Making Sense - blog

Hard at work

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Reinventing the Wheel

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:15:00 +0000

Reinventing the Wheel: Volvelles : "As inventive as instructive, information wheels-or volvelles-have been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything form time and space to military history and recipes"

Helvetica at 50

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 09 May 2007 21:17:00 +0000

More on Helvetica's 50th birthday on the BBC website here

Helvetica's message is this: you are going to get to your destination on time; your plane will not crash; your money is safe in our vault; we will not break the package; the paperwork has been filled in; everything is going to be OK.

Helvetica

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:05:00 +0000

A film about a typeface? Well not just any typeface. Helvetica has come to embody all those clean, clear, clinical values that appeal to the modernist in us all.

Gary Hustwit's film about the development and use of Helvetica starts doing the rounds this month, and some excerpts are on the movie website. Great stuff.

Another Place

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:13:00 +0000

I finally got around to making the journey to Liverpool this weekend to see Antony Gormley's installation Another Place - 100 iron casts of his body scattered over 3 kilometers of Crosby beach.

I found the installation very moving - all the still figures staring out the sea, alone with their thoughts, watching our days come and go. If you haven't been to see them yet, go now - they may be moving on very soon. You can see some of my photos here.

Sidney the snowman

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:11:00 +0000

Above and beyond the call of duty on this job. Not just designing the posters and leaflets for Sheffield PCT's 2006 winter health campaign, but getting into the role of Sidney the sickly snowman in the launch photoshoot too!

The posters are on buses and tram stops across the city, and information leaflets available just about everywhere. More information about winter health in Sheffield here.

New look for PiF

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:54:00 +0000

My work with the Patient Information Forum continues, with the development of their new logotype.

PiF is the UK's main provider of networking and training to raise the standard of patient information. More information here

Sotheby's at Chatsworth

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:44:00 +0000

I just got out to see Sotherby's wonderful collection of contemporary sculpture in the grounds of Chatsworth House - including my favorite, this manically cheerful rowing boat by Dale Chihuly. The exhibition is on until the end of the month. A few of my photos are here.

Social Marketing conference

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:22:00 +0000

Encouraging to see the National Social Marketing Network making headway. I couldn't make their first conference unfortunately, but I'm happy to see resources from the event available online here.

Sunrise

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:02:00 +0000

Just trying to work out which direction the sun rises in the unrealistic hope that one day I might actually get up in time to photograph it.

A visit to the Sunfinder site and few minutes with Illustrator allowed me to produce this diagram. [16Kb pdf] It's calculated for 53� North, which is where I am - if you want it anywhere else you'll have to do your own sums. The times are here. [100Kb pdf]

Why it really takes so long

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:18:00 +0000

Why it really takes so long for a pharmacist to count out a few pills.

From the ever wonderful Joy of Tech.

Worldwide panorama

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:48:00 +0000

The quarterly Worldwide Panorama event has just been running, on the theme of 'gardens'. You can see my contribution, Hardwick Hall, here and here

You'll need Quicktime installed on your computer to see these interactive panoramas.

We have a winner!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 14:20:00 +0000

My annual report for South East Sheffield Primary Care Trust has just picked up first prize in the PCT category of the Nexus Awards for NHS reports. Also my report for Sheffield West PCT was highly commended. I'm going to be unbearably smug about this.

Here I am at the Kings Fund in London looking only marginally less shocked than Kay Lean, SESPCT's Comms Manager.

Following orders

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 16:27:00 +0000

None of us like to follow orders - especially when we don't understand the reasons behind them. This new addition to medicine prescriptions currently being trialed can only be a good thing - a couple of lines just to explain that the medication is going to do for us is going to make us a lot more likely to follow our doctor's instructions.

More information here.

Smart blister pack

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 17:37:00 +0000

More high-tech drug packaging here - although this time just for clinical trials - to help to accurately measure patients' compliance. Clever stuff.

The Med-ic ECM (Electronic Compliance Monitoring) packaging is a disposable, low-cost intelligent pharmaceutical packaging (IPP) monitor for blister packaged medication. It uses a sensor grid technology and a proprietary process of printed conductive inks to record each time a pill or capsule is expelled from the package.
At the end of the clinical trial, the blister pack is scanned using radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology and the dosing information can be downloaded to a database.

The primary purpose of Med-ic is to ensure that patients in clinical trials are taking their medication at the time and frequency recommended, to avoid non-compliance issues that could skew the results.

More information here.

Co-creating Services

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 05:53:00 +0000

A new paper from the Design Council here, looking at how users can help to develop improved health services. not so much user-centred design but user-instigated.

RED Paper 01 Health: Co-creating Services sets out a new vision for healthcare in which users take a key role in shaping the services they receive. The paper says the 'co-creation' model it proposes will help both to manage chronic disease and also tackle the broader lifestyle issues that have a direct impact on health.

More details and download here.

LCD drug pack

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:52:00 +0000

This is interesting - the winner of the RCA's student design competition, improving medication safety for patients - there are a few details in the Pharmaceutical Journal.

I must say I have my reservations about this - I'd like to know what this system offers that couldn't be made available at a far smaller cost. High technology isn't always the answer - what matters is understanding the user and producing something appropriate for them.

Your moral duty!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 24 May 2005 13:43:00 +0000

Well it's that time of year again - time to book onto the Designers in Health annual study day.

This years event is at Manchester Metropolitan University on July 29th. Speakers include Mark Duman, author of Producing Patient Information, John Wild from the Plain English Campaign and usability blogger Louise Ferguson.

More details and a booking form are available here.

Back-to-basics design

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 21 May 2005 11:30:00 +0000

More on the design of technology being appropriate to its users and no-frills mobile phones here. So if all you want is a simple way to make calls and perhaps do a bit of texting, these phones are being launched by Vodaphone .

User-centred pill bottle

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 11:14:00 +0000

Some interesting work here by American designer Deborah Adler looking at clearer - and safer - ways of presenting information on drug packaging.

Although it's nice work, it isn't directly transferable to us here in Europe, where we make far wider use of boxed patient packs, but it is refreshing to read about a user-centred design process coming up with something so useful.

Fundamental phone

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 14:09:00 +0000

At last someone's spotted the gaping hole in the mobile phone market. Do we want more buttons? More features? No - we want a phone that more people can use. A phone pared down to its bare essentials for those people that can't cope with the usual microscopic teen-orientated gadgets.

This phone, from SilverPhone has no complex menus or navigation - just three big pre-programmed buttons. Ideal for older users and people with special needs - excellent.

Movie fonts

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 21:00:00 +0000

A bit of fun here on the Linotype website, identifying the fonts used on movie posters. This is Kabel - designed by Rudolf Koch in 1928 - very Bauhaus - there's an interesting article about Koch by Hermann Zapf here.

Happy snapper

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 13:04:00 +0000

Good to have a chance to exercise my rather rusty photographic skills this week at the Yorkshire Artspace, taking lots of pretty pictures of John Thatcher and Anna Child's lovely furniture.

I particularly liked this image of the YAS building twenty minutes after sundown.

Vision Plus 11

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 17:36:00 +0000

If you don't understand it, don't design it. That's the rather blunt message from Vision Plus 11, the latest of the IIID's occasional Information Design summer schools being held in Vienna July 7 - 9 this year.

A more long winded way of putting it might be "understand your goal, your product, your audience, before trying to design anything for it".

Anyway - Vision Plus promises an excellent line-up of speakers and a good excuse to spend a few days in Austria. I hope to be there.

Better information

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 13:33:00 +0000

When two people in two days tell me about a report perhaps I ought to go read it - Better information, better choices, better health: putting information at the centre of health

This document from the Dept of Health lays out a three year programme of action, at both national and local level, to improve access to high quality information that people need to make choices about their personal health and healthcare.

Just leafing through I came across this point about making information more effective:

"The process of delivering information to people is just as important as the information itself. How it is explained directly impacts on how it is received and acted upon."

A good argument for effective information design I'd say.