Linknote — — 178 words

Human-centred approaches

The double diamond, 15 years on… — Cat Drew — Design Council

It’s 15 years since the Design Council came up with the double diamond, a model of the design process.

I find it useful as a general guide, although it does seem to confuse many people who assume it to be a strictly linear process. Recent conversations I’ve had at both the Service Design Academy and work have shown me that it remains a challenge to truly convey the complexity of a design process, and that the double diamond may in fact hinder this.

As always, it’s about having the right approach and mindset, rather than expecting an off-the-shelf tool or model to fix all your problems. Cat Drew’s article points this out:

But following a toolkit does not equal designing a good solution to the right problem. It is as much about the mindsets as the tools (e.g. being humble and open to ideas coming from everywhere and changing as a result of feedback, curious about what’s really going on and how things are working or not and working as teams rather than as a lone genius).

Article — — 52 words

Service design — User experience — User research

Work:

Slides from my Edinburgh UX meetup talk on Monday 2 September 2019, about the user research we have been conducting around the needs of students and staff working with course materials digitally at the University of Edinburgh. See the more detailed blog posts about this project over at the Website and Communications team blog.

Linknote — — 83 words

Society

Do MotoGP riders get depressed? — Mat Oxley — Motor Sport Magazine

Johann Zarco listening to a mechanic

In the wake of Johann Zarco’s request to be released from his contract with KTM, Mat Oxley uncovers a side of MotoGP riders not often talked about.

Do MotoGP riders — surely some of the strongest people on Earth — get depressed? Of course they do! Motorcycle racing may be a macho game, but machismo never stopped anyone getting depressed, quite the opposite, in fact.

It’s also fascinating to see Valentino Rossi talking so openly about his mental health issues when he raced for Ducati.

Note — — 96 words

Technology — User experience — User research

Work:

I’m doing a couple of talks this week. They are both about [the user research we’ve been doing for the Learn Foundations project](https://duncanstephen.net/tag/learn-foundations/).

This evening I will be presenting at the [Edinburgh UX monthly meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Edinburgh-User-Experience-Meetup/events/ghvkllyzlbjc/). It’s a friendly meetup and it’s free, so do come along if you’re interested.

Then on Wednesday I’ll be [presenting](https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2019/sessions/a-105/) with my colleagues Karen Howie and Paul Smyth at the [Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Annual Conference](https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2019/).

Linknote — — 180 words

Society

Academia uneasy with lack of diversity on ‘dude walls’ of honour — Nell Greenfieldboyce — NPR

A 'dude wall' featuring several portraits of white old men

On the campaign to remove — or make less prominent — walls of portraits of old white men from academia’s past.

“It just sends the message, every day when you walk by it, that science consists of old white men,” says [neuroscientist Leslie] Vosshall. “I think every institution needs to go out into the hallway and ask, ‘What kind of message are we sending with these oil portraits and dusty old photographs?'”

While defenders of dude walls warn of erasing history, the counterpoint is powerful:

…some argue that the old portraits themselves have erased history, by glorifying white men who hold power while ignoring the contributions to science and medicine made by women and people of colour.

Celebrations of individuals in this way always make me wary. It seems to be particularly common in higher education, where awards and buildings are routinely named after white males.

But very few breakthroughs are truly the work of a single individual. The people honoured in this way are likely the people most adept at taking all the credit for other people’s work.