I just watched the British Grand Prix. 😱 Sebastian Vettel needs to retire as soon as possible, before he does any further damage to his reputation. So sad to see a once great driver reduced to this.
33 adventures in The Designers Republic
“On July 14th 1986 The Designers Republic was declared.” Celebrating 33 years of Brain Aided Design. Read full article
CommentThe elements of a better user experience in Learn — Website and Communications Blog
As part of the Learn Foundations project, we have carried out a programme of quantitative research to ensure a user-centred approach to solution development.
The Learn Foundations project team wanted to develop a new template using a user-centred approach. This template would be designed to introduce more consistency between different courses in Learn. But it also had to support a diverse variety of needs across different courses, supporting different schools, colleges and teaching needs. It also had to be developed quickly.
We took inspiration from a classic user experience diagram to ensure this new template could be built on firm foundations.
This post introduces the steps we took. Forthcoming posts will describe each step in more detail and some of our key findings.
Why this is a bad time for Red Bull to drop their leading junior talent — — RaceFans
It’s good to see this issue getting some more attention, from none other than Dieter Rencken. I’ve been saying this for years.
If the aim of the Junior programme is to develop F1 drivers such situations point to something seriously amiss with the selection process. In 20 years and over 350 grands prix, just three alumni – Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and Verstappen – won grands prix. Of these only Ricciardo can be considered a fully ‘homegrown’ product of Red Bull’s system, the other two having been schooled elsewhere.
Dan Ticktum’s meltdown was seemingly brought about by the high-pressure environment of Red Bull’s driver programme. But this just the latest in a very long line of failures.
It’s easy to say this from the outside, but if I was a driver with some talent I would steer well clear of the Red Bull programme. The list of unnecessarily ruined careers is far, far longer than the successes.
Memories of our wedding day
When people ask me how our wedding was, I say two things. It was a very stressful day. But it was also the happiest I’ve ever been. Read full article
CommentThe return on investment of design-led change — — FutureGov
How design can be used instead of traditional change management methods.
In the same way that design-led change isn’t just about hiring designers, it also shouldn’t be thought of as a specialist or localised resource (like a design team). Creativity and thinking about design as a state of mind is more a competence that should be part of the fabric of every 21st-century organisation.
My thinking on this has changed a lot over the years. In the past I might have thought that having a strong design team was the way forward. But that’s just creating another silo.
Now I see the real job as finding ways to empower the entire organisation to think like a designer, and help them make the right decisions for the right reasons.
Vexations — Erik Satie
Erik Satie’s Vexations is shrouded in mystery. It was not published during Satie’s lifetime. It’s thought it was composed in 1893. But it went undiscovered until 1963, when John Cage first performed it publicly.
It is just three lines long, but is accompanied by this ambiguous instruction (translated from French):
In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities
While this is usually interpreted as an instruction to repeat the music 840 times to complete a performance, it’s not clear if this was actually Satie’s intention.
The tempo instruction is “Très lent” — very slow. In the words of Wikipedia, this “could mean anything”.
Cage’s first performance lasted over 18 hours — longer than he had estimated. The CD recording I own lasts only 23 minutes — a tiny fraction of the full experience. The liner notes to that CD flags up the following:
A 70 minute performance (40 repetitions) of Vexations by Alan Marks is available on the CD Vexations (LTMCD 2389)…
Despite the repetitive nature of the music, it never seems to get boring. There is something disturbing yet irresistible about it. I always imagine falling very slowly towards an uncertain destination. It feels like being trapped in an Escher painting.
This piece predates muzak and ambient music by at least 50 years. The CD liner notes say it “provided minimalism with an important historical precedent.” It even predates Dada.
This YouTube video contains a full performance, albeit one performed seemingly too fast.
You don’t hear this on adverts quite as often as Gymnopédie 1…
Photo — 2019-07-04
Graffiti aubergines. More expensive than aubergines. Taste exactly like aubergines. 5/5 would hipster again. 🍆
Managing your professional decline
It is suggested that a decline in our careers is inevitable, and comes earlier than you might expect. So what should we do about it? Read full article
CommentInterviews with students to understand users’ needs and contexts around Learn — Website and Communications Blog
Summarising the key findings from a set of user interviews I conducted with students on their needs around accessing course materials digitally. Just one of the strands of the Learn Foundations project, which I still have much more to write about.
After analysing and synthesising the insights gathered through the interviews, we built up a picture of how and why students’ experience with Learn varies throughout the year as students attempt to complete different tasks. This is presented as a semester in the life of students using Learn.