Design with Intent

Some interesting projects (Part 2)

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 10, 2009 ⋅ 7 comments

Following on from Part 1, here are a couple more very interesting student projects linking design and behaviour. This time, both involve providing feedback on the impact or costs of everyday behaviours in order to get people to think.
Tim Holley’s Tio project, developed in response to a brief by Onzo, and described as ‘A Light [...]

Stuff that matters: Unpicking the pyramid

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 14, 2009 ⋅ 5 comments

Most things are unnecessary. Most products, most consumption, most politics, most writing, most research, most jobs, most beliefs even, just aren’t useful, for some scope of ‘useful’.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to point this out, but most of our civilisation seems to rely on the idea that “someone else will sort it out”, [...]

How to enjoy taking notes and revising things

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 1, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

It occurs to me that it’s now October, and in Britain that really means the summer’s over (though as I write this it’s pleasantly sunny and crisp outside). And despite attending a lot of very interesting talks and events over the past few months, I’ve been very lax at writing them up for the blog. [...]

‘Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen’ Seminar, 17th October – programme updated

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 17, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen, mentioned a few days ago, now has a full agenda available [PDF] (thanks Debra) – here are the abstracts:

‘Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen’ Seminar, 17th October

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 4, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Debra Lilley, who runs the very useful Design-Behaviour website, sends details of an interesting forthcoming seminar at Loughborough University:
Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen!
The 13th Sustainable Design Network Seminar Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen! will be held on the 17th October 2008 at the Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL), Loughborough [...]

A year in

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 30, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

It’s nearly a year since I started my PhD, (and coming up to three years since this blog was launched). Last week I had my end-of-year review, and, while I don’t often post about the minutiae of being a research student on the blog, I know that at least a few of you are in [...]

The asymmetry of the indescribable

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 1, 2008 ⋅ 6 comments

Like the itchy label in my shirt, there’s something which has been niggling away at the back of my mind, ever since I started being exposed to ‘academic fields’, and boundaries between ’subjects’ (probably as a young child). I’m sure others have expressed it much better, and, ironically, it probably has a name itself, and [...]

Interview with Sir Clive

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 30, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Chris Vallance of Radio 4’s excellent iPM has done a thoughtful interview with Sir Clive Sinclair, ranging across many subjects, from personal flying machines to the Asus Eee, and touching on the subject of consumer understanding of technology, and the degree to which the public can engage with it:
Your [Chris Vallance's] generation really understood the [...]

Sarah Burwood: Tumble Sums

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 14, 2008 ⋅ 4 comments

We’ve covered teaching machines and programmed learning textbooks a few times on the blog, and I’ll admit to a general fascination with analogue computing and similar ideas, ever since reading John Crank’s Mathematics and Industry as a teenager, after finding it in a skip (dumpster) along with a lot of other very interesting books*. It [...]

Spear’s Spellmaster: Poka-yoke in the classroom

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 7, 2008 ⋅ 3 comments

Back in September we looked at Mentor Teaching Machines, a clever type of non-linear textbook from the early 1970s which guides/constrains the user’s progression, in the process diagnosing some common types of misunderstanding and ‘remedying’ them. The comments were enlightening, too: there’s a lot more history to programmed teaching texts and programmed instruction than I [...]

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