I can’t seem to get away from Uber lately – if it’s not another article on its disruptive genius or its double-digit-billions valuation, it’s another article about its equally disruptive misogyny. While both of these are valid discussions, I think there’s more to the picture than I see in a lot of the stories about the former (I’m not arguing …
Mysterious switches and other design phenomena [post 22/100]
I spent last night in one of my favourite hotels. As always, the bed was super-comfy, the room was beautifully appointed, the service was friendly and all was very comfortable. I appreciated, as I always do, the presence of not only power plugs but also USB ports at either side of the headboard – you’d be amazed at how few …
Internet of neighbourhoods, part 1 [post 19/100]
In 2012 and 2013, Martin and I did a couple of workshops on the topic of Smart cities, taking a bit of an unconventional approach. Most Smart Cities projects that I’m aware of concentrate primarily on infrastructure, transport and security, with a bit of commercial enablement on the side. They don’t seem to spend a lot of time on the …
Beacon blues [post 18/100]
I’ve been reading an increasing number of articles lately about how the Internet of Things is going to transform the retail industry. the specific thing that gets mentioned most often is in-store beacons that can broadcast offers and purchase suggestions to shoppers’ smartphones. And every single time I read one of these articles, I get angrier. Because every time, I …
Getting in on the action (an addendum) [post 17/100]
As Hajo quite rightly pointed out in a comment on my earlier post, of course the other side of understanding that ‘social media’ is really a giant global ongoing conversation is knowing how to participate in that conversation without, if you’ll pardon my French, being a total dick. 5 or so years ago, a designer at Fjord and I put …
Digital snake oil (a bit about branding) [post 16/100]
Brands and branding used to be such a straightforward thing (a few centuries ago, at least). A brand differentiated one person’s products from another’s, and over time customers learned that, say, Pete made the best dark ale and Phillip’s joint salve worked better than that other guy’s (what was his name again?). All you had to do was make a …
You talkin’ to me? [post 15/100]
Last week I made mention of poor recommendations by way of suggesting that we should maybe stop trying to draw conclusions about everything all the time. This time I want to point out another facet of the problem. I’ve written before about Big Data and the general meaninglessness of that term. Still one of my favourite quotes from 2013 was …
Aspiration: Master or Mimbo? [post 14/100]
Yes, I know, I missed posting yesterday. I’ll make it up to you over the weekend. Anyway, I’ve been continuing to have conversations with people in the creative and technology industries about avoiding techno-dystopia. And as I was discussing this with a friend who doesn’t work in that domain (yes, I have them, shut up), something occurred to me that …
Hunter/gatherers in the 21st century [post 13/100]
Autocorrect failure. Bad recommendations. Offensive ‘related’ content. These are a few of our least favourite things (except in a schadenfreude kind of way). And the frustration we feel comes from the fact that they are all drawing conclusions – the wrong conclusions. It doesn’t help that quite often, we aren’t given adequate means to correct them. A colleague sent me …
You keep using that word: AI and false expectations [post 12/100]
In this wonderful world of technology, we’ve made up lots of words. That’s natural, since we’ve made up lots of new things as well. But sometimes we make up a word and we use it over and over again, even though the word doesn’t really describe the thing that we’re talking about. It reminds me of one of my favourite …