UX for Architects

  • Take care.

    Design is a power – underestimated by designers and ignored or exploited by others. Our collective failure to recognise the extents of power we yield as designers has ‘hollowed out’ architectural culture.

  • Photograph used with permission by Tony Lin, Playing with Shadows.

    The architect, my sensualist.

    The opinions and criticism I hear around architecture’s obsession with the sublime and ineptitude of codifying it seem unnecessary through a UX lens. There can be method in madness.

  • Because these stairs are actually fu

    I see images of these ‘stramps’ and others like them do the rounds on social media, accompanied with loads of praising comments like ‘this is so good for wheelchair users’ and ‘this is how you do great accessible design’. The problem is: it isn’t, and it isn’t.

  • Two simple design processes

    A UX process for Architecture: Rendition 1

    The complexity of Architecture UX needs a simple reference point we can make a mess of and return to time and time again. As a UX designer, I’d developed a UX design process which I’m now adapting for Architecture. Read the six-phase process and get thinking about empathy and ego with me.

  • Preliminary case study thoughts

    Here’s a short update on the WeWork/UX case study progress. I share my preliminary thoughts on the purpose of the case study, my theories and assumptions, like how I think WeWork applied a product-business model way of thinking to office space, using architecture as a research and development tool.

  • Data-informed Architecture: Acquire data literacy and reap the rewards

    I’m introducing the research I’m starting for the first case study. WeWork recognised that UX research is a means to create architecture that responds to people and their humanity, and recruited a UX team to find out how. WeWork acquired architectural data literacy and reaped the rewards.