The stories

I put personalities in my toys, complete with voiceovers.
All my stuffed toys are somebody, I have my own “Sesame Street” in my bedroom!
I’m a bedroom animator.

It will have to be fitness coaching which has absoutely no relevance to my current professional career. During National Service some 10 years ago, I went for a couple of coaching certification. At that point, it was a natural progression from the instructor course I took when in Army. I must say, it has changed me to become more open to different people.
What struck …

Some ten years ago, the impending demolition of a red-bricked building in Singapore stirred a passionate public debate about the importance of social memory, heritage conservation and cultural identity among Singaporeans. On the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s plan, the 40 year-old National Library at Stamford Road was slated to make way for a tunnel and a new university campus. Architects, academics, and newspaper editors sought to convince government authorities that the iconic building embodied the experiences that most Singaporeans had as school-going children, and that these common memories contributed to the …

How do we know the (designerly) things we know?
Design Research has been called many names and projected onto many different platforms. From observing like a fly on the wall to role-playing as a participant; from collecting personal stories through an eclectic collage of images to utilizing focus groups as dipsticks to approximate product success rates; these methods have been useful in gathering (social and cultural) knowledge that design needs to know in order to do designerly things.
But questions of utility lead us to designing for task accomplishments; are there human …

In thinking about the trends of personalization and customization, I’ve been wondering if these (marketing and strategic) categorizations accurately reflect the way we live and if these categories are still useful in allowing reinterpretation and new application. These days, you’ll find computer makers thinking about allowing customization en masse through specialized product configurations, or shoe makers installing booths in their retail stores for consumers to style a new pair of sneakers. To be sure, teenagers and adults across the world seem to enjoy participating in this process. Personalization and customization …