This is a picture taken in Manchester Central Library.

There’s an increasingly amount of touch screen interfaces appearing in physical spaces which doesn’t feel very digital to me. The question is how hard are we thinking about these spaces being transformed through digital?

The choice to add new physical objects into already crowded public spaces feels risky and even a little lazy. It doesn’t feel of the internet.

How many organisations simply invest in designing user interfaces and installing self service kiosks as their response to digital?

If you take the example of a libraries, we need to ask the question of how the information they hold can extend beyond fixed physical spaces, rather than how to best condense this information so it can be accessed, or managed, through a screen in a fixed space?

Digital should be an opportunity to open up our public spaces. But all to often this ends with the digitisation of familiar expectations — a screen or display where a person once stood, or a scanning system where the librarian used to stamp and collect books.

Introducing digital as physical objects is a design choice.

Way finding in public spaces like libraries could also be much more interactive in the future. Traditional concepts of how we access, ‘borrow’, or share information can, and should be re-imagined.

Technology is an opportunity and a set of tools that should enable this to happen. The greatest opportunity I think this represents is to open up public spaces and information to those that can’t physically access them at all.

The question: How can we open up our public resources, data, and physical spaces in more meaningful and useful ways using technology?

Digital as physical objects was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re already seeing this play out with startups like Purple Bricks and HouseSimple establishing themselves.

There’s a lack of digital innovation from traditional estate agents. They’ve already lost, but they haven’t realised yet.

I was asked to judge a digital awards event last year, and had to look at a number of high end estate agent entries (mostly from the South East of England). The only ‘digital innovation’ on show was slicker websites and large screens in traditional shop fronts.

You can see the investment in both these ‘shop fronts’ for the industry, but this is not responding to the increasingly digital business models being adopted by new competitors and other companies that we might describe as being of the internet.

Introducing digital screens in physical spaces simple won’t cut it. This isn’t digital, it’s digital paper over the cracks of old business models.

The winners in this sector are likely to be those who adopt completely new business models rather than just websites, with affordability and cheaper services (through greater automation of activities and capabilities) key to beating the established market leaders.

Being of the internet is increasingly about moving your business models away from fixed physical assets and costs. This should be an opportunity to create value in new ways, or share more of the value you help create with other people and organisations.

This must be a difficult conundrum if you’re primarily in the business of selling physical spaces as investments. And this has been the business model for the most “successful” estate agents of recent times (think last 10–20 years and the UK housing boom).

In order to reinvent the housing sector you need to be able to understand digital through a different lens. Any focus on user needs for housing will have to reject many of the values of the existing commercial sector attached to it.

Everyone needs a place to live.

Helping people find, buy and sell homes. Somewhere to live, love, and belong to a community, might be a great match for a connection-driven design approach.

Estate agents. An example of a broken digital business model? was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While thinking about this over the past few months, this article was particularly uncomfortable reading: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression.

My thoughts.

Attention-driven design is a choice.

Technology is a tool we can use when designing and shaping the type of the society we want to live in. This doesn’t mean we have to accept the increasing rise and link between mental health problems and technology.

I’m still optimistic about the potential of the internet and how we can use technology for good. The challenge here is not about restricting technology from a generation of young people, its about redistributing its impact and opportunities.

Technology can be part of our lives in a meaningful way that doesn’t include creating dangerous social media addictions and smart phone dependencies. But we have to design the alternative.

Is digital destroying a generation? was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I‘d been inspired to think about this more recently after watching a TED talk by Tristan Harris: The manipulative tricks tech companies use to keep your attention.

Designing for attention is marketing, supporting a business model built on advertising. I’m going to call this ‘attention-driven’ design.

In many ways companies like Twitter and Facebook have adopted very traditional advertising models to monetise their products and the relationships people have with their platforms.

The alternative here is ‘connection-driven’ design.

There’s a choice in the design decisions we make. From how we help people navigate their timelines, to choosing to present content in a way that is more likely to deliver positive outcomes–meaningful social connections irrespective of screen time.

Connection-driven design feels like an opportunity to respond and design in a way that helps us meet user needs. The Facebook example Tristan talks about in the TED talk is very much about choosing to respond differently to emotional needs.*

How you respond with your design decisions is a choice.

*Earlier this year I wrote about the difference between emotional and practical user needs here: Understanding different types of user needs when designing services.

Attention-driven design versus connection-driven design was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There’s not enough experimentation in the news industry, especially within traditional news formats.

In the UK the i Newspaper as a format is interesting, as is the freemium business model introduced by established regional papers like the London Evening Standard and the Manchester Evening News (i.e. these are now largely free newspapers that you don’t have to pay for). We also have various subscription services, like the Times and the Sunday Times digital editions that exist behind a paywall.

When the i Newspaper (launched in 2010) was first published in the UK it felt like it was of the internet. The news summaries (matrices) at the front of each edition are much more like a newsfeed–think Facebook or the orignal 140 character limit of Twitter. As a business proposition it offers a quick summary of important or ‘headline’ content — just like we’ve come to expect with digital formats, acting like a ‘homepage’ for the news of the day in a printed edtion.

The 24 hours news cycle, always on, always rolling, is also very much a reflection of internet culture. The unlimited news feed of the internet has become ‘the news’.

The question is whether these business models and associated formats will still meet people’s expectations in the next 5–10 years? There’s also the question of how sustainable these business models are, and whether they can make enough money to still be viable.

The relationship we have with news content is changing rapidly. This year (2017) has shown us more than ever that we need effective filters for what is real news and what is fake news. This might be something that we’re willing to pay for, but it’s potentially very dangerous if we design a world where only those that can afford to pay can avoid fake news.

It seems that most physical and traditional media outlets for news and content have, at least in part, reflected internet culture and expectations up until now.

In order to meet expectations people will have in the future, we will need to design the next set of alternatives to these now established digital formats and business models.

*It’s interesting to see what publishing platforms like Medium are doing with paid subscriptions (memberships) but I expect other alternative business models to emerge .

Reading the news and digital business models was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The potential of digital is for your environment to be one step ahead of your experience.

In our virtual environments and interactions we expect a high level of control over how our individual preferences are handled relative to the situation or the context we’re dealing with.

I don’t think we’ve yet seen this translated to most of our physical spaces and interactions.

When I walk into my local coffee shop, I still have to queue behind a counter and wait to be served. But what if using the device in my pocket, and recognising the patterns of my behaviour (ie. I’m always in this coffee shop at 9:30am on a Thursday), there didn’t have to be a counter or a queue? I could just walk in and sit down. Coffee shops would become more like your living room.

What if the train I’m on knew I had a valid ticket (after all, it’s an app on my phone already)? This way I don’t need to be disturbed 2 or 3 times on the journey to have my ticket checked.

Until very recently, few physical spaces have interacted directly with our digital lives. This is starting to change with connected devices and voice activated devices in our homes, but this is still more unusual in the public spaces we spend time in, or when we visit private spaces like retail.

Preferences in a physical space

What if you could control your physical environment with a device like your smartphone? This is already possible. We have apps to control lighting and connected devices in our homes, but how might this extend to other physical spaces and experiences?

What if you could walk into any space with an invisible ‘do not disturb’ sign?

I like the idea that you could set a preference on your phone (do not disturb) that people then observe or respect in a physical space. This would work in shops if you didn’t want to be approached by a shop assistant or offered ‘help’ — I always feel like I’m being sold to in these situations and it can feel uncomfortable.

My increasing expectation is that the types of settings I have in my virtual life (ie. the level of control I have over my apps or phone settings) should be applicable to something I can expect in physical spaces and interactions.

To extend this example, someone alone in a bar or restaurant might want to avoid unwanted attention. The bar staff could monitor individual statuses and intervene if required. This use of personal preferences in physical spaces could also work the other way. It could be a way of starting new interactions with people, or even, letting those around you know that you’re lonely or simply need someone to talk to.

I’m very interested in how a set of digital preferences and your previous interactions through a website, or internet-enabled device, might help to shape the experience you then have in a physical space as part of the same service. This is especially relevant for local government services, when someone mostly transacting with services online also needs some level of individual or face to face support — the sort of extension of a service that might be delivered in a physical space in a local community.

There’s a genuine challenge here for all organisations to be consistent with how they address people’s individual needs across all types of interactions within a wider service–whether it’s face to face support, or through an interface on a screen.

In areas of public service delivery like welfare this could be a genuine opportunity to treat people with the respect they deserve by applying greater attention to how people want to be treated and how they’re feeling. If respect and dignity are the default settings across all interactions, how else can you give people back a semblance of control in their lives?

Preferences across platforms

All of these types of interactions would need to be built on open, rather than closed, platforms. The thought of having to use Facebook to control my physical environment is a scary prospect. The danger here is powerful retailers and large internet businesses building ‘closed’ spaces — you can imagine this happening in retail quite easily or having to download an app for every single ‘store experience’ — no one wants that.

The potential of digital expectations applied to physical spaces is to give people control of their immediate environment and experience, to do so seamlessly and without interruption. Taking the opportunity to stay one step ahead of how people want to be supported, respected and treated.

Digital expectations of physical spaces was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I first wrote about things of the internet it was a deliberate inversion of the Internet of Things.

For the uninitiated, the Internet of Things is the connection of everyday physical objects through the internet (and local networks), enabling them to send and receive data.

The internet of things are are just that, things. Connected objects. They offer some value as connected objects but, most importantly, they offer unlimited potential as tools connected to a network — both locally (for example, in a household) or globally (as part of extended communities and global networks).

In the work that I’ve been doing recently with FutureGov I’ve updated my original list of things of the internet to include ‘connected’.

This is more than just connected things, it’s about connected people. By connected we mean that internet era services connect people, data, and experiences.

I think this is important and recognises the Internet of Things, but, as a set of values, things of the internet is more about the potential of connection.

Experiences should become increasingly connected as the result of services built around internet connectivity, but there’s a much bigger picture and opportunity. With many people, especially older people, in society feeling increasingly lonely and isolated, services enabled by the internet can help build social cohesion and create social value.

The ability to reimagine our future products and services means thinking beyond our ability to sell internet connected fridges, or wifi enabled lightbulbs.

Here’s an example of why this matters: How Tower Hamlets council is tackling loneliness. The question is whether digital services and technology can start to support existing efforts to tackle loneliness in our local communities?

This blog post is also published on my website.

Connected: things of the internet versus the Internet of Things (IoT) was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Design in a digital world is, at least in part, a story of dealing with no alternative.

In government, I see no alternative all the time. From a lack of money/funding, skills, leadership, or simply political will power. These are all situations where there is no choice but to radically rethink what’s happening around us.

Finding yourself with no alternative, or no choice, can be turned into an opportunity. A story where there’s no more room for small incremental change, or iterations of old ideas and policy.

The no choice narrative

The digital age demands design where there are no alternatives. It demands bold reinvention. This is when your organisation, service, or product can’t afford not to change.

If you’re digital by design, make or break is a good place to start.

The only option is to rethink everything. How you work, what you do, and why? Digital is a way to respond to these challenges.

This blog post is also published on my website.

Designing without an alternative was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re following my posts over the last few days you’ll appreciate how important I think digital is as a lens for how we see and respond to the modern world.

That society will be digital. We can’t lose sight of what this means with the increasing impact of technology in our lives.

Asking the right questions

Digital is something in the lexicon of the government machine that helps at least a small group of radical thinkers consider the alternatives to the policy we have and the type of society that we want to be part of.

Even when big government fails with big policy, these people are still there shaping the behaviours and cultures of a future public sector.

Don’t underestimate the impact of the many designers now working in government and the public sector (#govdesign).

The importance of design in government is those people prepared to ask the right questions.

Digital by design:

Technology is what could be done. Design is what should be done
 — Louise Downe (Head of Design, GDS/UK Government)

This is our response to technology, reflecting our values and intentions. All of which results in the products, services and organisations we spend our lives shaping.

Are you asking the right questions?

Read part 4: Designing without an alternative.
This blog post is also published on my website. The quote from Louise included here was from a DWP Digital event held on August 17th 2017 [1].

Digital by design was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back when I was a design student I discovered David Carson’s book The End of Print.

This book inspired a long term obsession with good design and the necessity of breaking rules.

Digital as a conversation

In reality, Carson’s book started a new conversation rather than marking the end of print as an idea or medium. It became a moment where creativity in graphic design increased, changing perceptions and inspiring a new generation of designers.

I feel the same way about ‘digital’.

The voices arguing for the end of digital (see my previous blog post) remind me that conversation is a catalyst.

In ‘digital’, we have the tools we need to design 21st century services, but still need to question our values along with the scale of our creativity and ambition.

There needs to be a bigger conversation about the impact of technology in our lives, and that conversation will happen with technology as part of our lives. This is just the start of the ‘digital’ conversation.

Carson did this with print. We’re now waiting for the same to happen with digital. A moment that demands a different type of response from new generation of designers.

The world is digital and our response to it needs to be the same.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

Read part 3: Digital by design
This blog post is also published on my website.

The end of digital? was originally published in OF THE INTERNET on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.