Andy Polaine
Online Teaching Tips
Practical tips for teaching and training online, drawn from over twenty years of running virtual design studios and remote workshops.
Writing & Thinking
A mix of essays and commentary about design, innovation, technology, society, coaching, personal and leadership development. Since 1996.
Suddenly remote? Tell me your stories
A call for stories from people suddenly working from home during lockdown, for a new podcast exploring the remote work experience.
Workplaces need to change, not women
Michelle King and research from HBR make the case that gender inequality at work is really a problem of overwork and structural denial, not women''s behaviour.
Remote Work in the Age of Corona
COVID-19 is forcing organisations into remote work. Practical advice on making it genuinely work, from someone who has taught and coached online since 1998.
Organisational Amnesia
Why do organisations keep re-hiring the same coaches to do the same work? A look at how knowledge lives in people rather than processes, and fades when they leave.
Revisiting The Californian Ideology
Twenty-five years on, the 1995 essay The Californian Ideology reads as prescient. Silicon Valley's tech fixation has come at real costs to the physical world.
Leaving Fjord
After four and a half years at Fjord, Andy Polaine returns to independent life, focusing on teaching, coaching, and mentoring design teams.
A second life for avatars?
From Second Life to Facebook Horizon: why virtual worlds keep making the same mistakes, and why digital social spaces are malls, not parks.
Moved to Hugo
The blog has moved from WordPress to Hugo on Netlify, with faster pages, zero tracking, and a new name: Doctor''s Note.
Next Conference and eDay
A compressed version of the Synthetic Realities talk given at Next Hamburg and Emerce eDay, with the slide deck.
Design for the long term
During my move from Australia to Germany I somehow missed posting the talk I gave at Web Directions Design 18 called Design for the Long Term (another version …
Design in the Age of Synthetic Realities
AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic media are remaking the creative industries. A long read on how to understand what''s really at stake.
Learning from Ed Sheeran
I went to see Ed Sheeran live the other day. I can assure that’s not a sentence I thought I would be writing. At the start of his meteoritic rise, I couldn’t …
Storytelling, Pitching and Synthetic Realities at UX Australia 2019
I’m heading back to Australia in August forUX Australia 2019 where I’ll be running a workshop on Storytelling & Pitching for Designers and …
Innovation = Conversation + Doing
“What should we be doing to be increase innovation?” It is a very common question from clients. It’s not unreasonable, since the chatter around innovation is …