As I’ve already done with economics, I’m adding a design feedroll. I’m not exactly a designer — at least not a visual or conventional one — but I love thinking like a designer and knowing what’s going on in the industry.
Some of these feeds promote the notion of ‘design thinking’ (Tim Brown, Bruce Nussbaum, and Roger Martin who posts sometimes at Creative Class) and argue that design thinking can and should be used to address broader social, business, and environmental issues — which is precisely what I’m trying to do with my practice of ‘conceptual development.’
And then there’s the field of ’experience design,’ which from my perspective is a kind of ‘applied social science’ that has a lot of potential associations with behavioural economics and public policy (associations that I think tend to be neglected). I love both the theory and the practice of it. Indespensible are Putting People First, Experience Matters, John Thackara, and Don Norman.
Another reason I don’t feel so bad about trespassing into different design fields is that good designers, by definition, are habitual trespassers themselves. Bruce Mau Design’s Love Blog and Jason Kottke are two design-oriented feeds that consistently curate interesting artifacts from all over the web.
And of course the design industry churns out enough of its own material that Core77, Design Observer, Designboom, UnBeige, and countless other feeds keep the pipeline flowing. I love perusing Core77 especially: there are always surprises. Anybody creative ought to be able to find new energy and inspiration within a minute or two of checking these out.
Then there are the web design outlets – A List Apart and Boxes and Arrows are two that I read occasionally — sources that I don’t have the technical proficiency to really take advantage of but save me from complete naivety and ignorance.
And that’s just a start. There’s still much more to discover, much more to learn, much more to be created…
