I ran workshops on Dissent in 2020 and one outcome was a better understanding of what Good Dissent might be like. Lately, I have summarised some of those ideas on a badge.

The two ideas are:

• Sceptical generalist
• Persistent specialist

What that means is that Good Dissent comes from breaking the apparent unanimity of the group. People assume everyone agrees what has been shared and it’s easy for groups to stop thinking critically or seeking out new information.

What the two phrases try to communicate are the need to keep asking questions (not to convince others that they are wrong but to ensure they remain critical of ideas being discussed) and the need to keep speaking truthfully from your knowledge and experiences. …

WEIRD

When talking about #PostNormal, it’s important to talk about the concept of #WEIRD – White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. The idea that research is historically biased to a very specific group of people.

However, even WEIRD is itself is biased and does not completely describe the active nature of the bias to Normal.

I AM WEIRD is a longer version to try and take in those biases and missing elements.

AM

I have been reading a few books on time and research shows how little is truly available for what companies recognise as ‘real’ work.

Connie Gersick’s work on inertia and midpoints shows teams do not engage meaningfully with work until half way thru whatever the defined project timeline is. So in a 6 Month project, most work occurs post the 3M point (x axis in image).

Daniel Pink’s book When (which includes Gersick’s research) talks about Chronotypes and the idea of a fairly standard Peak, Slump, Recovery sense of individual capacity. Mornings work for most people for analytical work but performance slumps by 20% or more in afternoon. …

This is a post to just set out some ideas of problems in Codesign and Service Design with communities and change in a world of fake news, populism and authoritarianism.

More particularly it is a post about the problems of friendship. Friendship that bridges between families to enable civic society yet also which can ensure civil war. Friendship that is enabled by social media and yet poisoned by it.

Friendship

The power of friendship is great. It creates positive change in neighbourhoods and communities that go beyond simple family or clan connection.

People will build and will fight with their friends. They will keep doing this way beyond what they would do for money or ideology. …

Just a short post about 3 professional biases in user research that prevent making accessible or inclusive products and services. These are some basic ideas of the normal, on what it is to be human, and how such definitions of being human exclude so many people.

I am not saying do not use them. I am saying be aware of how you use them and involve people with different ideas and viewpoints on them. Normal is a comforting place to view problems from but it is not the right place.

Perception

There is an old conservative trick to stop radical change happening. Politicians and journalists talk as tho such a change has happened and then condemn its clear failure.

I have read slightly too many tweets and read too many articles lately talking of the failure of human centred design. Mostly they are written by people who are not conservative but have been captured by this old narrative trick.

This is a quick post just to clearly state that human centred design has not failed because we have not really even started with it yet. …

I’m currently working on a talk and a workshop on the topic of Hope for EuroIA in September. Obviously, it is being held as an online conference. This means I have two constraints, particularly for the design of a workshop. Firstly, I must explain and engage people with ideas of Hope – an enormously broad concept. Secondly, I must enable people to participate in activities while sitting at work or at home with only a few materials to hand.

This post is about the current prototype of both the ideas to be communicated and the method for involving people.

Vast, small and big

Getting lost is stressful. It becomes harder and harder to make good decisions. Many people who get lost and die in physical spaces, like forests, are often found near to systems of paths but, from a personal perspective, nowhere near safety. Providing advice on how to not get lost is not just about providing better signage and maps, it is about providing ways for individuals to survive when faced by both personal and systemic behavioural biases.

Stop

Both physical and digital architectures and experience design are currently biased towards a systemic ideal of frictionless journeys.

Ensuring that people move quickly thru spaces and get to the ending that satisfies the provider, but not necessarily the consumer, is important to both UX and Service Design. Rapid movement thru the system is a key metric for success. Many people, moving quickly thru many touch points to a delimited number of successful transactions. Both buildings and websites are designed on this frictionless theory. …