This is the second article in a series I’m using to define my opinions on High-Performing Design Cultures. By defining the qualities that I believe a high performing design culture has, I hope to spark a constructive conversation about how enterprises engage designers and how we step up to do our best work. I’m also keen to encourage designers themselves to look up and out, at the influences affecting our craft.

I’m not sure how many articles there will be yet….but I’ll keep a log of previous articles at the bottom of every new one.

I stole the title from…

This is the first article in a series I’m using to define my opinions on High-Performing Design Cultures. By defining the qualities that I believe a high performing design culture has, I hope to spark a constructive conversation about how enterprises engage designers and how we step up to do our best work. I’m also keen to encourage designers themselves to look up and out, at the influences affecting our craft.

I’m not sure how many articles there will be yet….but I’ll keep a log of previous articles at the bottom of every new one.

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Designers have no choice but to get on the commercial train

I appreciate that within…

There. I said it. Not taking it back either. This post is part rant, part scene setting (if you are patient enough to see beyond the rant which I hope you are).

This post is inspired by the massive rise* I see in teams raving about and seeking the holy grail of answers in activities that are designed to make things move faster. I don’t see anything wrong in this pursuit, but I have a sense that some of it is hollow. I hear a huge amount of hope in the outcome. That many believe that by going faster things…

I’ve spoken to many many people about how hard it is to get into and understand the blockchain space. My own journey at Chainspace has been the steepest of my career to date. To ease the pain of getting your head around what the hell this space is all about, I’ve decided to share some of the links and resources that made my learning journey just a bit easier.

Disclaimer 1: This is not yet a comprehensive list of everything you ever need to know, it may never be. If you want something that claims to be that, check out…

I’ve been buried deep in the knowledge archives of blockchain land. It’s a dark place. There are dungeons full of white papers and peer-reviewed papers (how many of us know there is a difference?). Caverns are stacked high with sharding theories, paths have the odd pothole with proclamations of doom and failure and a couple of hippies are skipping through whilst chewing on magic pills containing stories of a post-capitalist world order.

Ok so my reality is not as whimsical or Tim Burton-esque. But it does have just as many weird and wonderful twists to keep me busy. You can…

A couple of weeks ago I started work at Chainspace. Chainspace is platform for decentralised services that allows other developers to build solutions on top. Think of it as a way of making it possible for any developer to use a blockchain. It’s one of a new cohort of infrastructure offerings, looking to normalise the use of blockchain in areas other than cryptocurrencies.

Having spent much of my career being technology agnostic and focused on the bigger picture as I saw it, its a wild departure for me to commit to working on essentially a single technology solution. …

TL:DR — You can watch me give a talk on this issue at NUX5 2016. You may also be interested in attending the talk I’ll be giving at Talk UX in Boston on the 18th October. Find out more on the Talk UX website.

‘Wicked problem’ is a phrase coined in 1973 by professors Horst W.J. Ritter and Melvin M. Webber. They were looking into issues around policy and the design of urban spaces. They used the phrase to describe the types of problems that plague humanity, problems that are so persistent, so difficult and so changeable that they are…

We can all picture her, the famed tiger mom. Encouraging her child to be the best, then setting a gruelling timetable of endless practice and application to guarantee the outcome. It may come from love, but is ultimately as much about the ego of the mum as it is about the capabilities of the child.

I’ve been a digital practitioner for pretty much my entire career. I wouldn’t know how to be passionate about anything else. I wouldn’t know how to stop applying my knowledge to all aspects of my life. I buy all the gadgets, I download all the…