Some things are so complicated that you cannot understand how they could be so just through ignorance or negligence. The complexity seems to be there by design. Like bank notes, old style airline tickets, the table of contents of medicine or the back of a PC. When discussing examples of this approach, a friend of [...]

Both when entering and when leaving China you can rate your experience of the passport control officer, from sad face “not satisfied” to happy face “greatly satisfied”. Basically a good initiative and a nice gesture. But it also raises questions.

You say that you cannot measure without affecting the result. This apparatus makes people conscious and [...]

The video has now been published on YouTube.
To see my talk at TEDxNorrmalm, 17th of april 2010, click the image or this link.
Welcome!

Some time ago I came across the manual for the original Macintosh. It’s quite fascinating.
When you open it, it feels almost a bit surreal. A bit like watching Teletubbies, the TV-show made for 2-3 year olds. Why? Because it explains things we all know by heart since a long time ago, as something completely new. [...]

One of mans greatest inventions is the bicycle. They say that a human being on a bicycle is the most energy efficient form of transport (in relation to weight) on earth. On the other end of the scale you find some insects.
When I was a kid, a bicycle with more than three gears was a [...]

It seems like in today’s media world, many companies, organisations and individuals are struggling to improve their communication skills. They are trying to clarify their message, formulate information goals, developing ways to show the difference in how they do things differently than others. Which is fine! But not so often do you hear about a [...]

In the old industrial world you would look for the linear connections. If I do this, I will have that result. You would set a goal and then set up a linear process and work with determination towards that goal.
Same thing in communication. You would define what you do and then formulate how you do [...]

By now I think that the idea of how the western world has moved from an industrial state into a post-industrial state, is rather accepted. There are plenty of interesting readings to be found on and off line. I will only refer to this briefly.
What actually interests me is how this model, this shift from [...]

Someone said that the success of any company, organisation or even country depends on the degree of collaboration.

I can only agree.

In the old industrial context, there was less need for collaboration. You could develop a structural platform first, than have some “creatives” powder on some elements of beauty, experience and understanding.
Today, and tomorrow, those components are hard to separate, and competencies need to work together. You can more rarely separate one dimension from the others. [...]

Design often deals with two parallel aspects: making things more obvious and making things more attractive and interesting. For a true modernist the choice is simple: always aim for maximum clarity and remove everything else. And there are so many areas which still have a long way to go before reaching basic acceptable level of [...]

Here is a first rough illustration of the shift in various areas. Of course this model is very simplified and I want to point out the aspects which are increasingly in focus, not an absolute truth!

Obviously the later aspects don’t replace the earlier. But for me the change of focus is quite evident. You may [...]

Today is the second day of “The redesigning business summit” in London, with many fresh thoughts in the field between design and business.
The major theme is how design and business development will act after this recession. People will not consume as they did before. They will be more conscious about their spending but they will [...]

Motivational theories like those of Maslow and Hertzberg also follow the pattern from practical needs to experience. What they have in common is the idea that if you don’t have enough of the basics you will do what you can to fulfil these needs – shelter, food, enough salary to pay the rent. When the [...]