Guy Adam Ailion

The World Just For You

Agents of hyper-personalisation, fast software and the One-User OS.

On Thursday nights, millions watched Friends together. Shared time. Shared culture. Shared narrative. Now? You and I can scroll for hours and never see the same thing.

The systems around us are reorganising themselves around the individual. And the more you engage, the more the world is bending around you.

The Future of Search Is Conversational, 2021

A search bar is a blunt tool. Even with filters, the current state of Search is dogmatic and presumptuous. The future of Search will understand the context and meaning behind both the enquiry and the enquirer. This new interface will be conversational...

Rise of the Weird

AI risks the slow homogenization of culture, the blending of everything into the middle, and if you are not aware of how these models work, you risk the averaging of your own taste. The sanding down of your jagged edges.

But this is also the most incredible opportunity, and a wild moment of leverage for creative thinkers to rise. A moment where your irreducible weirdness will become incredibly valuable.

Everywhere Is Here — Designing the Future Library

With technology becoming cheaper and faster, the 3rd world Digital Divide must be seen as more than lack of hardware, and rather as a cultural divide. In these cities, the Library as a civic place of information is the perfect opportunity for a re-think of civic theatres of knowledge.

Why Designers Should Be Founders

One of the biggest mind shifts from Design to Tech was unlearning the need for consensus. Firstly, creativity is never linear. And neither is a startup. You have to be okay in the mess — in that space where nothing is finished, and everything is at risk.

In architecture, you're often seeking approval—from clients, from committees, from planning authorities and local residents. But in startups, speed beats symmetry. What you need is conviction not consensus.

Death of the Drawing Board — The Future of Built Design

The architect’s drawing board is dead. It died a long time ago, but when it did, it opened a whole new world of creativity and efficiency. The results quite literally changed the world, not just for designers but all of us. And now there is a new victim.

From Ancient to Digital Moodboards — The AI Design Leap

The concept of a mood board has been around in a variety of forms for centuries, quietly overlooked as one of the most stable means for visual human communication across time and culture. With GenAI, these intelligent tools are another leap in mood board evolution.

Small Huge, A Micro Book

I wrote 5 of my most valuable Small Huge Ideas into a micro-book. 7 minutes to read, a lifetime of creative leverage.

Curating Places — Beyond Placemaking Design

When it comes to the way we design public spaces we need to recognize how the ‘Experience Economy’ is changing the way we see placemaking, regeneration, tourism and even retail design.

It is not the design of the physical place alone that makes it a successful place, but rather the emotional experience of it.

Making Designers Better Storytellers

What happens when every material and product has a 3D digital twin, that you can experience online, on any device? The way we curate, mix and match these physical products changes. This starts with interior designers, who are in many ways the masters of collecting materials and objects to tell stories.

Designing for Trust — How to Hug a Bot

Can you convert a digital handshake to a digital hug by designing for Trust, Desire, and Delight using the Oxytocin metric.

VISI Interview About Design

“Think hard. Keep it simple. Make sure it functions. Beauty is a product of both function and aesthetics – where function fails, so does beauty.”