Infrastructures of inclusion and informality: who drives the design of sociotechnical systems?
A recent Debate (Development and Change, Vol 52, No. 4) on the infrastructures of inclusion, informality and the social contract expands the notion of infrastructure beyond the tangible and the technological, to the systemic and economic, as well as societal structures and processes that are intended to facilitate inclusion. As Kate Meagher says in her […]
Is it still design that we’re doing or is it simply using the designer’s toolkit?
It was sometime in the Spring of 2002 that I was looking for a metaphorical space that would accommodate me – an engineer, an MBA, with graduate product design education and the sensibilities and eye of a designer. I’d spent the year on a Heinz Foundation Fellowship after my MBA to train with Dr Chris […]
Magic, rhythm, and flow
Today has been set aside to read a book written by the Oxford professor of Archeology, Chris Gosden, called the History of Magic. My thoughts on the book will remain unwritten until I am able to do justice to a book review. In the meantime, I want to capture, in words, the inherent magic I […]
Facilitating innovation by introducing the means to express oneself creatively
Understanding Delegation
Less than 10 days ago, I was faced with an unusual problem, one of those which they say are good problems to have. I found I’d reached the point in my process of development where I had to choose between the perspective held over from a past life along with the skills honed therein, where […]
Flow
Reflecting on the unseen changes that have been taking place over the past month, the best way I can explain it, even to myself, is to use the analogy of rocks on a river bed (or pebbles in a stream, if you prefer). There’s been a re-alignment that has taken place at a much deeper […]
Silence
Weightlessness
I decided to indulge myself in pondering these thoughts a little longer, in writing. Tonight’s music on the keyboard has a subtle rhythm that is pleasing. Taking the thoughts of the previous post a little further, it feels like I’ve let go of something that once had value but today I cannot even answer whether […]
Inherent conflicts discovered in a moment of stillness during a process
My title is a word salad. I can sense and feel and perceive what I mean but cannot yet grasp it. Finding the words to be sung by thinking and writing. Since March, I’ve been documenting my intention and then process of making significant changes to my inner vision – call it a mental model, […]
Bringing to bear a legacy of perspective on the transformations of contemporary design practice
Thanks to Tricia Wang’s recent article in Fast Company magazine on the unhealthy legacy of a strategy tool from ‘design thinking’, I read her links to Jesse James Garrett’s reflections on the developments in the practice of UX and Maggie Gram’s tracing the history of design thinking and the increasing capacity of design to its […]
