About Arvind Venkataramani

Life is complex, and as a design researcher, I help people understand and tame this complexity and, hopefully, make better products and lives.

This website collects a set of observations and speculations about the world as viewed through the lenses of the interaction design and design research disciplines. As I learn more about living on earth and being human, both professionally and personally, I continue to document here my syntheses on dealing with complexity and designing a more humane world.

An incomplete and incoherent manifesto for life

1. All models are incorrect, but some are useful {box & draper}

2. When in doubt, be interested

3. Fail forward, fail fast

4. There are no grand truths, just small stories, local meanings and approximations

5. Go where you love being, and love where you are
   if you hate your city, you probably just don't know where to connect with your crowd. if you can't find a crowd, make one.

6. Worth owning: books, make tools, and cooking gear
   everything else is dead-weight and incurs effort.

7. Obsess over something

8. Think, do, document, reflect, re-orient, repeat.
   honour thy error as a hidden intention. {eno & schmidt}

9. Design against yourself
   uncover your biases, and design your world to compensate against them.

10. Work and life are the same
    take what you know in one and apply it to the other. watch boundaries vanish.

11. Repetition is a form of change {eno & schmidt}

12. Be gameful, playful, and artful

13. Travel uncomfortably

14. Rest. Disconnect. Slow down. Listen to silence.

15. It is more important to be human than to be right
    break rules when necessary.

16. Do good. You will always know what that is.
    and leave each place better than when you found it

17. this manifesto is a model. see #1, #4 & #8.