Published inUX Collective·May 3, 2020Member-onlyWhy remote work is the death of serendipityThoughts on the conversations and creativity that we’ve lost in going remote — All of a sudden, we’re all working from our living rooms and using remote tools and video calls to stay as connected as we can. The once-steady migration to working from home has suddenly leapt to 100% adoption. But in our collective loss of shared physical space, did we also…Spatial Interfaces9 min readSpatial Interfaces9 min read
Published inUX Collective·Jan 23, 2020Member-onlyWhy Google’s new search results design is a dark patternHumans are self-training machines, and in the context of the internet, we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the intrusive adverts which increasingly clutter our screens. If something looks vaguely like an advert, we don’t even make eye contact with it — a behaviour known as ‘banner blindness’. In the context of…Startup4 min readStartup4 min read
Published in20 startups project·Jun 4, 2019Member-onlyStartup #3: Bringing useful strangers togetherDone with leaving meeting people to random chance? 🎲 One of the main reasons coworking exists is to facilitate useful connection between people — each person sat in a coworking space is surrounded by dozens or more of potentially useful connections (and generally some pretty cool people). But how many potential opportunities are lost due to people not being…Coworking8 min readCoworking8 min read
Published in20 startups project·May 25, 2019Member-onlyStartup #2: Accountability and support for solo foundersWorking solo can be challenging. For one thing, there’s solo productivity and time management: When working on a project in-between existing commitments, it can be easy for things to drift and not get done as fast (or as efficiently) as they could otherwise. Why? Because they are battling for priority against other tasks, and there are no hard deadlines to provide adequate time pressure. …Startup6 min readStartup6 min read
Published in20 startups project·May 23, 2019Member-onlyStartup #1: Killing off sim swappingAfter a screeching landing on the tropical tarmac in Bali, I shuffled through the airport — and as I wanted to hit the ground running, I bought an Indonesian SIM card straight away. For the first few days, this was great — connection all over Bali is strong and surprisingly…Tech6 min readTech6 min read
Published in20 startups project·Mar 12, 2019Member-onlyWhy I’m building 20 startups in a yearTLDR: I’m going to attempt to build 20 startup experiments of varying sizes within the space of a year, with the aim of maximising exploration, learnings, and further pursuing one or more of the startups beyond the #20startups experiment. Yes, it sounds ridiculous (and maybe it is). This experiment is…Startup6 min readStartup6 min read
Published inUX Collective·Feb 3, 2017Member-onlyWhat we can learn from Alexa’s mistakesDesign challenges for conversational UIs — Conversation. The key to human-to-human interactions; a spectrum ranging from cavemen around a camp-fire, to lengthy political debates, through to awkward small talk with your dentist. Something that we've really got sussed - we quickly make decisions about whether someone is interesting, not paying attention to us, if we want…Design7 min readDesign7 min read
Published in5 Things I Learned…·Nov 17, 20165 Things I Learnt as a Designer at LEGOAt 5am on a cold, misty morning, my plane tumbled to a stop in a strange land where I didn’t speak a word of the language. …Design6 min readDesign6 min read
Jan 9, 2016Traditional business isn’t working for us. Here’s how we can change itThoughts from the Global Social Business Summit in Berlin — Where are we today? Recently, Beijing’s perennial pollution problem reached such a point that restrictions had to be put in place, closing schools and mandating that citizens could only drive on alternate days — the first time the city has had to issue a red alert. 99% of global wealth now sits in the…Social Enterprise5 min readSocial Enterprise5 min read
