designswarm thoughts

A little self-indulgent but was quite cathartic, so there (all my notes are there, just click through to Slideshare).

So yeh, you might have read, Tinker closed. Unlike people who leave large corporate jobs and write a final farewell blogpost, I’m at loss for what would be appropriate to say here seeing as I co-founded the thing. I like What Jeff Bezos said:

” I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.”

It’s been an incredible adventure, in ways I can only start to process. Maybe there’s a little book there. Maybe not. But for now, i’m back to freelancing, which is strange and enjoyable too, a plan at a human scale.

Spread the word!

4 year old tradition.

1.What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Missed a flight.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Really didn’t as far as I can remember. I have a lot on next year’s list as a result.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, my friends A and S had a little girl R who is totally wonderful.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
26 trips, too many to name.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
More freedom.

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory?
November 7th.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Having the courage to take a big decision that will change my life forever.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not making that decision earlier.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes to both.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Golden shoes for my friend’s wedding.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Nobel Peace Prize jury.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Julian Assange’s. Good intentions on paper, strange egotistic execution.

14. Where did most of your money go?
My business.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Working with great people on exciting projects!

16. What song/album will always remind you of 2010?
“I’ll try anything once” by The Strokes.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
More positive.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sports

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Travelling

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Home.

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
Brock

22. Did you fall in love in 2010?
Yes

23. What was your favourite TV programme?
The Wire (late to the party, I know)

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No

26. What was the best book(s) you read?
Everything Julain Barnes wrote.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The soundtrack to I Am Love

28. What did you want and get?
A sidekick.

29. What did you want and not get?
More time for my own work

30. What were your favourite films of this year?
Somewhere, I am Love, Inception, A Single Man, The September Issue.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 30 and spent it with friends in London

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More time to read books

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
1920s

34. What kept you sane?
Hanging out with C, C and K.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
The entire cast of Inception.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The Wikileaks scandal, fascinating.

37. Who did you miss?
Friends across the world, C more than most.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
C & N

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
Pick yourself up, Dust yourself off and start all over again.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?

“There is a time when we all fail,
some people take it pretty well,
some take it all out on themselves,
some they just take it out on friends,
oh everybody plays the game,
and if you don’t you’re called insane,”

1. Used (as –30–) to indicate the end of a newspaper (or broadcast) story, a copy editor’s typographical notation.

2. The duration in years of the Thirty Years’ War – 1618 to 1648.

3. 30 is the sum of the first four squares, which makes it a square pyramidal number.

4. The number of tracks on The Beatles’ eponymous album, usually known as The White Album

5. Slang for pornography due to its representation as Roman numeral XXX.[2]

6. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Matthew 26:15.

7. The house number of 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin)

8. The total number of major and minor keys in Western tonal music, including enharmonic equivalents

9. One of the rallying-cries of the 1960s student/youth protest movement was the slogan, ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’.

10. A stage in young adulthood

I went to Slovenia last year and it was beautiful. As with all fo.am events we ate a lot and drank a lot and during the last meal, enjoyed a long wine-tasting evening. The maitre de cérémonie had made a map which I have turned into a digital thing. It seems Slovenian wines are a little hard to find in the UK, so might not be super useful, but there. There’s a place for it now. All these wines were superb by the way.

View Les carnets d’Alexandra: Northern Slovenian wines in a larger map

In the little insular community that is the building I work in, you acquire habits. Surrounded by talented peers, constantly admiring others and wanting to do work that is as good, as challenging, as great, your expectations of others start to change. I’ve found myself asking “so what do you do” instead of “how do you do” much more often and becoming more and more critical of my time and how I spend it, both as a manager and as a designer.

It’s easier to just spend your days consuming: email, other people’s music, other people’s links, thoughts, etc without ever creating yourself. The head space necessary to create, to design, to act in the world is, if you let it, much smaller than it was before. Made me nervous all of a sudden. An informational backlash if you will.

You are defined by what you make, and you define yourself by the act of making. Lack of definition is just a by-product of not spending enough time contributing to those infamous 10K hours. So here’s to more making.

Wrote this as an exercise for JC back in Ivrea. Re-read it today and didn’t dissagree with it as much as I thought I would. Strange how we set a path for ourselves and naturally try to follow it. I was young enough I suppose to be able to see beyond myself. In the day to day these days, it’s hard to take that step back.

“A person who creates ideas worthy of note is a person who has learned much from others.”-Konosuke Matsushita

With this statement in a way I seal my faith and set a path. Choose among my many interests and direct my attention. It’s a very hard exercise and I get the feeling I might be inclined to rewrite this every couple of years but I feel I musn’t.

I should have the strength to make this decision. To put forth all my thoughts on myself, my work, my professions, my faith and write it out loud. I still fear as I digest this task, that I do not know, nor do I possess the tools to make such a bold move, but looking back, I’ve been braver. This statement should reflect what I feel of the former suit I wore that is that of industrial designer as well as the new one that doesn’t quite fit right now of interaction designer.

I should be able to tell you of my hope of a society where the industrial designer no longer has the right to produce unconsciously anything that is asked of him. Where responsible design is compulsory and services guide manufacturing and not the other way around.

I should be able to tell you of my fears that this will not happen in my lifetime, that people and societies are stupid, greedy and forgetful, that what has been, will be again and that I feel small in front of that fact but my heart tells me I must be part of the solution and not the problem.

I should be able to recall all the times I was inspired, loved and hated things around me, objects, technology, experiences, people and use that to my advantage.

I should be able to talk to you of my wonder in front of so many things that I still need to learn, all along this road of my life, so many books to read, people to meet and conversations to be had.

I should be able to tell you I only work emotionally, when a project plays with my emotions, that I see beauty I wish to communicate to others or horror which I want to point out.

I should be able to tell you of my love of poetry in a temporary installation, the beauty of something that transcends its physical nature, when an object is more than its shell, that the idea shines through.

I should be able to let you see the possibilities to express that poetry which I seek in technology around me and scarcely find. I wish I could see myself working to better some things, not all, that I know I cannot achieve sadly.

I would tell you of my absolute love of the expression “delicious experience” and my loath of the word “user”. I am not a user, I do not use, I enjoy or detest, I am emotions and intellect, not use.

I should be able to hope that interaction design is not just a screen, hiding the truth, faking experiences for people who have forgotten to appreciate hard work or a sunset. Enhancing is beautiful, faking is a crime.

I should be able to concentrate on this light at the end of the tunnel that are these 2 years in a small Italian village away from reality.

I should be able to see the beauty in befriending and working with 20 other unique, funny, sarcastic, egostistic, ambitious, depressed and talented people who one after the other have made me change a little more everyday as a designer, a student and a person.

I should be able to tell you that I think anything worthy of mention is a combination of different points of view and has a natural richness because of this.

I should be able to say and do these things but I fear, and maybe I should just be silent, take a deep breath and listen for the sound of a future I can’t quite fathom.

It’s always scary and entertaining when a concept that comes from programming techniques kindof made me think of the way I run my company.

Instead, most of a program’s overall functionality is coded into a single “all-knowing” object, which maintains most of the information about the entire program and provides most of the methods for manipulating this data. Because this object holds so much data and requires so many methods, its role in the program becomes God-like (all-encompassing). Instead of program objects communicating amongst themselves directly, the other objects within the program rely on the God object for most of their information and interaction. Since the God object is referenced by so much of the other code, maintenance becomes more difficult than it otherwise would in a more evenly divided programming design. [...] While creating a God object is typically considered bad programming practice, this technique is occasionally used for tight programming environments (such as microcontrollers), where the slight performance increase and centralization of control is more important than maintainability and programming elegance.

A bit of a tradition started 3 years ago by a canadian friend. I think it’s as good a way as any to recap.

1.What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Missed a flight.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Really didn’t as far as I can remember. I have a lot on next year’s list as a result.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, plenty. More significantly Caroline my best friend in Canada.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
France, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Perspective

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory?
Easter Friday

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Keeping my company going through a recession.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Totally putting the essentials of my life aside to make 8. happen.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Japanese school-girl bag.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Obama for making me not want to puke anymore when i go to the US.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Amy Whinehouse

14. Where did most of your money go?
My business.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Working with great people on exciting projects!

16. What song/album will always remind you of 2009?
Mrs Cold by Kings of Convenience

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
Much more tired.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sports

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Travelling

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent it with some friends.

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
Brock who works with me

22. Did you fall in love in 2009?
No

23. What was your favourite TV programme?
FireFly and Mad Men

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No

26. What was the best book(s) you read?
Makers by Cory Doctorow
Book of Dave by Will Self

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Wild Beasts

28. What did you want and get?
To move somewhere with a garden

29. What did you want and not get?
Peace of mind

30. What were your favourite films of this year?
Up

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 29 and spent it with friends in London

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More money

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Back to black

34. What kept you sane?
My friends and family and horrible 80s pop classics

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Toni Servillo & James McAvoy

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
American elections

37. Who did you miss?
Friends across the world, Caroline more than most.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Ben

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
You can only really choose one between fame and fortune. They rarely come together.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?

Every shooting stars in one night
The water and sand in our eyesight
The rocks in our hands preparing for flight
The lack of sleeping but it’s alright

If you fancy at all, do link to your own list!

So after 5 months of vacation I’ve decided to take up tweeting on my private account again. But this will be different…

- I’ve removed anyone who is too closely associated with work
- I’ve removed anyone who I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing a drunken conversation with

and basically kept anyone who I know wouldn’t mind me being me. I realised that my online presence, other than my Flickr stream is very much about my professional life and I’d quite like some down time and normality somewhere on the internet. Yes, yes that’s what Live Journal is about, but I don’t necessarily have the attention span for that…140 characters of bitching is quite enough :)

Stuff I’ve noticed is happening as I slowly crawl towards my 30s:

- Chocolate isn’t that great anymore. It’s still nice, but not as a snack, in the middle of the day or milky. And brownies are gross.

- Grey hair appears on pictures more clearly.

- Bullshit meter is at its most efficient.

- I’m less and less patient, and I was never patient to begin with.

- Spending an evening with a cup of tea and the internet seems like a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Saturday night.

- Living with housemates is for “young people”.

- Nostalgia sets in as a permanent state of mind. “In my days” is sometimes the start of a sentence. Not often. Just sometimes.

Shit.

Thankfully I can’t even take credit for this expression that I picked up from Aram back in Talponia days, but that’s exactly how I feel at the moment so you’ll have to excuse the hollow sound of this blog at the moment.

Things I’m busy with include researching robots, helping with blogging for LIREC, learning about origami for some of what i’ll talk about at Interesting, managing 2 large projects at Tinker.it! convincing new people to work with us on Christmas stuff, planning on learning all about conductive threads for the V&A, throwing crunched up post-its at Peter who sits conveniently accross from me, convincing Ben to quit Goldsmiths and just work with us for the rest of his creative life, enjoying having Cefn around the office in between paragliding trips, thinking about home automation from the ground up and cheap internet-of-things and taking the occasional trip to Europe to see friends. Conferences coming up soon as well.

All of this will of course materialise in different forms. Or I might just have a nervous breakdown. Will have to schedule that in though :)

Just because I really can’t help writing, I’ve started a personal blog on life “south of the river” called Yes this really is in Brixton

Disclaimer: this one has nothing to do with work, design or otherwise and will probably only make sense if you’re a friend and live or know or are curious about London. Enjoy!

I’m featured in the Rising Stars section of the August edition of Wired UK (page 23), wearing attire that I wouldn’t normally be caught dead in, but hey, they were after a “feminine look”, and a girl simply cant say no to wearing 700 quid Ferragamo shoes for 15 minutes (only to end up with the photo being cropped of course).

Happy now? :)