Ben Holliday

Refresh Edinburgh

Last week I gave my first ever design talk at Refresh Edinburgh. I’ve done some public speaking and presenting before but nothing really in the ball park of a 40 minute design talk. I was also really privileged to speak alongside a great speaker and designer in Simon Collison – so the pressure was well and truly on.

In the couple of months before the talk I thought a lot about what I wanted to say. I discovered writing about design is even harder than I imagined. The talk that emerged centered around how we use research and look for insight to design for other people. In the end everything seem come together. I actually enjoyed giving the talk and found the process of sitting down to write really valuable. I might even do it again sometime – not something I was thinking a couple of weeks back.

The results have been filmed so you can watch the video here – you can also view my slides.

Orde Saunders has also kindly posted a good set of notes from the talk.

Many thanks to everyone that came along and gave feedback. Special thanks to Robbie for inviting me to speak and also Andy for organising the event.

This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 18 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky, less frequently now on X (formally Twitter), and on LinkedIn.