorithm’ (or the ‘good, fast, cheap: pick two’ theory) as it applies to a young freelancer starting out. There were some very insightful […]