Author: designswarm
-
Papercamp 4
Papercamp 4 took place on September 20th 2025 at St Bride’s Foundation. It was a fantastic day.
-
Papercamp 3
I had the pleasure of reviving Papercamp , a multidisciplinary day event about paper in September 2024, thanks to the support of UCL, d4s, G.F.Smith and Moo. I’m hoping to do it again in autumn 2025.
-
Good Night Lamp at Biennale Internationale Design Ste-Etienne
Go visit the At Home exhibition until July 31st 2022.
-
Superflux & IKEA
To coincide with COP26 (hosted in Glasgow in 2021) Superflux were asked to work with IKEA/Ingka Group to showcase the best of their sustainability work. I acted as project manager and wrote a little about it. I went on to work with the audio visual contractor we hired as coordinator for a few months in…
-
Human Values in digital design questionnaire
In 2020, the BBC R&D North Lab and myself won some funding from NESTA to turn their Human Values work into practical tools for policy-making. Building on my experience shepherding the London Internet of Things community into developing the Better IoT assessment tool, I helped them develop a questionnaire for people building digital tools. The…
-
Creating a Culture of Innovation
My new book is out now and I’ve written a little blog post about it to give you a taster of what to expect!
-
100th #iotlondon
Tonight, I ran the 100th and my last London Internet of Things Meetup. I wrote about what I think we’ve achieved as a community back in May. It’s been such an honour to meet so many people and support them in a simple way in their journey: give them the time to talk about what…
-
Low Carbon Design Institute
We’re piloting a new kind of design education in summer 2021. This two week program is aimed at creative people interested in deeply learning about climate change and who refuse to start from a blank page.
-
IDII unofficial archive
I completed my Masters at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea between 2004-2006 at which point the program was closed. As the official story of the institute has yet to be told in writing, I put together an online archive documenting the move from Ivrea to Milan and the change in conditions for students before the…
-
IoT for climate change with Overlay
Since the start of the summer, I’ve been working a few days a month with Overlay, a startup incubated by ING Labs in the heart of London’s financial district. It’s been incredibly interesting and they are fantastic people which I didn’t expect from the financial sector. My work involves helping Overlay’s product development by researching…
-
ITA Awards Nominee
Tomorrow night, I’m very happy to attend the first ever ITA Awards ceremony organised by Inclusive Boards as I’ve been nominated for the ‘Tech Evangelist of the year’ award. It’s not exactly a title I’m completely comfortable with as I’m not a corporate evangelist, selling a product. I have however dedicated much of my career…
-
Post-it note included in OZCHI’19 academic paper
I attended a workshop in Chemnitz by the German academic project Miteinander. At the end of it, I drew on a post-it note what I thought was the overlap and position of the six different internet of things card-based toolkits which had been presented. The image of that post-it has been included in an academic…
-
Interview included in ‘How to Mozfest’ book
I acted as producer for the 2011 and 2012 edition of the Mozilla Festival. My experience was captured in a paper publication given to this year’s attendees to celebrate 10 years of the festival. When I worked with the Mozilla Foundation, this was the first time the festival was set in London and in the…
-
On BBC Front Row
I was asked to review the Barbican show AI: More Than Human on live radio for BBC Radio 4’s famous Front Row program. It was great fun to be interviewed by Stig Abel and with the address thrill of seeing The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers (Mark Billingham, Val McDermid and Doug Johnstone) perform live in…
-
Making it!?
I organised this one day conference on exploring ideas of success in making communities and makers in 2018. It was hosted at DoES Liverpool and sponsored by Barclay’s Eagle Labs and the European Union’s Regional Development Fund.
-
The Good Home
Along with Peter Bihr & Dries de Roeck, I organised a series of 3 exhibitions (during the Milan Furniture Fair, in Aalst Living Lab for the elderly and during the London Design Festival) around concepts of ‘The Good Home’. The work which was showcased was generated by multi-disciplinary approaches, group work and virtual submissions.
-
Good Night Lamp in the Design Museum’s permanent collection
The Good Night Lamp is now part of the London Design Museum’s permanent exhibit ‘Designer Maker User’ on the 3rd floor of its new space in South Kensington. It is included as an example of the internet of things next to the Nest thermostat & the Oyster card.
-
databrick
This a concept developed by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Mark Simpkins in 2016 and showcased as part of The Good Home exhibition at the Digital Catapult during London Design Festival in September 2016. It appeared in the exhibition newspaper. Whether you own or rent, databrick helps you learn from the former occupants and green your home even after you…
-
Know Cards
A set of cards that lets you explore a wide range of electronics components commonly used in internet of things applications.
-
Day in the life of a designer and her networked objects
I collaborated with Tom Klinkowstein in helping write the scenario for this extremely large diagrammatic narrative. In it, a potential scenario for life in 2030 is fleshed-out including the new smart products which might emerge out of current technological development. The full diagram can be downloaded as a pdf.