All blog posts
For the July 2017 issue of Premier Guitar magazine I was asked to write an article explaining the basics of speaker design (All About Speakers.) Guitar amplifier speakers are quite different from those for audio amplifiers. Speakers intended for listening to recorded music are designed to produce an even response across a wide frequency spectrum....Continue reading
Jordan Jackson has been creating insightful podcasts on the topic of branding. I’m happy to have been asked to record one of them with him. It’s titled The Power Of Purpose, When Executed Through Promise. The discussion falls under Jordan’s theme for the series: “As new technology encroaches upon all aspects of our lives, and changes...Continue reading
I was honored to have been invited to give the closing keynote presentation at the Design Center of the Philippines’ First International Design Conference, focused on design thinking. It was a packed room of business leaders and designers (as far as I can tell around 300 people.) Natalia Bednarek opened the final session with “8...
I’m starting my third week of a 2-month appointment as”Visiting Professor” in the Industrial Design department at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) in Daejeon, South Korea. Topics I’ll be covering over the 8-week course will include data visualization, quantitative methods in design research, statistics, basics of biomechanics, design and behavior, and design...Continue reading
Thanks Katelyn Bogucki and Cristina Quinn for including me in Gimlet Creative’s .future podcast series, sponsored by Microsoft. Along with my thoughts, the Design For All episode includes discussions on Inclusive Design in tech with Angela Glover Blackwell (Founder of PolicyLink,) Jenny Lay-Flurrie (Chief Accessibility officer at Microsoft,) Sean Marihugh (Escalation Engineer at Microsoft,) Crystal Jones (Escalation Engineer at...Continue reading
Rethinking Time, a commentary I wrote on our attitudes toward time, has been published in Ergonomics in Design Volume 26 Issue 2, April 2018. Discussing things such as why I set my microwave to 33 seconds instead of 30, the consequences of applying an education-instilled factory-based mindset to virtually everything we do, and why we downplay the fact...
Improving health through design: The podcast recorded last week with Moyez Jiwa, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Health Design in Melbourne, Australia, is now online. At just over 5 minutes, topics include design and behavior, and the need for better design in healthcare for both patients and healthcare providers. Thanks to Moyez for...Continue reading
After spending September and October as visiting lecturer at KAIST in South Korea, (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), I was invited to write an article for the Archives of Design Research. The journal is published by the Korean Society of Design Science. The issue has just been published (and I’m happy to see...Continue reading
Videos for the TEDxDrexelU conference have been posted on YouTube (my talk included.) TEDxDrexelU videos on YouTube I need to thank several people who assisted in my presentation. The super-nice slide guitar photos were used by permission of Randall Douglas. Randall is based in Minnesota – check his website for more nice photos – musicians,...
Premier Guitar’s February 2013 issue contains an article by Chris Kies on the first guitar effects pedal, the early 1940s DeArmond Tremolo unit. I was happy to assist. Although the article is titled “Late 1940s DeArmond 601 Tremolo,” the photo shows a unit from the early 1940s. My DeArmond page is here: DeArmond tremolo units...Continue reading
What do Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, The Staple Singers, Nancy Sinatra, the 1939 World’s Fair and a 16th century organ in Italy have in common? They are all discussed in my second article for Premier Guitar magazine, A Brief History of Tremolo, appearing in the November 2013 issue. Tremolo, an oscillation in...Continue reading
Happy to have written, illustrated and photographed the cover story of this month’s (August 2013) issue of Premier Guitar magazine. The article gives a part-by-part description of tube amp technology using my favorite amp, a 1960’s Vox AC4. It traces the guitar signal through every component, from pickup to speaker. And it gets into...Continue reading
The world of design is changing rapidly. The practice of design – not as quickly. The methods we typically use to design things today are based on decades-old practices. (I have project plans from the 1980s to prove that – I save a lot of things.) Following is a list of six things that I believe...Continue reading
On Friday April 29 I opened the two-day IDSA North East Conference in Manhattan. And I adhered to the AMA theme (Ask Me Anything), by selecting a number of questions that had been posted on their web site. Those included a question about speeding up FDA’s process on approving 3D printed products – known in FDA language as “additive manufacturing.” To address...Continue reading
Here’s a link to Episode 70 of the RoboPsych – a podcast on robots, AI and the future – hosted by Dr. Tom Guarriello and Carla Diana. The topic we discussed centers on technology, design and gender. The opportunities for companies and organizations to better address females are vast. This includes not just producing products and services...Continue reading
Here’s a link to Yang Yuhsiu’s documentary, Design&Thinking. Its third screening anywhere took place last Thursday at SVA in Manhattan. A discussion with Allan Chochinov, Bruce Nussbaum, Cameron Tonkinwise, Alice Twemlow and me, hosted by Paul Pangaro, followed.
Happy to be on the jury for the 2014 New York Design Awards. Congratulations to all the winners at the award ceremony held at Steelcase last night. To get to the site and see the 2014 winners of the award, click here. This is the first year this program has been held in New York, and the response,...Continue reading
Over the last few months I’ve been writing a series of blogs for Medical Packaging Innovation. My posts are here: MPI: Dan Formosa. The site is new, just started up earlier this year. Some lively discussions are going on. For my topics, the definition of “technology” elicited quite a bit of discussion (is it “technology”...Continue reading
I was in Hong Kong earlier this month giving a talk and workshop at the Include Asia 2013 conference. Usually held in London, the conference focuses on design for all – it was a first for Hong Kong. My keynote talk covered a range of topics, but with the underlying idea that “questioning everything” is a...Continue reading
John Barratt (photo) and I spoke at the Business Breakfast at the agideas event in Melbourne. John spoke about his work at Teague, and the development of the interior of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. The agideas team put together a really nice (and very complimentary) brochure, drawing a very receptive early-morning crowd. The World’s Most Innovative...Continue reading
The Center for Disease Control in the US periodically publishes updates on health statistics. Here is a chart showing age distribution of three common problems – arthritis, hearing trouble and vision trouble (even after corrective eyewear). The CDC reports this data in age brackets. For this chart, I interpolated that data – because a line chart...Continue reading
My relationship with Karen, exposed – online and in print, in the Winter 2012 issue of Innovation. Thanks IDSA and Steve Wilcox for making it available online. Innovation, Winter 2012 issue
Happy to be interviewed alongside ZZ Top’ s Billy Gibbons in an article by Michael Dregni in the September issue of Vintage Guitar magazine. The article discusses the early use of guitar effects – specifically, tremolo circuits and devices, which date back to the 1940s. I received the designation “historian” (apparently, for being able to supply...Continue reading
Agnete Enga and I will be running a workshop at the Design & Emotion conference in London. This year’s theme – Out of Control. The conference runs from September 11–14. The topic of our workshop: Relationship Counseling. Specifically, the workshop will delve into the topic of design and females, and how a brand relationship differs...Continue reading
An article I wrote for Fast Company, “One Fix For Health Care,” is now online (click here) – discussing pharmacies, design, drug compliance, and dope slaps. Thanks Belinda Lanks at Fast Company, and for help with the content, thanks Mark Jones and Tim Brown at IDEO, and Jeff Hirsch, Leah Waitekus and Josh Tsai for sharing...Continue reading
EMDT (European Medical Device Technology) published an article I wrote titled “The Future of Home Healthcare: Searching for Extreme Usability.” In it I discuss, among other things, how important it is to understand and design for individuals, not homogenized groups.
Next week IDSANY will be holding the second annual discussion on The Tangible: Dead or Alive. The event will be held at Farenheit 212 in NYC, Tuesday June 19 at 7:00 pm. I’ll be on the panel with Karim Rashid, Tom Igoe and LinYee Yuan. Here’s the announcement on the Core77 site.