I’ve recently found myself on the receiving end of countless text messages, pub questions and conversation starters about the rising number of emergent ‘new things’ in the world — fundamentally different devices which challenge the ways in which we ‘do computer stuff’. I’d like to explore the spirit and culture which is embedded within them, the ways in which we’re assessing them, and how we all seemed trapped in an unhelpful loop.

Read More

Design Thinking is dead — so the majority of my peers claim — yet there it is, smeared all over LinkedIn, peeking out from job descriptions and lurking in resumés. It crops up in conversations, sneaks into pitches and elbows its way into briefs. It graces the covers of the magazines which languish in shabby wire racks of my local supermarket. In my close circle of well-dressed-folks-in-black, Design Thinking has jumped the shark. It’s rolled up and died somewhere, drowned under little squares of pale yellow paper, but out there?… Out there it’s matured into a fully fledged industry. It’s been absorbed deep into curricula. It’s found its way into the rhythm of commerce and the vast, sprawling lexicon of the boardroom. I’ve been bumping up against Design Thinking for over a decade now, and have developed strong feelings about it.

Read More

Last night, I travelled to the Royal Society of Arts in London to receive the title ‘Royal Designer for Industry’. I have a hunch that this accolade isn’t broadly known, so here’s a little background for those who may be unfamiliar:

The title ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ (RDI) was created in 1936 and is awarded annually by the Royal Society of Arts to designers of all disciplines who have achieved ‘sustained design excellence, work of aesthetic value and significant benefit to society’. The RDI is the highest accolade for designers in the UK, and only 200 designers can hold the title. Presently this list includes Sir Jonathan Ive, Tim Berners-Lee, Brian Eno, Sir Norman Foster, Dame Vivienne Westwood, James Dyson and Thomas Heatherwick. The full list can be viewed here.

Read More

Over the last twenty years I’ve met a great number of futurists, futures designers, writers, strategists, foresight practitioners and more. They’re all wonderfully different but there are thematic traits in the ways they see the world and the ways they approach their work. Recently I’ve been trying to understand the relative merits of each and in so doing the following four characters have emerged. As with anything, there’s an argument for and against each approach (and my characterizations are simplistic and open for debate), but my hunch is that a well-rounded body of futures work would embrace elements of each, and a well-rounded futurist would understand how to use each of these mindsets in a balanced way.

Read More

The projects we tackle at X aren’t ‘normal’ by any measure, and that’s intentional. We aim to tackle the world’s hardest problems and explore emerging technologies; we think in long time horizons with undefined unknowns and uncertain outcomes. With this in mind, it might seem odd to some readers that we have a design team at X.

Read More

In 1929 a small guitar company by the name of Vega produced and launched a portable valve amplifier to pair with their line of banjos, releasing musicians from the large, static PA systems which preceded them. It’s hard to know exactly what happened next, but a succession of experimental combinations of valves, voltages and hardware followed until the early 1940’s when Fender launched what we now recognize as a guitar amplifier, to huge success.

Read More

Broadly speaking, design projects may be split into three categories: now, next and future. Most of our time as designers is concerned with the now or next, but occasionally we are called upon to embrace projects which are overtly future facing in nature. These projects are typically used as a platform to tell a story, be that a business projection, a socio-cultural exploration, or an illustration of new materials or technologies, so it comes as no surprise that one of the more significant inputs for many designers is science fiction cinema.

Read More

I just got off the phone with Julian.

I’m still obsessed with the role of objects in a world with Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). It’s a tough subject, as it requires a wholesale restructuring of everything we currently associate with objects: their affordances, what they mean, how they work and who owns them. I will continue to wrangle with this, but let’s begin with this thought:

Read More

As with everything involving language, a design brief brings with it a host of cultural nuances which reveal the true meaning of the request, a design direction that is rarely explicit but resides just below the surface, unspoken but evident. One of these unspoken standards is the drive towards simplicity.

In the world of manufacturing, productivity is king. The more one makes, the more one can sell, and the more one sells the more profitable the endeavor. At some point, one faces the limits of human ability, and we engage the services of tools and devices to bridge the gaps of effort and time. A lean system takes the critical path between volition and goal. This, in essence, is the machine ethic, the driving force behind industrial simplification, a force so intoxicating that it has found its way into almost every element of contemporary design.

Read More

In order to produce anything, you need three elements: an idea, the means to make the idea, and the money to pay all concerned. For these reasons it comes as no surprise that the entrepreneurial explosion of the early 2000's has focussed on software. Once the idea is solidified, the manufacturing and shipping of a software product, whilst not exactly simple is at least attainable by a small number of people with basic equipment and minimal outlay. In the world of object production the idea is the least of your worries.

Read More

In every job there is a line between personal time and employment. In some roles, the line is very clear, announced by a klaxon, punch card or timesheet. In other fields of work, the line is blurred, sometimes to the point of vanishing altogether. Design is one of those fields. Every designer is a cultural voyeur—a perpetual sponge for inspiration and a running faucet for ideas. When we design, we draw on experiences from our private lives, from our travels and observations. Design is a lifestyle, the method acting of careers. Design doesn't stop at 5pm.

Read More