Ep. 12: Kevin Knabe - Design, the Making of Sense, and How "Everything" Came to be the Way it is

How did everything come to be the way it is? My guest in Episode 12 of the podcast (I very deliberately decided to post this conversation in Episode 12 – listen to the episode to find out why), runs a blog and is working on a forthcoming book that attempts to answer this very question. 

Kevin Knabe is a User Experience Designer. He has worked at Apple (although not when Steve Jobs was there as Kevin points out!), Rodale and other leading organisations . He designs and improves the way we work with products. His blog (and book by the same name) is called “The Making of Sense” (www.themakingofsense.com).  It’s awesome.  

In it, Kevin applies his design background to all kinds of things and asks the simple question, “why did they design it like that?”  When you read his posts, you come to understand that many of the things that we take for granted and our quite common in our everyday experience were actually designed on the basis of randomness, quirks of history, the needs or other factors present whenever the thing was invented, and many other interesting phenomena.  I find the whole concept behind his blog and book to be strangely empowering.

In this episode, Kevin share many of the excerpts from his blog and forthcoming book and it makes for a very interesting and fun conversation.  We talk about:

•The origin of language and writing;

•Numbers

•The origin of the calendar – and how it could be improved (including a proposal to celebrate Festivus);

•The concept of time – where Kevin discusses Einstein and the theory of relativity, a very trippy part of the conversation;

•Music

•Art

•Randomness and risk in design

•And more

I am sure that you will enjoy it!

Show notes:

•Kevin’s site – “The Making of Sense” - http://www.themakingofsense.com/

•Find Kevin professionally - http://www.knabedesign.com/

•Kevin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/makingofsense

•The backwards brain bicycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

•Track Andre Goeritz, one of my listeners, as he attempts a world record cycling: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0HovQyalscNazqL9rXbQunbbqhUot4PlK 

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