{ design@tive } information design
In this talk, Jer Thorp discusses the intersection between data and human experience. He’ll go into detail a number of projects involving diverse data sets, including the 770,000 words in the Shakespeare Folio, astronomical measurements from NASA, text from nightly news broadcasts, and real-time air traffic reports […]
The open-source world has learned to deal with a flood of new, oftentimes divergent, ideas using hosting services like GitHub — so why can’t governments? In this rousing talk Clay Shirky shows how democracies can take a lesson from the Internet, to be not just transparent but also to draw on the knowledge of all their citizens […]
In the midst of a global conversation about change, many designers are pondering their own impact in the world. How does our experience in software interfaces, web sites, and physical products prepare us to address the profound issues humanity is facing? These issues involve many complex systems, systems too big to fit into the scope of any single company or institution. Design methods are potent at large scale and scope, but what does it take to be effective as a practitioner, as a team, as a company? What is it like to actually achieve a meaningful, sustainable, positive difference in life? In this evening of conversation, Marc Rettig will moderate a few discussions about the fundamentals of design work, and the need for designers everywhere to be working to have impact beyond making money for their employers […]
In this talk Marc Rettig offers insights into the question “what is it like to actually achieve a meaningful, sustainable, positive difference in life?”, drawing lessons from a number of serious, heartfelt attempts to affect change. The work we have all done in recent decades has prepared us to take on much bigger challenges. The foundations of design remain powerfully effective. That said, there are ways in which “designing for change” requires additions to our inventory of methods, and transformations in the way we plan and conduct our work […]
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows social media help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics […]
In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning […]