Design with Intent

Getting around

By Dan Lockton ⋅ April 16, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

The TAXI Design network has syndicated* my post on the Nicostopper for its very interesting ‘The Driver Speaks’ strand of articles – perhaps not the most obvious choice of articles to choose, but I suppose it was relatively short and to-the-point compared with much on this blog. I should probably consider actually submitting some articles [...]

What I’ve learned so far as a freelance designer/engineer/maker: Part 2

By Dan Lockton ⋅ April 13, 2007 ⋅ One comment

In part 1 of ‘What I’ve learned so far…’ I looked mostly at being a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ and the idea of ‘Wexelblat’s scheduling algorithm’ (or the ‘good, fast, cheap: pick two’ theory) as it applies to a young freelancer starting out. There were some very insightful comments which are also well worth reading.
Before starting on [...]

Plug: Wilson Brothers’ blog

By Dan Lockton ⋅ March 5, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Bit of a design-related plug: London designer/maker Ben Wilson (with whom I’m currently working on a project for Sir Clive Sinclair) and his brothers, Oscar and Luke, have just launched their own collaborative photo blog, which I helped set up using Wordpress.com, a mildly modified Sandbox theme and automatic email-to-blog (via Flickr) to allow the [...]

What I’ve learned so far as a freelance designer/engineer/maker: Part 1

By Dan Lockton ⋅ March 1, 2007 ⋅ 17 comments

This is the first in a series of essays where I’ll try to look at some of the realities of working freelance in this field; I hope these will be interesting and possibly useful to others contemplating this kind of work. Please note, these are only my own musings and ramblings, written mostly on train [...]

Still here

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 28, 2007 ⋅ One comment

Apologies for the lack of posts for the last week-and-a-bit; I’ve been very busy with projects (design, research, building prototypes, testing, etc) for a number of clients and, as always, things take longer than you expect. I said before that I didn’t want to write posts on here when my mind is elsewhere (it tends [...]

Friday quote: Precedents (the flipside)

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 16, 2007 ⋅ One comment

As a flipside, perhaps, to the quote on precedents from a couple of weeks ago:
If there is something really cool, and you can’t understand why somebody hasn’t done it before, it’s because you haven’t done it yourself.
(From Lion Kimbro’s fascinating How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think.)
The way I interpret that [...]

Friday quote: Precedents

By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 2, 2007 ⋅ One comment

It is remarkable… how often thinking for oneself will lead us to conclusions written about before we were born.
From a post by Vera Bass, ‘Teaching requires learning’, 6th November 2006.
Many people have probably also said this, but that’s the point, pretty much.

Coincidence?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 10, 2007 ⋅ 12 comments

A few minutes ago I was playing a track in Winamp, with Gmail open in an Opera window, and on refreshing Gmail, the Google ‘web clip’ at the top of the inbox display contained the same phrase, ‘jet stream’, as the track.
Is that merely a coincidence, or does Gmail monitor what music is being played [...]

Welcome, new readers

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 7, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Welcome to visitors from 9rules and We Make Money Not Art. With a diverse set of new readers, and the start of a new year, I should probably try to explain, succinctly, what this blog’s about.
Most of the posts look at ‘architectures of control‘ designed into products, systems and environments, which seek to force the [...]

culminate // 2006

By Dan Lockton ⋅ December 30, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

This’ll probably be my last post of 2006, so I’d like to thank everyone who’s read the blog (and commented, or suggested stories) over the year. 2006 has seen this blog, and the awareness of the ‘architectures of control’ concept, grow substantially – it’s pleasing to have so many regular readers and contributors, if a [...]

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