Month: May 2023
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Writing changes how we think about the world
I came across this lecture by Larry McEnerney from the University of Chicago Writing Program over on LinkedIn and I got so much from it. Larry makes some wonderful points about writing better. He talks about how we’re taught to follow the rules of writing rather than thinking about how our writing can be valuable…
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QWERTY, and lessons on user-centric design
Why are keyboards set out in the way that they are? Why aren’t the letters in alphabetical order? It turns out that the answer to these questions reveals a brilliant piece of user-centric thinking. After some early attempts at creating writing machines which were less than user friendly, inventors Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel…
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‘Gigantomania’ and why big projects fail
I’m looking forward to reading Bent Flyvbjerg’s new book ‘How Big Things Get Done‘. Bent, an academic at Oxford, has compiled a database of over 16,000 significantly-sized projects (including things like infrastructure and systems investment) which has revealed that only 8.5% of projects deliver to their original projected cost and time projections, and only 0.5%…
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Categorising Cognitive Bias
I’m not a behavioural science expert but I do think it provides a useful lens to consider when we’re trying to understand how people make decisions. One of the things I’ve always struggled with however, is how to navigate the long list of cognitive biases (there’s something like 150+ cognitive biases listed on the Wikipedia…
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Scott Brinker on MarTech trends: Composability & Orchestration
The two critical technology trends that speak to the future of marketing technology