A lot of digital transformation is happening this year, less in response to new problems and more because old problems are now painfully visible to those in power. Covid is a teenager lighting our accumulated unuseful defaults on fire and leaving them on the mayor’s doorstep. Take daycare thermometers in…

An emotional object beyond the smartphone — by Chris Palmieri with Jan Rod This essay was originally published at AQ. Consider a weekend visit to the beach. As the sun sinks below the horizon, a companion folds up the blanket and scrapes the sand from between their toes. You take a last stroll along the shoreline, looking for a little souvenir to bring back to the city. You find a stone. Smooth, slightly flat, unremarkable in color, it fits just so in the palm of your hand. When you make a fist, it disappears completely. You slip it into your pocket, and head home.

by Chris Palmieri A few days ago, I asked a few friends to join me for a showing of Mad Max: Fury Road. And not just any showing, but the most obscenely extravagant one I could find — the MX4D-equipped Theater 8 at Toho Cinemas in Roppongi.

Five questions for designers — by Chris Palmieri This essay was originally published at AQ. We need to talk about our ethics. As individual practitioners, designers have a responsibility to society independent of our client or employer. Unlike doctors or lawyers, this responsibility has not been defined by our community under a single code. …

Minimal signposts, the practice of noticing, and narrative mapping. — One spring a few years ago, I was wandering along a web of small paths in Kenroku-en, one of the three great gardens of Japan, when I came upon a stone, about the size of a small potato. The stone lay in the middle of the path, and had been…