Category: Blog
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How many uses are there for a shoe?
I’ve been spending some time over the new year reflecting on my work, and trying to develop ideas about how I package what I do (which is rather nebulous and difficult to describe). That calls for divergent thinking, amongst other techniques (e.g. needs analysis, prototyping and validation). So I read this blog post, Divergent thinking…
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Sketching, pens and a new DIY project
A while back, I posted about how I was looking to try other means of exploring, developing and communicating ideas beyond the computer screen. I have also been spending a lot more time in the company of designers lately, and I’ve seen sketching used much more frequently and openly as a problem-solving tool. This has…
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Reflections on hackdays
I’ve been to a couple of hackdays/weekends recently (Fieldwork Hackday and Good for Nothing / Summer of Love), and have learned a fair bit about how they function. Having worked with large-scale online innovation communities, that play out over several months, I’m particularly interested in how these different approaches compare. What kind of outcomes can…
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Creative work
My work is creative work, and yet it often feels like bureaucratic work. I’m sitting in front of a computer, typing. To someone peering through the window, watching me, I might look like an accountant (no offence to accountants). I believe a lot of people think the same way about their work, and they’d like…
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How bypassing retailers helped GoLite cut costs and increase innovation
Demetri Coupounas, of outdoor gear manufacturer GoLite, talks to Andrew Skurka about their direct-to-consumer strategy, and how bypassing their traditional retail partners has helped them lower prices, tell a better story, and build better relationships:
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Appliance computing
Noted as a sign of the times: Goodbye hotkeys, macro programs, end-user customization, and all the detritus of operating systems that were full of holes to crawl into and dumpsters wherein to dive. The new, clean way of computing is on its way. It may be a lot less fun but it’s gonna sell a…
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An experiment in open hardware
I’m running a small experiment. Inspired by some interesting uses of open hardware I’ve seen recently, I decided to design a product, document the process and parameters of the product, and share it as widely as possible to encourage adaption and improvement by others.
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Caine’s Arcade
OK, so it’s sentimental, but it’s also a well crafted story of innocent, creative play, a father’s love and encouragement, and what happens when the amplifying power of the web is directed positively. Watch this movie.
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Air quality egg
I love this project; just launched on Kickstarter. It’s a beautiful mashup of open data and open hardware: Citizens collect data about their hyper-local (not regional) air quality, using a device built on open hardware platforms (Arduino and Nanode) Share that data with the community via Pachube Make the data available via open APIs so we can…
Andrew Sleigh 