User-centred design for energy efficiency in buildings: TSB competition

The deadline’s fast approaching (mid-day 17th Dec) for the UK Technology Strategy Board’s ‘User-centred design for energy efficiency in buildings’ competition [PDF] – there’s an introduction from Fionnuala Costello here.
This is an exciting initiative which aims to bring together (in a 5-day ’sandpit’) people from different disciplines and different sectors to address the problems [...]

Designed environments as learning systems

How much of designing an environment is consciously about influencing how people use it? And how much of that influence is down to users learning what the environment affords them, and acting accordingly?
The first question’s central what this blog’s been about over the last four years (with ‘products’, ’systems’, ‘interfaces’ and so on variously standing [...]

What’s the deal with angled steps?

It’s a simple question, really, to any readers with experience in urban planning and specifying architectural features: what is the reasoning behind positioning steps at an angle such as this set (left and below) leading down to the Queen’s Walk near London Bridge station?
Obviously one reason is to connect two walkways that are offset [...]

Staggering insight

I’ve mentioned a few times, perhaps more often in presentations than on the blog, the fact that guidelines for the design of pedestrian crossings in the UK [PDF] recommend that where a crossing is staggered, pedestrians should be routed so that they have to face traffic, thus increasing the likelihood of noticing oncoming cars, and [...]

Architecture and Intent

Ernő Goldfinger on his Trellick Tower:
I built skyscrapers for people to live in there and now they messed them up — disgusting.
Discuss.

Anti-homeless ’stools’

Stuart Candy of the brilliant Sceptical Futuryst let me know about authorities in Honolulu replacing benches with round ’stools’ to prevent homeless people sleeping at bus stops (above image from Honolulu Advertiser story):
So far, the city has spent about $11,000 on the seating initiative, removing benches and installing 55 stools at 12 bus stops in [...]

{In|Ex}clusive Design

Giving with one hand, and taking away with the other.
The juxtaposition of hand rails and anti-sit spikes outside this church in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire suggests a particular configuration of design priorities: helping people climb the steps, but forbidding anyone sitting on the wall.
Are the targets different groups of people? We might think so: older people [...]

Skinner and the Mousewrap

Dontclick.it, an interesting interface design experiment by Alex Frank, included this amusing idea, the Mousewrap, to ‘train’ users not to click any more “through physical pain”.
It did make me think: is the use of anti-sit spikes on window sills, ledges, and so on, or anti-climb spikes on walls, intended primarily as a Skinnerian operant conditioning [...]

Architecting and designing

         
Seth Godin asks ‘Is architect a verb?’, and makes an interesting distinction between design and architecture (emphases mine):
Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it looks good. There are great designs that don’t look good, certainly, but it’s really easy to get caught up in a [...]

Design with Intent presentation from Persuasive 2008

Dan Lockton: Design With Intent (Persuasive 2008)
view presentation (tags: environment affordances sustainability lockton)

EDIT: I’ve now added the audio! Thanks everyone for the suggestions on how best to do it; the audio is hosted on this site rather than the Internet Archive as the buffering seemed to stall a bit too much. Let me know if [...]