Design with Intent

Heating debate

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 1, 2009 ⋅ 10 comments

Central heating systems have interfaces, and many of us interact with them every day, even if only by experiencing their effects.
But there’s a lot of room for improvement. They’re systems where (unlike, say, a car) we don’t generally get instantaneous feedback on the changes we make to settings or the interactions we have with the [...]

On the level

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 24, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

A tilt-detector from this 1984 US patent, with intended application on a packing box.
The liquid detection stickers in mobile phones, which allow manufacturers and retailers to ascertain if a phone has got wet, and thus reject warranty claims (whether judiciously/appropriately or not), seem to be concerning a lot of people worldwide. Around a quarter of [...]

Ticket off

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 13, 2006 ⋅ 12 comments

Henry e-mails:
“Perhaps this is too obvious: parking meters; and I mean modern digital ones, enforce arbitrary limits on how much you can pay for at a time (4 hours). Is this to share the enjoyment of democratic parking (at a dollar an hour), or some social engineering ploy to force productive members of [...]

Some links: miscellaneous, pertinent to architectures of control

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 1, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Ulises Mejias on ‘Confinement, Education and the Control Society’ – fascinating commentary on Deleuze’s societies of control and how the instant communication and ‘life-long learning’ potential (and, I guess, everyware) of the internet age may facilitate control and repression:
“This is the paradox of social media that has been bothering me lately: an ‘empowering’ media that [...]

The illusion of control

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 30, 2006 ⋅ 4 comments

Scott Adams recounts an anecdote illustrating the ‘illusion of control’ and how important it is to many people – even to the extent that it is the single defining characteristic of mankind which one might use to explain human behaviour to aliens:
“The maintenance man is moving the thermostat in our office today. I started talking [...]

‘Carmakers must tell buyers about black boxes’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 25, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

According to Reuters,
“The [US] government will not require recorders in autos but said on Monday that car makers must tell consumers when technology that tracks speed, braking and other measurements is in the new vehicles they buy.

The Privacy Ceiling

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 22, 2006 ⋅ One comment

Scott Craver of the University of Binghamton has a very interesting post summarising the concept of a ‘privacy ceiling’:
“This is an economic limit on privacy violation by companies, owing to the liability of having too much information about (or control over) users.”
It’s the “control over users” that immediately makes this something especially relevant for [...]

Ed Felten: DRM Wars, and ‘Property Rights Management’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 15, 2006 ⋅ 3 comments

At Freedom to Tinker, Ed Felten has posted a summary of a talk he gave at the Usenix Security Symposium, called “DRM Wars: The Next Generation”. The two installments so far (Part 1, Part 2) trace a possible trend in the (stated) intentions of DRM’s proponents, from it being largely promoted as a tool to [...]

Freedom to Tinker – The Freedom to Tinker with Freedom?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 4, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

At Freedom to Tinker, David Robinson asks whether, in a world where DRM is presented to so many customers as a benefit (e.g. Microsoft’s Zune service), the public as a whole will be quite happy to trade away its freedom to tinker, whether the law needs to intervene in this, and on which side: [...]

Friend or foe: Battery-authentication ICs?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 20, 2006 ⋅ 3 comments

Via MAKE, an article from Electrical Design News looking at lithium battery authentication chips in products such as phones and laptops, designed to prevent users fitting ‘non-genuine’ batteries.
Now, the immediate response of most of us is probably “razor blade model!” or even “stifling democratic innovation!” (as Hal Varian or Eric von Hippel might put [...]

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