About 10 years ago, I became an assessor for funding agencies. I have since worked for AHRC, Innovate UK, EIT and EU programmes to help them assess funding applications. As a result I spent a lot of time looking at other people’s (sometimes terrible) spreadsheets and it’s become a bit of an obsession. I’ve often… Continue reading Organising Design (or why you need to care about spreadsheets)
Category: Innovation & business
The Long Tail of Design Work
I started a new role 9 weeks ago at TPXimpact, a digital transformation consultancy born out of the merger of a mix of agencies that included FutureGov. My boss is Ben the Chief Designer and I’m Design Director. We work with 108 designers with a wide array of experiences and backgrounds across four practice areas:… Continue reading The Long Tail of Design Work
72 questions on digital human values
In 2020, the Human Values team at BBC R&D North Lab and I won some funding from NESTA to turn their Human Values work into practical tools for policy-making. Building on my experience shepherding the London Internet of Things community into developing the Better IoT assessment tool, I helped them develop a questionnaire for people… Continue reading 72 questions on digital human values
A beginner’s guide to exporting post-Brexit
I’m coming to the end of my contract working with Media Powerhouse as a project coordinator. This wasn’t my usual gig but I met their technical project manager Callum while working on my last client project. What I thought would be a project management role turned into a project coordination and administration role with a… Continue reading A beginner’s guide to exporting post-Brexit
Repairable by design?
I’ve been a trustee of The Restart Project, a right to repair charity, for almost a year. They are focused on raising political awareness of the need for right to repair legislation in the UK and Europe and have been doing a fantastic job over the past 6 years. It’s an honour to meet with… Continue reading Repairable by design?
Creating a Culture of Innovation (an introduction)
Just like I did with my first book here’s an intro to my new book which is out now! The initial premise of the book was to highlight the various ways in which organisations sabotage their own research & innovation efforts. With time (I submitted my table of contents to Apress in July 2019), it… Continue reading Creating a Culture of Innovation (an introduction)
The Cargo Cult of Innovation: the toxic habits of corporate innovation
Update August 7th 2019: This will become a book, published by Apress in 2020. Follow #writingabook on @iotwatch on Twitter to hear more as I write it! NB: I have an idea for a second book about the cargo cult of corporate innovation but I’m not totally sure how I’d get people to contribute to… Continue reading The Cargo Cult of Innovation: the toxic habits of corporate innovation
So you’re about to graduate
(This is a follow-up to my blogpost as I’ve been invited to give one of the keynotes at the Umea Institute of Design’s Degree Show in Sweden next month.) So you’re about to graduate from an interaction design degree. Welcome to the rest of your life in the industry of design. Here are some harsh… Continue reading So you’re about to graduate
The Value of Design
There’s a new book out called Design and the Creation of Value which at an eye watering £85 probably isn’t going to make it on to my reading list straight away but the review illustrates a point I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. “Moral or ethical value seems to have limited relation to design.” writes John… Continue reading The Value of Design
The £150K problem: how to properly fund #iot startups
I was invited to speak at Fund Forum in Berlin a few weeks ago and wanted to share the crux of my argument to a room full of investors and investment managers. I believe that fundamentally, the investment model that Silicon Valley has developed around software is completely useless when it comes to helping early stage… Continue reading The £150K problem: how to properly fund #iot startups