Self-employed design consultant and strategist Sandra Dartnell talks about the value of provoking people to take a fresh look at the assets they already have.
Watch her 6 minute Pecha Kucha story The Value of Reimagining Something presented at Pecha Kucha St Neots, Vol 4.
Pecha Kucha St Neots, Vol 4. produced by Richard Slade for Neotists.
Self-employed design consultant and strategist Sandra Dartnell talks about humans being used as public billboards and why the practice can be socially and emotionally degrading. Watch her 6 minute Pecha Kucha story Shame On You presented at Pecha Kucha St Neots, Vol 1.
Pecha Kucha St Neots, Vol 1. produced by Richard Slade for Neotists.
Sandra Dartnell helps people buy great design, so she is hyper-aware of what does and doesn't work. Her curiosity for and appreciation of design work led her to notice and explore the great design behind the Christian Alpha courses, despite not being a Christian herself. Watch her 6 minute Pecha Kucha story I don't believe in God but he does design well presented at Pecha Kucha Bedford, Vol 3.
Pecha Kucha Bedford, Vol 3. produced by Kayte Pippett for Bedford Creative Arts at The University of Bedfordshire.
Sandra Dartnell was achieving masses and nothing. This is a talk about struggling to find the right personal direction when all you feel is overwhelmed. Shared as part of #geekmentalhelp week. Listen to the audio (30 minutes) or View Presentation
More about Geekmentalhelp
Sandra Dartnell was asked to give a presentation on how to buy design at a creative networking event called Creative Bedfordshire. The presentation was developed to educate micro businesses with small budgets. View Buying Design Better , Subtitle – Making sure that the design you buy results in a quality product that does the job.
Creative Bedfordshire was produced by Kayte Pippett for Bedford Creative Arts.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Time and Motion – Redefining working life at FACT
“Time & Motion uses artworks, research projects, archival materials and interventions to track our journey through the world of work, from clocking on at the factory gates to checking in online from our home office.”
If you are in the Liverpool area you should drop-in, closes 9 March 2014. It’s free.
Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX
One of the things Sandra Dartnell does is make postage stamp pictures. She calls them Stampedes. She sources and hand positions the stamps to create 'portraits' which tell life stories. She also frames single stamps which she feels are just great designs. She does it for herself, for her family and to commission. She loves the graphics and the search to find the right stamp. It all started with a picture to talk about with her daughter. Actually it all started with an A4 envelope…
Watch her 6 minute Pecha Kucha story, Stampedes presented at Pecha Kucha Bedford, Vol 1.
Pecha Kucha Bedford, Vol 1. produced by Kayte Pippett for Bedford Creative Arts.
Over the Air is an annual event where developers come together (and sleep over) at Bletchley Park to talk, hack and tinker with all that is interesting in mobile web development…and some.
So why would a non-developer go to a developers’ hack weekend?
Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX
I like the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger@j1berger
It is a really accessible straight forward read with memorable examples. The storytelling format and argument shaped around six key points make the concepts easy to remember. Some of the points I have thought about before and might seem like common sense but I bet most people never think about them all at the same time. And a bit of researched evidence to back gut feeling is always a good thing. I had not thought about how powerful word-of-mouth is in day-to-day interactions – how much of a word-of-mouth waterfall I am – or reflected fully on my own motivations for passing things on. The key learning for me was probably the role triggers have to play. Reading that chapter made me think immediately of strong concepts that could have been more talked about with a little more thought about triggers. I think this is a really useful book for anyone who has to conceive or evaluate ideas.
I found out about the book via Fast Company where you can also currently read excerpts
Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX
When I was reading around about new web standards and browser technology I found Web Lab by google. It’s part of an exhibition at the Science Museum, London that runs until July this year. The project is part of something called Chrome experiments which is a showcase of JavaScript experiments created by developers interested in exploring the potential of new browser technology.
Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX
Walking on the prom on the Wirrall on Saturday I watched the flocks of sea birds weaving their way around the beach and today I found an article about the study of swarms in this month’s Wired magazine (May 13). It is a good read for anyone who likes thinking about behaviour, and can’t take their eyes of flocking birds. It’s got me thinking about the basic forces of attraction, repulsion and alignment. It makes me think about my motivation for just about every social Like, Comment or Post I have made in the last week. I guess I am part of the flock, but that’s ok because the flock can be mesmerising and a useful social function. The article is called As One by Ed Yong @edyong209
Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX
This advice is part of an article that appeared in the Jan 13 edition of net magazine. The article was written by Paul Adams @Padday who is Facebook’s global head of brand design.
Designing for Facebook
“Design the news feed story first….The news feed is where most people will experience content from brands on Facebook; therefore it makes sense to spend the majority of time designing the news feed experience…design the most engaging, beautiful news feed story first, and reverse engineer whether you need a Canvas app to make the story possible.”
“Design for growth…think about how people will involve other people in the experience…when someone lands on your product experience what is the minimum amount of time and effort required for them to produce news feed stories that will be seen by their friends?..”
“Design peoples’ friends experience…design the primary actor’s experience at the same time as designing the experience of his friends, and friends of friends…”
” the primary goal of what you design should be the production of great news feed stories from your users and their friends. ”
Something to think about every time I update my own product page with a post.
This content came from a small break-out within the article ‘Facebook’s top 10 social design secrets’. The whole piece is a straight forward and interesting read on social behaviour and how to approach design for it, especially when accompanied by another article on page 130 of the same magazine by Katie Moffat @katiemoffat which covers the working of EdgeRank, Facebook’s algorithm, that shed’s light on how Facebook generates news feed content.
Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX
