Recent activities

25 March 2008 My piece on design and social networking for DCM (the UK Design Council magazine), reporting on and analysing developments, and presenting some forecasting, was published in Issue 3 (the blue ‘air hostess’ issue). I have now also posted it to this site. (The piece can also be found on pp38–41 of the issue.) The posted piece is as submitted and prior to cutting and editing. (I have also made available, with the permission of the publisher, an Acrobat facsimile of the published article.) The piece is extensively endnoted and I have also included the un-published sidebars. See my notes on it in my related journal entry.

29 Feburary 2008 Spoke at an Icelandic Marketing Association conference in Reykjavík on ‘Real innovation in the Internet age’.

16 November 2007 Reporting on the 2007 London Media Summit entitled ‘Future Media Technologies: Disruption or Opportunity?’, which took place at the London Business School. It was a surprisingly interesting event considering it was programmed by LBS students (clearly a talented bunch), and both the audience and speakers were smart. You can see my notes posted during the event.

18 July 2007 Presented at the Sichuan Media & Journalism Programme on a panel entitled ‘The Contemporary Media World’, organised by the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education Leadership Programmes for China.

3 July, 2007 My review of the Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2007 has been published in Core77. The review is divided into Reduction, Reactions, and Reflection. I am also writing a fuller, annotated report on this event. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing the report.

3 July, 2007 Issue 165 of .net magazine (August 2007) includes a feature by Jason Walsh on social uses of the Web, entitled ‘Build the perfect web community’, for which I was interviewed, along with Jeff Roberto of Friendster, Kevin Rose of Digg.com, Tom Coates of Yahoo!, Christian Ward of Last.fm, Andrew Calcutt from the University of East London, and David Gerard of Wikipedia. Among my comments, which somewhat contradict the thrust implied by the title of the piece, I note that “People are wary of real-life encounters due to a decline in trust“ and “Online communities are not communities in a real sense”. The article is not available online, but the magazine is worth buying for anyone interested in Web design and development. (Having purchased the first issue in the mid-90s I was pleasantly surprised to see how it has evolved. And unlike many computing-related titles, it is well designed.)

25 May 2007 Participated in a panel entitled ‘Web 2.0 and Social Innovation’ at the RSA Conference The Social Impact of the Web: Society, Government and the Internet. Prior to the event I posted my draft response/remarks for the panel in my Journal, including an explanation of the panel brief. By the end of the week I will post notes from my introduction. An audio recording of the event will be made available soon after. See the Audio link from the event page.

19 March 2007 My article ‘London: still stuck in a jam’ has been published in spiked Environment, which reflects on its failure at the level of policy and imagination. Documentation on this article. “Ken Livingstone and New Labour”, I write, “are achieving what a Tory government failed to do over 17 years: get people to gracefully, even gratefully, accept an attack on their standard of living and freedoms”.

24 January 2007 My article ‘Competitiveness Summit ’06:
A review from the UK Design Council’, a report and reflection on the Competitiveness Summit ’06, has been published on Core77. It has also been syndicated in the Innovation & Design section of BusinessWeek.com as ‘Innovation and the Prosperity of Nations’. The article has aroused considerable interest in the design policy sector.

15 November 2006 I have posted the Media Futures article, ‘Not your father's media’, commissioned for the launch issue of the journal Wordrobe. Looking at the factors that fashion media forms and evolution, I argue that established publishers and broadcasters lack imagination in the use of online and digital platforms, and contend that their lack of understanding and exploitation of design is part of the problem.

15 November 2006 My review of Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer (New Riders, 2006) has been published in the November 2006 issue of Blueprint magazine. Although the book struggles to work at the different levels of its intended readers, and takes a non-user-centred approach to ‘designing for good’, I conclude that “For the uninitiated Designing for Interaction is a good introduction to interaction design and design futures, and for anyone planning to practice it is a well-considered guide”.

17 August 2006 My article ‘‘Comment is Free,’ but designing communities is hard’ has been published in the Online Journalism Review. The piece anaylses the Guardian’s attempt to build an engaging group blog, suggests how the community might be more successfully designed, and considers the broader social trends driving online forums. Documentation on the article.

12 July 2006 Took part in a spiked-IT panel entitled ‘Why wi-fi?’, supported by Clarke Mulder Purdie, at the IBM South Bank centre. The other panelists were Chris Bruce, chief executive, BTOpenzone; Victor Keegan, columnist, Guardian; and Steve Watkins, senior consultant, IT Governance. Notes based on my remarks and on the discussion have been posted.

19 May 2006 Presented at a St Bride Library event on newspaper design, addressing newspaper design and the Internet. The other presenters included Guardian creative director Mark Porter and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. I have published an annotated outline of my talk, along with a copy of my presentation.

11 May 2006 Presented at the intersperience and the Centre for the Study of Media Technology & Culture Open Ideas event ‘Anyplace, Anytime, Anywhere! Moments of Contact’ at the RSA in London. I have posted the annotated text of my presentation.

7 February 2006 Panelist at the Centre for Creative Business event ‘Design or Die!’ at the RSA in London. The other panelists were Sir George Cox, Wayne Hemingway, and Sebastian Conran. I have posted notes based on my comments during the panel and audience discussion. The CCB has documented the event in its newsletter Grow! Edition 3, April 2006 (3.3MB file linked from the ‘Previous events’ section of the CCB Events site). One attendee noted by email that “It was fantastic to hear such well informed, enthusiastic and still firmly grounded voice on the panel”.

7 January 2005 Gave a seminar entitled ‘Designerly thinking and beyond’ on the RCA Interaction Design programme.

12 December 2005 Having attended John Thackara’s lecture at the RSA I have posted my review of his book In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World (The MIT Press, 2005), which I reviewed in the July issue of Blueprint. The review asks ‘to what question is this book the answer’, and points up its ‘heaviness’ and lack of theory. However, in its own terms it is a success, and represents a journalistic tour de force through emerging design practice.

22 September 2005 Appeared on the BBC 6 O’Clock News commenting on the convergence of devices into mobile products. The piece was hung on the O2 launch of live-TV-enabled mobile phones.

22 September 2005 Interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live about research showing users wanted better battery life from mobile phones.

15 September 2005 My piece on the MIT Media Lab researcher Kimiko Ryokai’s I/O Brush project has been published on the BBC News Technology site as ‘‘Magic brush’ paints visual world’. I first came across the project at the CHI2005 Design Expo. The intro reads: An electronic paint brush developed in the US is helping children understand the world around them.

6 September 2005 Took part in the ‘Insight: Meet The Customers’ panel of the MEX (mobile user experience) conference in London. I represented the ‘24/7’ persona of an advanced user. The other panelists represented the personas ‘Inc.’ (“for those who face the minor, but inevitable, physical challenge of ageing”), and ‘Essential’ (for “the many women, with busy, multi-faceted lives, who still don’t use their mobile much”).The panel was chaired by Gus Desbarats, chairman of Farnham, UK-based product designers The Alloy, which researched and developed these personas, and has developed product concepts around them. The conference sessions were well documented by the organisers. They are also selling a ‘report and presentation package’.

01 September 2005 My critique of graphic activism, ‘Practise, don’t preach’, has been published in the September 2005 issue of Creative Review, and is also the subject of the issue’s editorial. I argue that graphic activism represents bad politics and makes for bad design. It’s anti-humanist culture of complaint fails to present a cultural or political alternative to the targets it attacks. And the ethics it espouses is notably absent at home. Sadly, Creative Review doesn’t publish online. If you have a subscription to mad.co.uk you may be able to read it online, and read letters published in response. You can comment on the article at the end of the post on my Design and Society journal.

16 August 2005 My piece on the interactive Lifeline at the Churchill Museum in London has been published in BBC News Online as ‘Lifeline From The Past To The Present’. The introduction reads: An interactive ‘Lifeline’ table is a key part of a new museum in London dedicated to the life of Sir Winston Churchill. Readers are invited to ‘Have Your Say’, and a number have commented.

09 August 2005 Appeared in a BBC Breakfast News item on the cycle of consumer technologies, hung on the demise of the film-based camera.

01 August 2005 My article ‘Better by Design’ has been published in the August 2005 issue of the RSA Journal, in print and online. The introduction reads: Design used to be associated purely with aesthetics. Today it has been embraced by business leaders and is advocated for social policy development. Nico Macdonald investigates these claims. I am keen to develop the discussion around this theme.

27 June 2005 My report on the 22 June Cass Creatives event ‘Read All About It! – News in the Internet Age’ has been published in Netimperative. The event turned out to be quite insightful, and rather more measured than much discussion about publishing from the ‘upstart’ Weblogging side.

29 April 2005 Panelist at the ICA Club² event on forecasting trends entitled ‘The Next Big Thing’, asking of trends “What are they, How does Technology influence then, What leads? Influence, Predicting the next big thing”. Other panelists were Lydia Crawford, Centre for Fashion Enterprise; Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel; Alan Moore, CEO of SMLXL; Tom Savigar, Sense Worldwide; and digital marketing specialist Jason Young. An outline of my introduction has been posted.

19 April 2005 My opinion piece ‘Adobe and Macromedia: bad news for online tools’, a reflection on the previous day’s announcement of the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe, has been published in The Register. I observe that while Adobe has been unable to focus on the Internet its Acrobat strategy was a far-sighted play. Its print heritage and the conservatism of its corporate users has limited, and even undermined, its online activities and will have an adverse effect on Macromedia’s pioneering products. Comments welcome in my journal, or to The Register (link on the article page).

15 April 2005 Interviewed on BBC News 24 about post-industrial Britain and the demise of the MG Rover car company. The interview went out live around 21:20. I will try to post the video online, if I can get it off my TiVo. I am also planning an op-ed piece based on my research for the interview.

14 April 2005 Panelist at ‘Whither Wi-Fi’ event, programmed by spiked-IT, which takes place at the RSA in London. Other panelists were: Piers Bearne, managing director, Rock Media; Pierre Trudeau, co-founder and chief technology officer, Colubris Networks; and James Woudhuysen, professor of forecasting and innovation, De Montfort University. Notes on this panel have been posted.

7 April 2005 My feature on VoIP for SMEs and home users has been published in Guardian Online. Voice over IP (VoIP) is coming of age for home and SME users, with a plethora of software and hardware products. While most won’t save money, many will benefit from flexibility and interoperability, features and ease-of use, and value-added services. However, I conclude that current services are still primitive, and many suffer from poor ease of use.

3–4 April 2005, Portland, OR Presenting to the CHI 2005 Development Consortium on ‘Meeting the Needs of the Multidisciplinary Professional and of the Multiple Professional Associations and Events of Importance to Them’. (I chaired the CHI 2003 Development Consortium on Mass Communication.) Other participants are: Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Research; Keith Instone, IBM; Fred Sampson, IBM Silicon Valley Lab; Whitney Quesenbery, Whitney Interactive Design; Richard Anderson, Riander (chair); Beth Mazur; Nigel Bevan, Serco Usability Services; Dennis Galletta, University of Pittsburgh; Ping Zhang, Syracuse University; Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; John Zapolski, AIGA; Dirk Knemeyer, Involution Studios; Nick Finck, Digital Web Magazine; Matteo Penzo, Consultechnology, Idearium; Arnold M. Lund, Microsoft Corporation; Lynn Strother, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society; Wendy A. Rogers, Georgia Institute of Technology; Barbara Helfer, Capital University; Ian MaClelland, Philips Applied Technologies; Annie Archbold, Centers for Disease Control; Paul Sherman, Best Software, University of Texas at Dallas; Michelle Berryman, IDSA; David Heller, Intralinks; and Joe Konstan, University of Minnesota. I will document my contribution in due course.

02 March 2005 ‘Graphic Design and the Future of the Web’. Presentation to University of Plymouth BA Graphic Design, BA Media Arts and MA Publishing students.

24 February 2005 ‘Cousins but not siblings: the relationship of Web and graphic design’. Talk at the University of Reading Department of Typography.

25 January 2005 ‘Interaction Design: The Bigger Picture’. Introduction to and seminar with Royal College of Art MA Interaction Design students.

28 December 2004 My collaborative report ‘HITS is a welcome Collaboration of Design and Business’, including contributions from Hugh Dubberly, S. Joy Mountford, and Ian McClelland, was published in Usability News [8 November 2004], and has been translated for the Chinese uiGarden site. I have also published the full version of the article.

13 December 2004 Following the launch event for What is Web Design?, I was interviewed by Netimperative, for a piece entitled ‘Web design: For humans, not machines’.

December 8, 2004 Gave an evening talk entitled ‘4D space: from aesthetics to interaction in Web design’ with Vassilios Alexiou of Less Rain at the Barbican Art Gallery. This talk was connected to the Communicate exhibition, for which I wrote a book chapter, and followed by a launch event for my book What is Web Design?

02 December 2004 My review of the RSA’s ‘Day of Inspiration’, which took place at the Royal Albert Hall on 11 October, has been published in the Architects’ Journal, 2 December 2004, p40.

11 November 2004 My review of the Jeremy Rifkin LIFT talk ‘The Hydrogen Economy: A Question of Culture?’, which was delivered at the LSE on 12 October, has been published in The Architects’ Journal, 11 November 2004, p45. I was also been involved in advising LIFT on this event.

01 November 2004 My review of the V&A Contemporary publication Interplay: Interactive Design has been published in Blueprint, November 2004, page 113.

16 September 2004 My essay on the impact of graphic design on design for the Web has been published in a book, Communicate, edited by Rick Poynor, that accompanies an exhibition that opened at the Barbican Art Gallery (London) on 16 September 2004. References and links to related articles and Weblog posts, including coverage of the book and exhibition, are being added as they are published.

09 September 2004 My latest Second Sight column on HCI and innovation has been published in the Online supplement of the Guardian. I argue that our obsession with the Web has obscured from us the lack of design innovation in graphical user interfaces. Instead I argue that we need to re-engage with human-computer interaction research and raise our ambitions. A number of people have responded to the article.

22 July 2004 My analysis of current developments in junk mail (and anti-junk mail systems), ‘Scamming the spammers’, has been published on spiked-IT. I argue that the spammers themselves are the main victims of online scams, and that as they wise up junk mail will tend to wither. I also critique the crass models of junk mail filtering implemented by corporate IT departments, and warn that in ‘dealing’ with spam we may destroy the ease-of-use that has made email so widely used. I conclude that we musn’t lose sight of the improvements needed in emails systems, at the front end as well as the back-end, some of which are highlighted by the proliferation of junk mail.

20 June 2004 My piece ‘Digital pen takes on mouse’ has been published on BBC News Online. It reviews the work of researchers at Sony’s Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, who have developed an interaction technique they call ‘pick and drop’ that addresses file exchange in physical space, building on and perhaps supplanting drag and drop and the mouse. Annotated article.

20 May 2004 My third Private View column in four years has been published in Design Week. Entitled ‘Real world sustainability’, the article asks why sustainable design is in vogue, and questions its proponents’ lack of ambition and understanding of human progress.

20 May 2004 I am writing a series of articles on HCI, design and mass communication for the Online Journalism Review. The first article, ‘Publishing by Design: Time to Make Human Factors a Concern’, has been published, and the series will run over the next few months. Documentation on the article.

18 April 2004 My first article on Weblogging has been published on The Register. I will be publishing a number of complementary articles in the near future. It concludes with a radical proposal for the future of Weblogging and online publishing.

13 April 2004 My critique of recent reports on broadband for Silicon.com has been published.

01 March 2004 My introduction to the special issue of the ACM publication interactions based on the work of the Development Consortium on Mass Communication at CHI2003 has been published.

10 February 2004 The Register has published my piece reporting on the realities of using WiFi in London, based on my itinerant activity during BT OpenZone’s recent Wireless Broadband week.

I have written ten white papers for BT Wholesale looking at specific aspects of SME business activity. They are available in its Marketing Resource Centre.

Proposed activities

Proposals

I have developed a proposal for a series of television programmes that would take examples of good design and investigate how they came about, looking at customer needs, social trends, business models, technology possibilities, and market adoption.

Articles seeking commission

The problem solving culture What happened to our problem identifying and solving culture? We should remind ourselves what we have achieved in all areas of society, and challenge the idea that people are a problem, a barrier to solutions, or unworthy of a better life.

What is an IT revolution? It is a truism to say that the talk about the Internet revolution was hype, but that when things really change those changes will be more profound than had been anticipated. I would like to reflect on the design and publishing industries, which truly have been transformed by digital tools and the Internet, to give people a sense of what real transformation looks like. (I worked as a consultant in this area from the mid-80s to the mid-90s.)

Anticipative design Digital and networked products often fail to offer much advantage over other ways of doing things. For instance it is quicker (and usually more convenient) to call directories or national rail enquiries than to use their respective Web services. Some digital and networked services will only come into their own when they can anticipate what you might want (based on context, activity, location, plans, or known preferences) and deliver information as you need it.