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1. Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?

A thought-provoking essay from Bruce Nussbaum over at Fast Company Design:

Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers? Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

2. 101 Patterns for Influencing Behavior Through Design

In the tradition of Oblique Strategies and IDEO’s Method Cards, Dan Lockton has created a design deck with patterns meant to affect user behavior.

3. The Ethics of Overdraft Policies

This article is breathlessly anti-bank, but it has a point: what kind of company could ethically design a policy like this?

“When you step back and ask, as a reasonable business person, would any customer want their fees to be itemized such that their fees would be maximized? No. No customer would ever want it.”

4. PAY & SIT: the private bench

Adam Greenfield on delicious:

The truly terrifying aspect of Fabien Brunsing’s piece illustrating differential permissioning and the monetization of public space…is that you can bet someone somewhere’s going to take it as a best practice.