When Companies Build for the Wrong Idea of How People Live

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This article argues that research should not only be used to validate strategy after key decisions have already been made, but should help shape the strategic imagination behind what organisations build. Through examples such as the Tesla Cybertruck, the DeLorean, Google Glass, Apple Vision Pro, the iPod, Dyson and the Panini World Cup album, it explores why some products attract attention but fail to become meaningful, while others succeed because they understand real behaviours, emotions, frustrations and cultural rituals. The article then connects this argument to AI, showing why human research and judgement become even more important when companies can generate ideas, prototypes and products faster than ever. Its central claim is that organisations do not only build products, services or technologies. They build assumptions about how people should live, and good research keeps those assumptions answerable to life.

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The Material Ghost in the Machine: Why are we buying physical records like vinyl or CDs again? (2016-2031)

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Why are we buying physical records like vinyl or CDs again these days? This article shows changes in music, how the culture of it is changing and what probably could happen over the next five years.

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My first book has been released! "Eating With The Heart"

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I would like to announce that my first book has just been launched in Spanish by Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. “Comiendo Con El Corazón: Cómo La Comida Abre (o No) Espacios de Integración en Lima” (Eating With The Hearth: How Food Opens (or not) Spaces of Integration in Lima.”).

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What Do We Talk About When We talk About Democratic Urban Design?

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Here's an article I just wrote for The Centre for Conscious Design (CCD) about what democratic design is, why it's important, what it entails for design practitioners and policy stakeholders focused on cities, and why communities are so central to make cities vibrant.

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The scientific evidence that trees communicate and are sentient beings

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Science has proven through new break through research how trees communicate with each other and how they are sentient beings, just like humans and animals are. Knowing more about the research being done on the topic (through an illuminating 18-minute Ted Talk) will change the way you think about how we as human beings relate to the world.

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Current focus: between the worlds of social research and the marketing

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Focusing on new directions: the intersections between social research and the field of marketing. New blog posts ahead!

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What is making cities for people? (video)

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In this video, I argue why it's important to have a people-centered perspective when thinking about the way cities are designed around the world, and why public spaces are so important for this.

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What the built environment does to people: the lack of public spaces and democracy in the district of Los Olivos

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Public spaces are essential to city life. Public spaces are places such as plazas, parks, streets lined with things to do, where people can see other people. “Others” are not just family and neighbors, but moreover people one would not normally see in one’s own area of residence, including people from different socioeconomic backgrounds or from areas of the city different from ours. Public spaces are thus central for people to become accustomed to seeing strangers and developing a sense of diversity and civic congeniality. The district of Los Olivos (Lima, Peru) has developed as an up-and-coming residential neighborhood with lots of parks but with no real public spaces. In this article, I explore how this affects public life and people's high sense of danger and lack of public security.

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Technology, music and how we understand society through popular culture: Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and electronic music in the 1970s

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What is the meaning of  music to a society? Everyone has a special relationship with music, but not everyone can very clearly say what makes a song, a style or band special to someone. By looking at the cases of the two grandfathers of electronic music (Kraftwerk in Germany, Yellow Magic Orchestra in Japan), and how electronic music emerged in Germany and Japan in the 1970s, we can explore the relationship between popular music and the social, historical and cultural context in which it appears.

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Understanding civil society and civic culture in Latin America: Southern Peru and Buenos Aires

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Whilst the case of the city of Lima is my the focus of my work, in this article I would like to focus on what civil society is and what happens when it does not exist. To do this, I would like to refer to another case in Peru, that of the cities of Puno and Juliaca, and later compare them to the case of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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"The limits between life and the virtual: the real shape of autistic avatars" a documentary by the NHK

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In July this year, I worked as a photographer and personal assistant to professor Eiko Ikegami (sociology and history professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City) on a documentary the NHK (the Japanese broadcasting company, the Japanese equivalent to the British BBC) was filming about her work on people in the autism spectrum that use Second Life (the online virtual world) as a platform for support and socialization.

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