2. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
Thomas Wendt
UX Strategist and Researcher
Founder of Surrounding Signifiers, a strategy and
design consultancy
Background in continental philosophy, psychology,
and literary theory
3. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://img103.fansshare.com/pic12/w/non-celebrity/
800/8520_jean_baudrillard.jpg
“We live in a world where there is
more and more information, and
less and less meaning.”
Jean Baudrillard
10. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
“Apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals
cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only
through invention and re-invention, through the
restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry
human beings pursue in the world, with the world,
and with each other.”
Paulo Freire
11. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
Ancient Greeks
Theory
Practice
Technology
Design
12. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
Ancient Greeks
Theory
Practice
Technology
Design
Praxis
13. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://uxmag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/evanswireframing/
globalcruise6.png
14. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/uploads/Beautiful%20Trouble/PRINCIPLE
%20Praxis%20Makes%20Perfect/PR_Praxis%20Makes%20Perfect_Praxis
17. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/uploads/Beautiful%20Trouble/PRINCIPLE
%20Praxis%20Makes%http://cdn.grin.com/images/preview-object/document.
18. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
“A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound
combined with a series of differences of ideas.”
Ferdinand de Saussure
19. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/http://fanart.tv/fanart/music/382f1005-
e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2/albumcover/all-eyez-on-
20. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/http://fanart.tv/fanart/music/382f1005-
e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2/albumcover/all-eyez-on-
West side
Urban culture
Teenage rebellion
Gangsta rap
MTV
Rural/suburban white kids
Conspiracy theory
25. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
“Intelligence and understanding are rooted not in
the presence and manipulation of explicit,
language-like data structures, but in something
more earthy: the tuning of basic responses to a real
world that enables an embodied organism to sense,
act, and survive.”
Andy Clark
26. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tOjzP9CI7tE/STJi66aMyhI/AAAAAAAAAS4/
isVs8IugZJk/s1600/Martin+Heidegger,+Looking+Surprised,+scanned
Design for
Dasein
27. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://absolutegalore.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/monkey-wrench-
mini1.jpg
31. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?
q=tbn:ANd9GcSzBSsXw4M5nEcuU4lD8iTyyRw4QJj__s7D06gnoY-
“If knowledge about the unconscious were as
important for the patient as people inexperienced in
psychoanalysis imagine, listening to lectures or
reading books would be enough to cure him. Such
measures, however, have as much influence on the
symptoms of nervous illness as a distribution of
menu-cards in a time of famine has upon hunger.”
Sigmund Freud