Articles written & published
The case for liminal design
It is easy to assume that the beautiful messiness of desires, awe and transformation belong to worlds far away from the good folks that brought you smartphones and digital assistants.
We need to be more explicit about what it means to be interesting and fully human. And then really go to work on the one thing critically missing from the current stage of technology: liminality.
Research Paper: Liminal design
A conceptual framework and three-step approach for developing technology that delivers transcendence and deeper experiences.
We suggest a new category of products to promote deeper and more meaningful experiences, specifically those offering liminality, transcendence, and personal transformation.
On the Narrative of AI as fiction
Yes, we should stop thinking of human interactions as the ultimate state for AI. And no, “AI as tool” is not the only alternative.
There is a third and very different door that is much less limiting for the real goal: our own explorations.
The narrative of designed friction
No, the goal is not ease-of-use and convenient access. And please stop asking customers what they want.
Designed experiences are inherently narrative: they have beginnings and ends. If the end is the same as the beginning, the experience was a waste of time. What makes us …
On curation as narrative
The new Louvre Abu Dhabi is a masterclass in experience design, offering one true lesson: all stories are told for a reason.
One might be excused for entering the new Louvre Abu Dhabi rather smugly, driven by a morbid curiosity wondering how this preposterous project can be anything but a $1.3 billion dollar ploy …
On money as narrative
When the real story of our goal is money, it’s too boring to tell.
What are companies for, really? The Business Roundtable representing 192 of Americas largest companies declared in August of 2019 that leaders should deliver value to “all stakeholders”, challenging the supremacy of “profits to shareholders” as the ultimate goal. The declaration …
On Photographic Reality as Narrative
A narrative model for finding story in the space between reality, and what makes it meaningfully unreal — suggesting a solution to the century old debate of actuality in photographs.
All stories need to be both inevitable and surprising, at the same time. This duality is what makes a story worthwhile. In this context, the slippery reality that looks back at us from a photograph is …
Hippocratic Oath for Storytellers
Do storytellers need an oath, like doctors, priests, soldiers and government officials? Or is our work not important enough?
I write and direct films. I write about story and work with narrative structures as a tool. My work is not academic in nature; I am not that clever. I am like most of you — fighting in the trenches. The daily search for …
Film reviews
Pig (2021)
When Nicholas Cage’s beloved truffle-pig gets stolen, the search forces him to confront his past: the upscale restaurant-scene of Portland.
Part drama, action, comedy and foodie porn, the narrative glue is of course Nicholas Cage. We know from the first scene (chapters marked: Part 1 ‘Wild Mushroom Tart’, Part 2 is called ‘Mom’s French Toast and Deconstructed Scallops’ and Part 3 ‘A Bird, a Bottle, and a Salted Baguette’.) that it will work by sheer audacity. But the film's true genius is slower to reveal…
Jerichow (2008)
Director Christian Petzold injects just a hint of his general political disapproval of how things are in this story of a returning soldier down on his luck who gets hired as a driver and falls in love with the abusive boss' wife. If that sounds like a low budget German remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice, it’s because it should. But Prezold refuses to let his characters take shape of stereotypes and doesn’t let s single false note slip by. The battered wife is destructive in the slow burn Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves sense…