ARTICLES
Reflections on design practice + its impact on people, systems, and everyday life.
AI, Ethics, and Robo-Utopia
There is no more significant time to be a designer than the present and no greater reward than creating something new and contributing to the betterment of others, but this also comes with a huge responsibility. As new and emerging technologies evolve at an unprecedented pace, we must ask ourselves: if this pace continues to accelerate, what challenges will we face?
What's Trending in the New Dawn?
For years, designers have been advocating for a more equal, diverse, and convivial future. By shaping meaningful conversations about the purpose of design, its raison d’être, designers continuously transform and re-invent design practice to not only benefit screen-deep experiences, but also exploit the full potential of design and technology in informing and changing the ways in which people think, live and act, as individuals and as part of a community.
The Value Impact of Service Partnerships
In a world where almost everything is digitized, services can now be understood as concepts with infinite potential to grow and transform. What was once unimaginable now lies within the expected.The delightful ‘Of course!’ moment often reveals itself through these service combinations, giving new meaning to the services that we use.
Designing for the Future Self
How might we shift our focus from the invasive introspective chatter and gear our energy towards learning new behaviors in pursuit of our future, wonderful selves?Design has now infiltrated a market where it can begin to positively impact the individual. Over the years and decades to come, design will help drive meaningful change in the ways that individuals treat their body and interact with their various environments.
Empowering Design
In 2016, design will empower people, giving them a sense of control over their bodies and environments. More importantly, this is the year that design will fuel all aspects of our social and private lives, and play a role in how we deal with the everyday as a society and as individuals.
The Influence of iOS 7 + Designing for Mobile in an Omnichannel World
Digital design paradigms are shifting faster than ever before. In less than a decade, we have moved from point-and-click to skeuomorphism to flat design. This pace of change impacts designers who need to keep up with ever-changing standards, companies that have to manage increasing fragmentation and updates across platforms, and it also affects customers who have to process and adopt novel patterns while seeking familiarity in the tools that they use.
Interacting with Possibilities of Existence
Dunne and Raby in their latest work describe an imaginary future governed by technology and centred around the car, posing a deeply philosophical question: What is the impact of design on ways of existence? And, to which extent does design take in consideration their consequences on the big picture (society, community, economy, etc.)?
Frog's Research Learning Spiral
As clients are becoming increasingly aware of ethnographic-ish research being an essential and integral part of the design process for a high quality user experience offer, it is important for us (designers) to learn an appropriate format for approaching and customizing research on a project basis.
On UX Debt
According to Aarron Walter's "Hierarchy of User Needs," which follows Maslow's framework of Hierarchy of (Human) Needs, the functional measure lives at the lowest level of the quality axis and supports the increasingly qualitative measures: reliable, usable, and pleasurable; the latter sitting at the top of the pyramid denoting the ideal, target or "peak" experience.
Startups on the Connected Home
On May 7, 2013 I attended an event entitled "The connected Home, TV, and Living Room" sponsored by MIT and Verizon at the Yotel Hotel in New York. The talks consisted of 4 startup representatives who Verizon named "Ninja Innovators"… this is I am assuming open to interpretation. Presenters were allowed a total of 3 minutes each, or so.
Meadows' Leverage Points in Complex Systems
"[R]ules for self-organization […] govern how, where, and what the system can add onto or subtract from itself under what conditions." (Meadows, 1999:15)Self-organizing structures allow a system to change, evolve, and sustain itself as external actors and internal entities affect and impact its systemic structure overtime; thus, developing new response mechanism and enacting new rules and behaviors.
Ethnography in Design Practice
Ethnographic research is important when interaction designers start raising questions about the core values and place that technological tools have in people's everyday practices. The methods used for understanding user behavioral patterns and cultural realities focus on interaction as inseparable from the environment in which it occurs. Rather than analyzing separate data points, ethnography restores actions within their contextual settings and examines behavior as part of a holistic system in which people, things, and the environment affect each other and intertwine with one another.