It’s been quiet here, for reasons which will be explained later, but in the meantime I should mention that CarbonCulture (with whom I’ve been working for the past two years as part of the TSB-supported EMPOWER collaboration) has a new blog. In anticipation of the […]
All posts filed under “London”
Through London with the DwI goggles on
As I’ve admitted before, having the idea of ‘design that’s intended to influence behaviour’ on my mind a lot of the time does sometimes lead to seeing everything with that filter in place: [It’s] a kind of conspiracy bias, ascribing to design intent that which […]
Some interesting projects (Part 2)
Following on from Part 1, here are a couple more very interesting student projects linking design and behaviour. This time, both involve providing feedback on the impact or costs of everyday behaviours in order to get people to think. Tim Holley’s Tio project, developed in […]
The Convention on Modern Liberty
Britain’s supposedly on the verge of a summer of rage, and while like Mary Riddell I am of course reminded of Ballard, it’s not quite the same. I don’t think this represents the ‘middle class’ ennui of Chelsea Marina. Instead I think we may have […]
Invitation to participate
For the last few weeks I’ve been setting up and running the first few trials of the ‘Design with Intent Method’, the design/innovation tool I’ve (embarrassingly sporadically) talked about on the blog over the last year. It’s essentially an innovation method to help designers given […]
London Design Festival: Greengaged
The London Design Festival always throws up some interesting events, especially involving clever people trying new things in design and sharing their experiences and expertise. This year, the Design Council are running Greengaged, a “sustainability hub… developed and organised by [re]design, thomas.matthews and Kingston University […]
The world’s energy meter
One of the presentations I’m really looking forward to at OpenTech 2008 in London is by AMEE, self-described as “The world’s energy meter”: If all the energy data in the world were accessible, what would you build? The Climate Change agenda has created an imperative […]
“Steps are like ready-made seats” (so let’s make them uncomfortable)
Adrian Short let me know about something going on in Sutton, Surrey, at the same time both fundamentally pathetic and indicative of the mindset of many public authorities in ‘dealing with’ emergent behaviour: An area in Rosehill, known locally as “the steps”, is to be […]
Seminar, 27th May
I’ll be giving a brief seminar at Brunel on Tuesday 27th May, in advance of presenting at Persuasive 2008 – it’s a bit of a practice/rehearsal, to be honest…
“It’s a weak society that sees removing them as the solution”
Following on from our recent look at the strategic design of public benches, BBC London’s Jimmy Tam let me know about this story in the Camden New Journal: A public bench has been removed from outside West Hampstead Library [photo from Pashmin@’s Flickr] after it […]
Freelancing Part 3: The Ben Wilson Interview
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series I looked at some aspects of what it’s like being a freelance designer / engineer / maker, and some of the things I’ve learned along the way. Lots of freelancers have blogs, and sites such as Freelance […]
The Terminal Bench
Mags L Halliday – author of the Doctor Who novel History 101 – let me know about an ‘interesting’ design tactic being used at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. From the Guardian, by Julia Finch: Flying from the new Heathrow Terminal 5 and facing a lengthy delay? […]
Plug: Wilson Brothers’ blog
Bit of a design-related plug: London designer/maker Ben Wilson (with whom I’m currently working on a project for Sir Clive Sinclair) and his brothers, Oscar and Luke, have just launched their own collaborative photo blog, which I helped set up using WordPress.com, a mildly modified […]
No sliding
These spikes are embedded every couple of feet in the hand-rails of a staircase at Highbury & Islington station in London, presumably to prevent kids (or adults) sliding down them. They’re not especially sharp, but would bruise someone pretty badly. Note that there are also […]
Bruce Schneier : Architecture & Security
Bruce Schneier talks about ‘Architecture and Security’: architectural decisions based on the immediate fear of certain threats (e.g. car bombs, rioters) continuing to affect users of the buildings long afterwards. And he makes the connexion to architectures of control outside of the built environment, too: […]
Reversing the emphasis of a control environment
Image from Monkeys & Kiwis (Flickr) Chris Weightman let me know about how it felt to watch last Thursday’s iPod Flashmob at London’s Liverpool Street station: the dominant sense was of a mass of people overturning the ‘prescribed’ behaviour designed into an environment, and turning […]