Design with Intent | 2007 February

Still here

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 28, 2007 ⋅ One comment

Apologies for the lack of posts for the last week-and-a-bit; I’ve been very busy with projects (design, research, building prototypes, testing, etc) for a number of clients and, as always, things take longer than you expect. I said before that I didn’t want to write posts on here when my mind is elsewhere (it tends [...]

Who serves whom

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 16, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Joel Johnson:
Stop buying products that serve any other master than you.
(via Boing Boing )
Bruce Schneier also wrote something along similar lines last year, though the context was different:
When technology serves its owners, it is liberating. When it is designed to serve others, over the owner’s objection, it is oppressive.
I mentioned before that to [...]

Friday quote: Precedents (the flipside)

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 16, 2007 ⋅ One comment

As a flipside, perhaps, to the quote on precedents from a couple of weeks ago:
If there is something really cool, and you can’t understand why somebody hasn’t done it before, it’s because you haven’t done it yourself.
(From Lion Kimbro’s fascinating How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think.)
The way I interpret that [...]

37signals: Control vs Communication

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 16, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

Johan Strandell kindly lets me know about a discussion of ‘Control vs Communication‘ at 37signals’ Signal vs Noise:
Every once in a while we get an email from a customer asking about how permissions work with our products. They’re almost always asking how to prevent someone from doing something. “How do we prevent someone from posting [...]

Useful terminat-ology

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 16, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments

Image from Black Flag website.
Sometimes there’s very useful terminology in one field, or culture, which allows clearer or more succinct explanation of concepts in another. In the UK we don’t have Roach Motels. There are doubtless similar products, but they don’t have such a snappy name, or one which can be repurposed so easily.
Reading [...]

Objects in mirror are wider than they appear

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 15, 2007 ⋅ 14 comments

This is an interesting story. Robert Kilroy-Silk (above) currently an independent MEP, has raised the issue in the European Parliament of intentionally distorting mirrors in clothes stores, specifically Marks & Spencer:
Marks and Spencer has said it is mystified by a claim by MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk that it uses “distorting” mirrors in its changing rooms.
Mr [...]

Friday quote: Fashion & convention

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 9, 2007 ⋅ One comment

L.J.K. Setright, the late motoring writer and commentator, self-taught mechanical engineer and all-round Renaissance Man, once wrote:
Fashion is a terrible fetter; convention, since it lasts longer, is even worse.
This was in an issue of Car, when it was still any good.
Setright wrote it in reference to car design, and the lack of [...]

Packet switching

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 7, 2007 ⋅ 6 comments

Both Dr Tom Stafford (co-author of the fantastic Mind Hacks book & blog) and Gregor Hochmuth (creator of FlickrStorm, an improved Flickr search system) have been in touch suggesting packaging/portion sizes as a significant everyday architecture of control, (or at least an aspect of design which has a major impact on consumers’ behaviour, and can [...]

Friday quote: Precedents

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 2, 2007 ⋅ One comment

It is remarkable… how often thinking for oneself will lead us to conclusions written about before we were born.
From a post by Vera Bass, ‘Teaching requires learning’, 6th November 2006.
Many people have probably also said this, but that’s the point, pretty much.

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Archive for February, 2007