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// Ben Bashford

Product, Design, Engineering, Data Science. Marketing agencies, innovation studios, in-house. I’ve done all three, and moved between them on purpose.

I like the cutting edge, but the technology is often the easy part. People and process are the work.

My job is turning insight and intuition into decisions. Curious and creative first, rigorous second. Prototypes over decks. Experiments over opinions. I’ve killed ideas I liked because the data didn’t back them, and shipped ones I didn’t because it did.

Sometimes I lead from the front. Sometimes the best thing I can do is get out of the way. Either way, the work only gets good when people feel valued and safe enough to be wrong in front of each other. Self-esteem powers bravery.

I'd love to tell you more.

// Node Based Tool Design

I spent an evening this week back in Max/MSP, patching boxes together on a canvas, watching numbers and audio move from one to the next in something close to real time.

A look at node based tool design: what it actually is, where you’ve probably already met it, the patterns that keep showing up wherever someone builds one of these, and why the same shape might be the best way to work with AI itself.

Also: modular synths, Mark Fell on why he builds his own tools inside Max/MSP, and why a shader node in Blender is doing the same basic trick as a mixing desk.

// Information Appliances

Every function a device can perform is something your brain has to hold open as a possibility.

Jef Raskin, the Canon Cat, and why a device that only does one thing asks less of you than one that does everything.

Also: a language with only one variable, a phone that used to do one thing at a time, and the iPod again.