Finds

№ 52 | Speculative Cartography, A Better Catastrophe, Tasting of Tomorrow Cards, The Art of Gathering… Canvas?, and A Playful Explanation of the link Between Physical and Mental Health

Stephen P. Anderson

Sep 1, 2023 — 2 min read

Speculative cartography

Ok. Here's an odd (and clever!) kind of ‘thing to think with’—speculative cartography. Specifically, maps of a future earth, after sea levels rise. Pictured below is the “famous 1748 Nolli map of Rome, with 66m of sea level rise.” See dozens more similar prints at Conspiracy of Cartographers.

A Better Catastrophe

“I Want a Better Catastrophe” is a new (?) kind of flowchart for navigating our climate predicament. Explore on your own, or push play and be guided through with a voiceover. Now I'm thinking about other kinds of flowcharts we could create using this format… Also, a nice bit of systems thinking going on here!

Tasting of Tomorrow Cards

More cards! IDEO's Tasting of Tomorrow Cards ask “human-centered questions about the future when designing intelligent products, services, systems, and visions.”

The Art of Gathering… Canvas?

So, one of my many back burner projects has been to turn ideas from Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering into a toolkit of sorts, for planning my own gatherings. Along these lines, the folks at Griffith University's Centre for Systems Innovation created a playbook and canvas

Inspired by Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering online course, which a team of us completed in March 2023, we have created this playbook. While it’s no replacement for the detail and insight from the course or reading the book of the same name, it combines ideas we learnt with the way we be in our Centre.

Playful Explanations

I love this playful explanation of the link between physical and mental health…using toys!

**BONUS: Check out this reimagined UNO deck from Shantell Martin, the latest installment of the UNO Artiste series.

№ 80 | Magical Gatherings, Dixit + A Canvas!, OuiSi Cards, The Hidden Curves of the Gartner Hype Cycle, Threshold Spotting, and Case Studies… with a Twist?!

Designing for Magical Gatherings So, interesting sidenote: I was in a webinar earlier this week where I was asked to reflect on especially memorable or meaningful gatherings I’ve been a part of. The common themes for me were things like adventure, discovery, challenge, fantasy, immersion, and so on. On

№ 79 | Competency Ladders, Cards for Humanity, Unicode Explainer, Spectrum of Influence, Decision Journal, and the Mola Structural Kit

Competency Ladders Here’s a ‘framework to think with’ specific to product teams… Context: The lovely thing about ‘horizontal’ software tools (such as MURAL, AirTable, or Notion) is how people are free to create their own—often unpredictable—ways of using that thing. The challenge of these tools is onboarding

№ 78 | WCAG card deck (+ more!), Tabbed Out on the Oregon Trail, “Who Killed the World?”, “The Year Without Sunshine,” Reflection vs Rumination, and… Dynamicland!

WCAG card deck (and more!) Apparently, this is the week for things to think with related to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)… First, I had this deck of WCAG 2.2 cards (LinkedIn post leading to a Figma file) lined up and ready to share: Then, I stumbled across

№ 77 | Branching Scenarios and eLearning, Surviving Design Projects, Ursula K. Le Guin on Growth, Quests (Not Goals), I’m Voting Postcards, and Levels of Automation

Branching Scenarios and eLearning In 2020, I did a deep dive into how narrative games could be used for learning purposes, which left me with a deep appreciation for (and small collection of) CYOA books, gamebooks, interactive fiction, solo RPGs, and similar experiences with branching paths. Anyway, this post on