Best new music 2025
The year’s best music, and a personal reflection on 2025, exactly 366 days after the last one.
On the ritual use of personas in design
What happens when a method meant to represent complexity becomes a performative shortcut instead? A critical look at the persona artifact in design work.
Best new music 2024
A brief personal reflection followed by the traditional list of the best music that caught my ear during 2024.
Best new music 2023
Better late than never, here is my annual blog post listing my favourite new releases from 2023. It’s been a rather trying festive season this year because the rich soup of respiratory viruses making the rounds have ensured that my various holiday writing projects, including this one, got pushed and pushed.
Best new music 2022
Every year, I somehow commit myself to spending a few days writing up the best new recorded music I heard in the previous 12 months. Here’s the 2022 edition.
Gamestorming for ethnographic data analysis
On January 31, 2022, I gave a talk at the Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto, about using “gamestorming” — a set of collaborative workshop techniques — for ethnographic data analysis.
Best new music 2021
A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of the afternoon, someone enthusiastically rang our doorbell and then knocked several times. Unfortunately, we were both on Zoom calls so couldn’t rush to the door to see who was there. Usually … [read more]
Of mixtapes and playlists (DIVERSIONS//2021.01)
This year, I’ve decided to occasionally make a streamed playlist “mixtape.” I don’t have a specific listener in mind. I do this for my own amusement primarily. There might be a series of these, or only a few ultimately. My objective is to include good music, of course, but also to sequence something that’s listenable in context.