designswarm thoughts

This sounds like a great way to answer

As I struggle to keep my head away from tinkering for more than 15 minutes, I’ve realised a few things so far:

- there is a fine balance to be struck between saying yes and saying no

- people are, in general, quite unforgiving of any mistakes, even if you’re starting out

- money is always an issue

- hiring is difficult

- you have to be able to give up control if you want to go forward, but give up too much and all hell breaks loose

- be sure to know what you’re good at and what you’re not

- I only end up doing things I “trained for” 10% of my time, means I have to learn the other 90% on the fly

So I feel I’ve neglected this site long enough, I really should update people about why on earth I’m hardly in touch with the world. January is always a good month for announcements anyway right?

Firstly I am now CEO (or chief slave driver as I prefer to call it) of a small technology and design startup called Tinker.it. My partner in this being non other than my former IDII professor Massimo Banzi. So that’s taking, oh about 90% of my time now.

I’ve also been spending the last few months doing a bit of work for Blyk the free mobile network for young people funded by advertising. Often referred in my twitters as Finland2.0, it’s been really interesting as I’ve been running workshops with their target audience. Call it a user-based Applied Dreams if you will.

Then, well I’ve been working on a little project of mine with some great friends. More soon I hope. Let’s just say my dreams of getting something weby done are finally coming true.

And to top things off, Karola and I will hopefully be selling Topoware china to the world in a few months. I’ve been having fun dealing with real manufacturing constraints and old world communications with this one.

So there, it’s not that I don’t love you all, it’s just that I’m trying to die young :P

I shall try to have more free time to finish books, knitting, personal projects.
I shall attempt to get back into shape by taking a much lusted after flamenco class.
I shall attempt to make new friends in London, the kind that likes to have coffee and a rant once in a while (seems difficult here)
I shall attempt to travel more with Matt rather than waving goodbye or vice versa.
I shall try to not be the only working during the holidays next Christmas.

Happy New Year all!

I’ve been working a lot and I admit, more than is probably required by your average human. I barely keep on top of email, check the odd flickr photo, haven’t opened my RSS reader in weeks, haven’t done my Xmas shopping and barely managed to squeeze in a haircut after 2 months without one.

I think I need a new generation of portable technology that let’s me keep up with the world when I’m on the go (what do you mean cell phones already do that?).

Give me till saturday and I’ll be back on track I promise!

I’m about to go into hypertravel again but this time it’s a little different. Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent in Milan working with Massimo and greeting our second intern. Then I’m back in London for an evening before embarking on the spanking new Eurostar to Bruxelles (2hours 20 minutes…woah)

The event I was supposed to attend unfortunately got canceled so I will actually be somewhere I haven’t spent any time in, with the people I know being out of town… is that what real tourists do? I doubt it, they usually plan this ahead, it isn’t accidental.

So I’m left with an open day that I can fill up in whatever way I please, so if anyone has suggestions, do ping me! I’m thinking “moules frites”, having a look at cartoons and books, and walking around flickring, buying chocolate…

I’ve been heavily involved working with Blyk and tinker.it lately, so I could do with a day off in an unknown city.

On Friday, I’ll be having lunch with the nice people at 31 Volts in Utrecht… which reminds me I have to write something for their blog… argh.

An article on my work of the past few years was published in Surface magazine’s 10th annual Avant Guardian edition, page 132.

And for some reason, they thought i should go shoe-less…:P

It makes me chuckle to eavesdrop on people who have pre-conceived ideas of what it’s like to freelance.

“Oh I don’t want a 9-5 job” they say. Yes that’s true, if you freelance you will be working ALL THE TIME if you’re not careful. Most of your time will be spent looking for those “next steps” and your evenings and weekends will be taken over by client work that needs to be done.

Yes you’ll be better paid, but less often and usually not on time.

Regardless of these factors, as I write this post at the end of a shattering day, knowing that the rest of the week will probably kill me as well, I still like being a freelancer. But it’s definitely not for everyone.

Some great progress lately on the Good Night Lamp, go check out the new site with some more details and new fab images.

A reason for the update: yours truly might appear in the Annual design review of Surface magazine this fall. Yes, old media! I’m excited nonetheless.

Must be the weather. I’ve changed the blurb on my website for the first time since I started freelancing.

Before:

This is the online portfolio of Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, freelance interaction designer. I am interested in the way service design ties product design and interaction design together to create meaningful experiences for people both in the virtual and tangible worlds.

After:

This is the online portfolio of Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, industrial and interaction designer. She designs technology-enabled and socially-aware creative solutions to problems. From product design, service-based experiences, mobile-based interactions as well as play experiences, what binds her work is a holistic approach to problems, a keen interest in the user and collaborations with partners and clients from around the world. She now freelances in London, UK.

I like it, what do you think?

Update: ok here’s the final version in light of comments :)
This is the online portfolio of Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, industrial and interaction designer. She designs technology-enabled and socially-aware creative solutions to problems. She takes a holistic approach to problems, a keen interest in the user and collaborates with partners and clients from around the world. She now freelances in London, UK.

I think this is what Il link to when people ask me what i do.

So I got a “No thanks” from the Come out and Play competition in response to my submission. Am I disappointed? Sure, but in a way, at least I got to think about an area I had only vaguely worked on till then: locative games (ill post my game soon promise!).

This is where my ability to work under tight deadlines and with people I like comes in. I know that if I only relied on myself to get a personal project done, it wouldn’t go anywhere… so I submit work for competitions (lately Dave and I worked on a stationary idea for Muji and I just submitted an idea for an interactive display for the town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana for Moment Factory) and for clients.

In times where client work is slow, these competitions force me to keep going, to re-invent what it is that I do, keep me problem-solving for different contexts. The great thing about competitions is that you don’t need to submit your resume to apply, you can decide to work on an architectural competition if you fancy, noone would be there to tell you you can’t coz you’re “just a designer”. Of course it’s not a perfectly honest game to play and, as Matt points out, a good way for companies to get free ideas, but I know at least it’ll never be my last one :)

Unbelievable but true, I have now settled in London permanently. After an exciting month catching up with the Montreal crowd and working on “Looking for Design” I have come to appreciate immensely coming back to the cut-throat beat of this city. Montreal shares the same mellow beat as Amsterdam but for this girl, it simply won’t do. I’m too much of a procrastinator already :)

So now I have to figure out how to live in the greatest and most expensive city in the world while keeping myself sane with insane amounts of projects and work…hmm promising set of constraints.

So if you’re looking for a freelance interaction/smart-products/blogger/web2.0/strategic/ohmygawdshessohollistic/ designer, what a coincidence, i’m looking for work! :P

You can always contact me at alex care of designswarm and if you’re not interested, well forward it to someone who might! we all have friends ;)

(yes i’m authorised to work in the UK)

While I look for new opportunities, i’m keeping myself busy by being digital webmistress and agent to Karola Torkos (im diving into Drupal for this one at the moment, ouch), organising a super hardware hacking weekend for Tinker.it , trying to find a way to do a small production of Topoware and juggling with a mobile application idea i had a few months ago that could run well as an add-on to Dopplr users.

Not enough hours in the day.

I’ll be speaking tonight at Montreal’s very own Pecha Kucha about my Good Night Lamp project, how it came about, where it’s at now, and why on earth it’s still not out there!

Update: Here are the slides from that night’s presentation. Enjoy!

I had the pleasure of meeting very briefly Boris Anthony at Xtech in Paris. He’s an interaction designer working and living in Montreal and these days is organising the local edition of Pecha Kucha. I think he feels, like me that there must be more to design that what we are made to believe or to see.

I hope I get a chance to speak to him more about this soon. In anycase I’ll be there, presenting the Good Night Lamp project which is slowly but surely, being put together. Hope to see you there!