As we find technology becomes easier and easier for people to use, it does sometimes feel to me that we are on a precipice of terminally dumbing-down our species. Here lies the distinction between intuitive user interfaces and user experiences, and complex activities and specialist knowledge. The history of information technology has often been about … Continue reading Counter-intuitive
Category: Themes
Last night was the first public outing for some of the material I've been working on with my "inevitable" side project, Stamp. I ran an hour long webinar for a few kind folk who volunteered to be Guinea pigs exploring some ideas about developing personal digital strategies. If you are interested, you can find the … Continue reading Stamp
If you read this blog with any regularity, you'll know I'm a bit of a metaphor junkie: the name itself stems from that love, and I've even performed on stage extolling their virtues. Now with analogy there is always a risk that one will descend into Swiss Toni territory, where using metaphor, analogy and simile … Continue reading Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 1. Breadcrumb Trails
An old friend of mine yesterday asked me to share a list of the things I've been reading recently. Thought I'd share more widely: 50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know: your really need to know (50 Ideas) a bluffer’s guide to economics Adland: A Global History of Advertising another self-explanatory title. Useful to … Continue reading The Book Shelf
Next week I'm running a short webinar about the way in which people can take personal control over their use of digital and social media. It's testing some content that I've been playing around with over the last few months thinking about how to help individuals make sense of their personal and work use of … Continue reading The power of personal
It's often said that the Internet is leading to a disintermediation of services: that the ability for organisations to communicate and transact with their customers online cuts out intermediators (more widely known as middle men). What's happening in London with taxi firms these days seems to show an opposite effect. I've written in the past … Continue reading Intermediation
I had two meetings scheduled yesterday where the people I was expecting to meet found themselves without their mobile phones. One was lost, the other had turned into an iBrick. Both cases had fairly catastrophic impact on their owners' days. As we become increasingly reliant on smart devices, the impact of their failure becomes heightened, … Continue reading Single points of failure
In the past 48 hours three of the services that I use fairly extensively have had significant changes: LinkedIn's user interface (UI) has been tweaked, seemingly in their drive to make things look as much like Facebook as possible, TweetDeck's user interface has been significantly altered and "given a cleaner look", and the Android phone … Continue reading The UX problem with Agile
How long does it take for a new electronic communications system to be regarded as a social medium? It seems about half a century. I'm currently reading a book on the social history of the telephone, and the parallels with the emergence of computing are fascinating. From the phone's inception in the late 1870s, it … Continue reading Going social
You can now access a recording of the webinar here http://www.themarketer.co.uk/knowledge-centre/webinars/digital-communities-how-marketers-can-engage-and-utilise-crowds/ You can find the narrative and slides for today's The Marketer webinar here. I'm also running a free webinar on the evening of 18th June to test out some content that I'm developing at part of my side project, Stamp. You can find out … Continue reading Communities – The Marketer Webinar
