Design with Intent | Vague rhetoric

Sort some cards and win a copy of The Hidden Dimension

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 2, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

UPDATE: Thanks everyone – 10 participants in just a few hours! The study’s closed now – congratulations to Ville Hjelm whose book is now on its way…
If you’ve got a few minutes spare, are interested in the Design with Intent techniques, and fancy having a 1/10 chance of winning a brand-new copy of The Hidden [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

Dredging up some old ideas

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 28, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Three essays I’d pretty much forgotten about, written for courses at Cambridge during my Master’s in Technology Policy, linked here for no reason in particular:
Peer Treasure: how firms outside the software industry can use open source thinking
How can we strengthen links between entrepreneurial companies and entrepreneurial universities in the UK?
Motor vehicles in the developing world: [...]

Cross-purposes?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 18, 2008 ⋅ 4 comments

Last week I was at a seminar where a fellow student was outlining some (very interesting) research about how to adapt ‘professional’ products to be usable by a ‘lay’ audience (what functions do you retain, what do you lose, how do you deal with different mental models? and so on)
He repeatedly referred to the importance [...]

Apologies for the delay to this service

By Dan Lockton ⋅ April 22, 2008 ⋅ 4 comments

You’re owed an apology, dear reader, for the 2-month hiatus with the blog. It’s down to a variety of reasons compounding each other, and alternately forcing me to prioritise other pressing problems, then when I tried seizing the initiative again, frustrating me with technical issues and actually preventing posting. You probably never noticed it, due [...]

Interesting parallels

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 15, 2008 ⋅ 3 comments

Security is about preventing adverse consequences from the intentional and unwarranted actions of others. What this definition basically means is that we want people to behave in a certain way… and security is a way of ensuring that they do so.
Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear
A simpler way of thinking about Interaction Designers is that they are [...]

Persuasion & control round-up

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 10, 2007 ⋅ 6 comments

New Scientist: Recruiting Smell for the Hard Sell
Samsung’s coercive atmospherics strategy involves the smell of honeydew melon:
THE AIR in Samsung’s flagship electronics store on the upper west side of Manhattan smells like honeydew melon. It is barely perceptible but, together with the soft, constantly morphing light scheme, the scent gives the store a blissfully relaxed, [...]

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 [...]

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Vague rhetoric