There are things about this type of criticism that makes me cringe. Things about this, that makes me feel like I’m not included in the city experience in the same way as my more testosterone-driven peers and that the entire point made in this article was obstructed by one simple statement:
“The next day I received an email from my, far more organised, girlfriend”.
Seems to me people help people go through stuff, life and things. Technology and infrastructures are not the only tool we have and social interactions count more in my opinion. When technology fails, you’ll still have to ask for directions whether you like it or not :) and whether you think your laptop is user-friendly or not is absolutely not related to your gender.
I had the great honour of speaking this Saturday at what I can only describe as a great British institution and cocked up massively trying to talk 300 people into making an origami box. Failure is a good thing, it’s something you can learn from, it makes you humble and since it was only the top of the iceberg of what I wanted to talk about, I thought I’d do it here and apologise for screwing up in a totally public way.
First things first, the theme was paper and since I’d done a 15 minute session at Papercamp last Feb, Russell thought it was a good idea to invite me back. I’m sure he regrets it now. This is what I would have talked about if given a second chance (these thoughts were enhanced from speaking with the lovely Georgina Voss):
- Paper as a tool for 2D to 3D thinking in design and creativity.
Instead of all of that, i decided to pick from what I thought was the simplest origami I’d seen (after staring at books my friends lent me for months). It turns out you learn so much about language, signs, importance of steps and procedural thinking in origami, that taking 300 people cold turkey through about 20 different steps in 10 minutes was a rather bad idea. I enjoyed trying though and I hope people won’t be too cross with me. I was tired of giving talks and at the time, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, until half way through when only 10 people were still tagging along…oh well. Next time.
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About
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is a product & interaction designer and entrepreneur. She has been designing products for the "Internet of things" and been blogging about it since 2005.
