Design with Intent | Specious arguments

Bye-bye 9rules

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 5, 2007 ⋅ 17 comments

Around ten months ago, this site was accepted into 9rules, a diverse network of blogs which, at the time, had this aim:
9rules is a community of the best weblogs in the world on a variety of topics. We started 9rules to give passionate writers more exposure and to help readers find great blogs on their [...]

No photography allowed

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 22, 2007 ⋅ 4 comments

A couple of recent stories on photography of certain items being ‘banned’ – Cory Doctorow on a Magritte exhibition’s hypocrisy, and Jen Graves on a sculpture of which “photography is prohibited” – highlight what makes me tense up and want to scream about so much of the ‘intellectual property debate’: photons are no more [...]

Some links

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 17, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

First, an apology for anyone who’s had problems with the RSS/Atom feeds over the last month or so. I think they’re fixed now (certainly Bloglines has started picking them up again) but please let me know if you don’t read this. Oops, that won’t work… anyway:
‘Gadgets as Tyrants’ by Xeni Jardin, looks at digital architectures [...]

BBC report on Gowers Report reads like a press release

By Dan Lockton ⋅ December 7, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

They’ve got quotes from the BPI, AIM, FACT and the Alliance Against IP Theft, but nothing from the Open Rights Group or anyone else offering any counter-view. I wonder why, and I wonder if the BBC will update or alter the article at any point. Newssniffer’s Revisionista will let us know.
Still, I can rest [...]

A vein attempt?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 28, 2006 ⋅ 7 comments

Blue lighting is sometimes used in public toilets (restrooms) to make it more difficult for drug users to inject themselves (veins are harder to see). The above implementation is in Edinburgh, next to the Tron Kirk.
It was more difficult to see my veins through my skin, but there was normal-coloured lighting in the street [...]

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 [...]

‘Secret alarm becomes dance track’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 28, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

The Mosquito sound has been mixed (sort of) into a dance track:
“…the sound is being used in a dance track, Buzzin’, with secret melodies only young ears can hear.
…
Simon Morris from Compound Security said: “Following the success of the ringtone, a lot of people were asking us to do a bit more, so we [...]

Shaping behaviour at the Design Council

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 28, 2006 ⋅ 3 comments

Photo by Kate Andrews
I’ve blogged before mentioning the work of the UK Design Council’s RED research arm, which applies ‘design thinking’ to redevelop and create public services appropriate for societal changes right now and in the years to come. The previous post was specifically about Jennie Winhall’s ‘Is design political?’ essay, but I’ve kept in [...]

Is there a better term than “architectures of control”?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 14, 2006 ⋅ 12 comments

Welcome, readers from Metafilter and del.icio.us.
One point raised in the Metafilter discussion is whether the term ‘architectures of control’ is a sensible one for this phenomenon, and whether ‘architectures of control in design’ is a good title for the blog. I understand the issue; it’s something (clearly) I considered at length when starting my [...]

Spiked: When did ‘hanging around’ become a social problem?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 30, 2006 ⋅ One comment

Josie Appleton, at the always-interesting Spiked, takes a look at the increasing systemic hostility towards ‘young people in public places’ in the UK: ‘When did ‘hanging around’ become a social problem?’
As well as the Mosquito, much covered on this site (all posts; try out high frequency sounds for yourself), the article mentions the use [...]

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Specious arguments