Design with Intent | 2007 October

Slanty design

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 29, 2007 ⋅ 5 comments

The Main Reading Room, Library of Congress. Image from CIRLA.
In this article from Communications of the ACM from January 2007, Russell Beale uses the term slanty design to describe “design that purposely reduces aspects of functionality or usability”:
It originated from an apocryphal story that some desks in the US Library of Congress in Washington, DC, [...]

News from Runnymede

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 20, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments

All sketches from John Thompson & Partners’ ‘Runnymede Campus Community Planning Broadsheet’ and photographs of the public presentation. Apologies for the variations in image quality and colour balance.
This post’s overdue but I wanted to have some real news (and images) rather than pure speculation.

Review: Architecture as Crime Control by Neal Katyal

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 18, 2007 ⋅ 5 comments

Review: Katyal, N. K. “Architecture as Crime Control”, Yale Law Journal, March 2002, Vol 111, Issue 5.
Professor Neal Kumar Katyal of Georgetown University Law School, best-known for being (successful) lead counsel in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case dealing with Guantanamo Bay detainees, has also done some important work on the use of design as a [...]

The future of academic exposure?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 10, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments

A lot of research is published each year.
Now that I’m a student again, I’ve got access (via Athens) to a vastly increased amount of academic journals, papers and so on. Far more than I could have done ‘legitimately’ without that Athens login, aside from travelling from library to library to library. And while it’s good [...]

Persuasion & control round-up

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 10, 2007 ⋅ 6 comments

New Scientist: Recruiting Smell for the Hard Sell
Samsung’s coercive atmospherics strategy involves the smell of honeydew melon:
THE AIR in Samsung’s flagship electronics store on the upper west side of Manhattan smells like honeydew melon. It is barely perceptible but, together with the soft, constantly morphing light scheme, the scent gives the store a blissfully relaxed, [...]

Bye-bye 9rules

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 5, 2007 ⋅ 17 comments

Around ten months ago, this site was accepted into 9rules, a diverse network of blogs which, at the time, had this aim:
9rules is a community of the best weblogs in the world on a variety of topics. We started 9rules to give passionate writers more exposure and to help readers find great blogs on their [...]

Some thoughts on classifications

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 3, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

Over the last couple of years, this site has examined, mentioned, discussed or suggested around 250 examples of ‘control’ features or methods designed into products, systems and environments – many of which have come from readers’ suggestions and comments on earlier posts. I’d resisted classifying them too much, since my original attempt wasn’t entirely satisfactory, [...]

Water on the membrane

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 1, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

The Cranfield/Electrolux Smart Sink – photo from Trespassers by Ed van Hinte and Conny Bakker.
Ten years ago, teams from Cranfield University and Electrolux Industrial Design collaborated on an ‘eco-kitchen’, a family of related concepts for a kitchen of the future. Part of the intention was to demonstrate that eco-design could be a positive spur to [...]

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Archive for October, 2007