A framework for designing storytelling experiences Narrative Architecture Stories are systems of knowledge organisation. Storytelling is the revelation of connected information over time. Designing the order in which knowledge is revealed, how it is revealed, and to whom, is crucial in any storytelling or narrative experience. The state of play, who knows…

A sequel to this time last year. The picture above doesn’t really tell the whole story. Work After what amounted to a rather hectic (and, admittedly, slightly stressful) end of 2017 work-wise, 2018 was much more kind to me. A new team, a stable thing to work on. Very much the…

Context is royalty, or so they say, in our online environments. It’s often seen as crucial to the success of new (especially digital) products and services. Design a product to adapt to different contexts, they say, you’ll delight your users, and become indispensable. Contextual Design There’s a whole sub-discipline of design, known…

2017 is a year that, personally speaking, I suspect I’ll look back on fondly. Inspired by Alyson, here’s my 2017 ‘year notes’. Work When I left the BBC and joined Springer Nature in September 2016, I did so with the aim of getting more experience in product management. I’ve made no…

tl, dr: The Digital Research Assistant helped you keep a track of primary paper research from across the Web. If it had a DOI, we kept a note of it, so you could find it again later. It was available as a Chrome plugin. As of 2021, the service was…

or at least some way of discussing and building upon this… Some basic propositions There are proven, accepted facts, which should not be called into unreasonable question, until the weight of legitimate evidence proves otherwise. Nothing should be set in stone, we should accept that our understanding evolves and changes as new evidence…

Context: The folk at Unthinkable Digital asked me to write something about the dream & creative potential of linked open data and the Web, as I saw it, and what the barriers to it have been. The following is what resulted. Although I don’t go into the practicalities of it…

Imagine if the goal in politics wasn’t to ‘win’ an election, or to ‘beat’ your rivals, or to ‘prove’ that your side is correct and the other side is evil. Imagine if the leaders of the main political parties agreed that, despite their inevitable differences of opinion, working together for…

A bit of context: Back in May last year, I met up with Donna Lichaw, who invited me to contribute a short ‘side-bar’ to her upcoming book, ‘The User’s Journey”. In the end, none of the side-bars by guest authors were used, but seeing as the book is about to…