For a few years now, connected by the Design Council's Humanising Technology initiative, I've been plotting with Indeva, headed up by UK entrepreneur Mike Whiteside. Indeva develop a unique and significant new breed of enterprise-level decision-management software. It generates, in Mike's words, "a collective memory of the future". Better get used to "value loops" and "cointeraction" – you'll all be saying it soon...
Nick
A kitchen in an Royal College of Art show? How brilliant is that? The InnovationRCA's Innovation night, which featured domestic kitchen godesses, Sheila and Jruti's work for MFI is entitled the democratisation of luxury.
More innovation plotting at Imperial College, with a selection of projects and viewpoints touching on the challenges of bringing science/business and design together. And more triangle diagrams explaining how they fit together - often without exploring the cultural differences that we have to overcome to make these collaborations work.
When we were shaping the Humanising Technology project – now the Technology Campaign – at the Design Council, these cultural differences were central to how we made those connections work; and understanding the different world views was a great starting point. How emerging technology companies approached commercialisation was missing a strategic design stage, which could influence the whole direction of the company, as well as its ability to mitigate risk and attract better investment.
Funny, too, that those of us born pre-internet have a distanced fascination with open-source and what it can and could be, and I'm looking forward to seeing the impacts it has on organisations. It's great seeing huge perception changes in the way organisations approach their assets and their audiences. The BBC and Matt Locke's backstage.bbc.co.uk is really heartwarming. If the discoveries made on the Humanising Technology/Technology Campaign become open source, there is so much we could discover about the power of design to create new value.
Gill
The film of the "Plastic" debate at the Dirt Café London, with Gill as facilitator, is now available
cheers, Plot
This week we've been mostly... having an outstanding time connecting and working with fascinating people and companies.
It started with ET Capital a Cambridge venture capital firm, who asked us to shape them a new plot. This is our first formal collaboration with a VC, and they thought we were good value. Martin Rigby is the David Attenborough of venture capital...
It continued with a trip to Southampton for the Ordnance Survey's Terra Futures Conference, a showcase for their research and innovation unit. A sparkling presentation by the sharp thinking Richard Scase - who can present a stack of graphs on demographics like a stand-up routine. We had a chance to swap ideas with more of the OS research team; as well as explore a fascinating screen technology.
On Thursday Gill facilitated the Dirt Café's debate on Plastic - a cross disciplinary debate on sustainability, design and food, based in Borough Market for the first week of the London Design Festival. What a wonderful hybrid... and a tasty lunch! Added to that was the chance to encourage lively discussion between such a feisty and dynamic group: Michael Braungart (Author of the challenging book on designing for sustainability, Cradle to Cradle), Peter Whybrow (whose book on American consumer malaise fascinates) Patricia Michelson from La Fromagerie, Tyler Moorhead from the Ecologist Magazine and George Nicholson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Borough Market. Documentary film of this event is available for download at the Dirt Café. Dirt Café is a collaboration between Wormhole, Slow Food London and LDF.
As obvious as it sounds, the Slow Food people really know their food - never before has a grape, goats cheese and bread been such a moving experience! And the striking part of the atmosphere was the event's freedom from cynicism - refreshing in it's absence.
On Friday, Nick met up with Wendy March from Intel. She's been exploring café communities with the aid of Cow and Pig. Or is it Pig and Cow? See them play! Read a short interview with Wendy. And if that doesn't slake your thirst, you can explore the learned paper.
– phew! Plot
We teamed up with the great London Design Festival to run a full scale seminar and methods workshop on user-centred design of RFID applications, and sadly had to cancel it with too few participants to run it.
Ah well, so it goes. We are learning lessons from trying things out in the open. Perhaps we've got to re-think through what and how it is we stage these things. There's much to explore here, beyond simplistic automation.
We are very keen to talk with people who have the task on their shoulders of bringing RFID applications into the world, and who would prefer it to be one that all of the users of the technology can find delight in.
best, Plot
Recent Comments