Dan Hill – Closing keynote: 15 years in
Web Directions South 2009, Sydney Convention Centre, October 9 4.05pm.
Presentation slides
Session description
It is time for the practice of web development and design to broaden its horizons. How can the skills and experience we’ve acquired over the last 15 years of working on the internet be applied more broadly to, say, the design of cities, buildings, organisations, government and so on?
In a slightly foolhardy, ambitious talk, Dan will draw from his experience of leading design across the BBC’s websites, co-founding the global media product Monocle, working with projects like Lonely Planet, Channel 4, Urbis museum and the Spice Girls website, and now his current work with the multidisciplinary design consultancy Arup, where he helps design better cities, buildings and streets.
Dan will suggest that some of these core ideas – harnessing user-centred thinking with the sparks of individual insight, working with real-time data, separating content from presentation, multidisciplinary design-centred practice, enabling adaptation and hackability, balancing top-down intervention with bottom-up emergence, amongst others – might work effectively as core principles of service design, offering new ways to build, design, innovate and operate to services, products and organisations well outside of the Australian web industry’s traditional focus.
About Dan Hill
Dan Hill is a Senior Consultant in Urban Informatics currently working for Arup, a global firm of designers, engineers and planners. He has been working at the forefront of information and communication technologies since the early ‘90s, developing many innovative, popular and critically acclaimed products and services. He conducted significant strategic work as one of the key architects of a BBC redesigned for the on-demand media age, launched Monocle magazine, organised the architecture and urbanism conference, Postopolis, and runs City of Sound, generally acclaimed as one of the leading architecture and urbanism websites. Dan has experience of product development and management in design, software and innovation, applied to sectors ranging from media and music to city government and academia. This is combined with a background of research and practice in urban regeneration through cultural industries and urban informatics. For Arup, Dan is helping clients explore the possibilities of ICT from a creative, design-led perspective, re-thinking how information changes streets and cities, neighbourhoods and organisations, mobility and work, play and public space.
Follow Dan on Twitter: @cityofsound
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