The Hacker’s Amendment

Congress shall pass no law limiting the rights of persons to manipulate, operate, or otherwise utilize as they see fit any of their possessions or effects, nor the sale or trade of tools to be used for such purposes.
From Artraze commenting on this Slashdot story about the levels of DRM in Windows 7.
I think it [...]

The world’s energy meter

One of the presentations I’m really looking forward to at OpenTech 2008 in London is by AMEE, self-described as “The world’s energy meter”:
If all the energy data in the world were accessible, what would you build? The Climate Change agenda has created an imperative to measure the energy profile of everything. As trillions of pounds [...]

Interview with Sir Clive

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 [...]

Seminar, 27th May

I’ll be giving a brief seminar at Brunel on Tuesday 27th May, in advance of presenting at Persuasive 2008 – it’s a bit of a practice/rehearsal, to be honest…

Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 3)

Continued from part 2
This series is looking at what design techniques/mechanisms are applicable to guiding a user to follow a process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence. The techniques fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this post, I’m going to examine the Poka-yoke approach. If you’ve been following the previous posts, you’ll probably [...]

Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 2)

Continued from part 1

These are the suggested mechanisms applicable to User follows process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence – they fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this post, I’m going to examine the System element approach.
System element approach
This approach includes mechanisms relating to the layout and properties of system elements, hence all [...]

Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 1)

Photo by trancedmoogle.
Back in January, I introduced the Design with Intent method on the blog. I’ve been developing this since then, and, suitably tested and refined, it should form the first stage of the PhD.
Essentially, the DwI Method is intended to be a structured ’suggestion engine’, where a target behaviour is put in one [...]

Making users more efficient: Design for sustainable behaviour

I’m pleased to say that a paper I wrote earlier this year has been accepted by the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, a new journal based at Loughborough University. The publishers (Taylor & Francis) allow authors to post a preprint* version online, so here it is.
Making the user more efficient: Design for sustainable behaviour [...]

Water on the membrane

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 [...]

On the level

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 [...]