The picture
The size of the bicycle in relationship to its parking space.
The security chains in relationship to the likelihood of partial/total theft.
The protection plastic wrapped around the saddle in relationship to the rusty rest of the bicycle.

The reader
The size of your flat/house/car in relationship to your needs.
The time spent with family in relationship to the time spent at work.
Your yearly salary in relationship to your performance and market value.

Truth is constructed, subjective and highly contextual.

As with any assumption or proportion: the opposite may also be true. Just not for you.

We increasingly live in a hyper-connected world where self-marketing trumps doing the job at hand.

When who you know becomes more important than what you do, what are the personal, social and financial costs associated with opting out of the rat race?

Leave the rat race to the rats. Do what you love and enjoy the luxury of staying off the grid from time to time.

Reflection and deep thought inevitably increase the value you provide to your connections. You’re not the number of facebook friends, twitter followers or blog posts. It’s about the quality, not the quantity.

New year, new camera, new position in the org, new challenges, new photos and way more questions than answers. Let’s get going!

These are the times.

Post hoc labelling or annotating any kind of interaction design is the ultimate confession that you or your organization:

• over- or underestimated the target audience – or even worse, didn’t know about them at all.
• didn’t care about good interaction design: eg. prioritizing business considerations and technology constraints over ux, usability and a relentless drive for good design.
• didn’t know how to do good interaction design: eg. not testing, prototyping and iterating with real users, no skilled or senior designers inhouse etc.

I have seen projects fail, both from a client- and agency-perspective. Why is it, that large organizations with hefty budgets, good intentions and an affinity for human-centered design sometimes struggle with the little big details?

My guess: It’s all about love.

The Phone Stacking Game, also known as “Don’t Be a Dick During Meals” is a convenient and fun way to keep dinner social:

Here’s how it works: At the beginning of the meal, everyone puts their phone face down at the center of the table. As time goes on, you’ll hear various calls, texts, and emails, but you can’t pick up your phone. If you’re the first one to give in to temptation, you’re buying dinner for everyone else. If no one picks up, then everyone pays for themselves.

Kudos to the crew at Lift 2012 for giving this a shot. Since you asked: the tower crashed due to various simultaneous vibration mode calls.

Chained and decapitated.

Most things can be bandaged and fixed with a roll of good old duct tape.

A typical Chinese “Welcome” door mat in the picture below and a branded interpretation by frog design in their Jing’An district Shanghai studio in the picture above.

Zàijiàn China, until next time.

What objects and surfaces are suitable for branding? How about your private/corporate brand?

Which kind of interaction and experience can or should be branded?

Now factor in time, context and advertising. Branded new world.

Change happens.

I recently had the chance to speak at Helsana about Process, People, Politics, Projects & Places.

These are interesting times. The customer experience lingo is on the rise in a myriad of industries.

Practice what you preach and keep shipping!

Kudos to Daniel for the invitation. Cheers to the audience – you get to shape the future.

Roman solved the self-knotting-headphone-cable-problem.

Yes, I am using it wrongly … a little counter-intuitive at first :)