Cake or Death

Lemon poppyseed cake photo by James Ransom

Can we all agree that how we experience the world is important?  So why do so many businesses still see experience design as an optional extra? This has come across my desk often enough this week for me to feel a need to post about it. Too many designers are still fighting for the right to do the jobs they …

FOR SALE: Me. Good condition. Convenience ONO. [post 42/100]

[This article was written for Prophecy and is cross-posted here with permission.] We are addicted to technology. Literally. Cognitive scientists have found the same kind of dopamine response in smartphone users checking Facebook as in gamblers pulling the handle on a slot machine, or junkies getting high. And we know it. We now have resorts where you can pay to …

The Internet of Why [post 38/100]

I was thinking some more on my way down to MIPTV this morning about last week’s post on the (possible) commoditisation of our selves through the wholesale adoption of “helpful” technologies (thanks very much for the comments, by the way, both here and on the backchannels. You know who you are). I don’t want to sound too much like Cassandra …

Getting it together (the important business of cross-platform design) [post 35/100]

Remember the old days of design for mobile? I mean before the iPhone, when all we had were dumbphones and WAP? That was a gigantic pain in the arse. Screens were tiny, data connections were slow, touch screens were nonexistent. We had to very carefully select which portions of a web site we’d offer in the WAP version – if …

Unauthorised agents [post 29/100]

Toward the end of 2014, I received an email informing me that a friend and former colleague had joined a new professional networking site called RareBridge. When I clicked through, I found no information was available without sign-up. In a fit of uncharacteristic naiveté, I created an account. The next step was headlined, “Search for friends already on RareBridge” – …