Category: The daily blog – For Engineers (and Other Humans)Page 1 of 4
My daily blog on creativity, regenerative design and practical philosophy drawn from across my teaching, writing and collaborations. Sign up for my weekly digest by clicking here and choosing the appropriate button.
This is my final post for the year. Some things we notice because we are looking for them. I have lost my keys; I look around the house,…
Four times a year, I have the pleasure of heading up to Cambridge to teach on the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) course. It’s always a…
It is easy to look back on the year and list what you have done – projects started and milestones met, things ticked off. It is much harder…
Any domain of knowledge is a treasure trove of jargon. When that knowledge relates to a traditional craft, it becomes a vocabulary deeply rooted in working with the…
Make hay while the wind blows. Riffing on yesterday’s theme of power, a few weeks ago as storm winds tore across the UK, I was kept awake by…
At my latitude in Bristol, there are about 12 fewer hours of sunlight at the winter solstice compared to the summer. That’s half a day’s less light. What’s…
I used to like making New Year’s resolutions. My resolution to stop eating chocolate digestives in my old job at Expedition Engineering lasted 3.5 years. My resolution to…
Last week, I wrote about an idea-generation strategy I regularly use in teaching called Juice the Brief. This week, I’ve been working on an analogous method called Juice…
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about doing more with the tags on this blog. Tags are the keywords that I assign to every post on this blog….
I need to get that invoice out. What was I thinking about? Should I order another coffee? There’s so much to do before Christmas. Is the role of…
(To the tune of “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor”) Chorus: What shall we do with a no-brief client? What shall we do with a no-brief…
Things are just a bit too busy right now. I don’t really have much time to think about my design process. Or so it goes. But here’s the…
Nobody relishes the prospect of a dull meeting, which is why, as a facilitator and trainer, I always try to bring an element of play into my workshops….
If you’ve ever played the computer game Tetris, you’ll know how it goes: things are fine at first. Blocks drop at a manageable pace, and you can take…
Some ideas are an instant hit. Some don’t stick at all. And some—ones you thought hadn’t stuck—are simply taking a long time to grow. Today, I’m running training…
Juice the Brief is one of my favourite techniques for uncovering the possibilities hidden in a design brief. It’s a simple yet powerful way to stimulate creativity, generate…
This week, I’ve been writing about observation as the starting point for regenerative design. Today, I’ve been working with colleagues at Hazel Hill Wood to envision a year-long…
Yesterday, I wrote about how starting design with observation allows us to take a broader, more holistic view of the systems we’re working within. Another reason to start…
We often think of design as starting with a design brief—a set of requirements outlining what we want. But when seen through a regenerative lens, design begins differently….
Yesterday, I wrote about improving how we manage poo at Hazel Hill. One particular challenge our staff face is dealing with three of our most “productive” toilets. These…
Some context. When people started visiting Hazel Hill Wood for respite and educational weekends in the early 1990s, there were no buildings. I believe the first structure to…
A final thought on conflict. This time, how the different modes of conflict (competition, accommodation, avoidance and collaboration) can be thought of as free-body collisions. Avoidance – the…
You read that right. No it is not an abbreviation of pack lunch. Clunch is a type of limestone, and one of the wonderful pieces of vocabulary I…
The fourth mode of conflict is collaboration. In this mode we are interested in the other person but also keen to assert our own view. I want you…
My job today is to convince you that avoidance is a mode of conflict, alongside the others we’ve considered this week: competition and acceptance. I could try to…
This week, I’ve been posting about conflict in design. By conflict, I simply mean two people with different perspectives. What happens next, when they discover their differing views,…
In this series of posts, I’m exploring conflict in design, which, for these purposes, is what happens when two people have different views on a subject. In each…
Some people like conflict. Other people stay away from it.Some people attempt to engage constructively in conflict. The opposite is also true. For me, conflict is simply when…
Having spent his whole professional career performing and recording symphonic music, my father, Nigel Broadbent, is a font of knowledge about composers’ creative methods. For engineers (and other…
Design is a continuous, looping process. It is a loop that begins with observing a situation, then establishing a brief for your work, developing ideas, and testing those…