Category: designers

  • You’re so design, you probably think this post is about you

    Reader warning: I’m not even sure what this post is about. I’m categorising it as ‘captured musings’ that seem to go together 😉 Let me just say at the outset, when I thought about doing this post the other week I thought it was a riff on research, listening and hearing. On Feb 19 I…

  • Baking is to Design Process as The Simpsons are to Research Observations

    At work we’ve been out in the field researching with users. I’ve talked before about research before on here. Again it’s a topic in government and I can’t share details. But this time, from a design process perspective I’ve played the Second Chair role – take care of everything (finding the place, confirming anything with the…

  • A True Story of Design Collaboration (in 16 sentences)

    I present to you the regular verbal punctuation of a typical design conversation – after each passage analysis, synthesis, tension, delight, creativity, and often, solutions ensue. Please, to enjoy: It begins Occasionally Last afternoon, before self-imposed deadline Finally, next day, when it’s committed to paper *Based on a true events in the DMA office.

  • Sometimes You Just Have To Shut Up

    Sometimes you talk too much and you just have to shut-up. Sometimes you don’t really know what you’re talking about so you just have to shut up. Sometimes you just have nothing to add; you just have to shut up. Sometimes, if you’re having a one-sided dialogue – that’s actually a monologue, because people can’t…

  • What has two thumbs (down) and doesn’t care

    This designer! I recently saw Design & Thinking, the movie. Warning: if your life changed from seeing this movie don’t read on. My life didn’t change. In fact, I’ll never get those 75 minutes back. Some of my favourite things in the world are documentaries and design. I previously waxed lyrical and was genuinely energised…

  • A state of service design (view from the top of the world)

    This top of the world! It’s been a busy month of many dialogues, conversations, presentations, seminal decisions, great client work, painful service design moments, great service design moments. That means this post has gone through some incarnations: From love letter To surprised yet slightly reserved observation To rant (strewn with swears galore…galore I tells ya!)…

  • Businessifying Design (Whating the what?)

    NB: A version of this post, written with Justin Barrie, is also published at DMA/We Think I recently saw ‘Design the New Business’ I’d heard about the movie for many months and finally had the opportunity thanks to Damien Kernahan from Proto Partners and the Canberra Service Design Drinks to see it.   A quick…

  • My Top Aspirational Design Companies

    Emma Jefferies is an “an award winning researcher, designer, educator, writer and more recently filmmaker” according to her blog. She is also a very active and inspiring twitterer – which is how I ‘know’ her (or of her in the tweequaintance-sense). Her site is a great resource and repository of curated design and research sources.…

  • Promised an experience; given a map: Filing a Tax Return Experience Map (Part B)

    In my last post: Promised the world; given an atlas: A personal service experience (Part A) I shared my service experience as I attempted to file a tax return online in a new country. In this post I share how I captured that research as a Customer Experience Map. Interestingly as I worked on the…