Richard Banks

Designer, Creator, Artist and Technologist based in the United Kingdom

One of the founders of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and an early electronic music pioneer. A nutty book that draws comparisons between electronics and life. Love it.

Love the Talking Heads, although this focuses more on performance than music, really.

You never know. You may be the first one who likes it other than me.

About Me

I'm a Principal Design Manager for Microsoft Research in their lab in Cambridge, UK. I focus on the issues and opportunities raised by artificial intelligence for people. I'm currently working on Project Alexandria, an AI system for making knowledge useful at work.

 

I'm the author of “The Future of Looking Back”, a book which focuses on new digital legacies and their potential impact on memory and reminiscing. I've been involved in over 40 academic papers on this and other subjects.

 

I'm honorary Professor of Design at the University of Dundee, hold an Honorary Doctorate from City University, where I am also a Senior Visiting Fellow at their Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design. I am a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and holder of 44 patents in a broad range of technology areas.

OTher Bits

Design and Creativity

I don't see a real separation between work and home. I don't mean that I have a problem with my work/life balance. It's actually pretty good. I just see the process of design, and the boundaries of creativity, as something that crosses both my personal and professional lives.

 

Maybe because of this I'm the initator of random skills. Making things in one aspect of my life helps me make things in the other. Designers are all about making. In addition to the painting and photography at the top of the page, I keep on starting new, small hobbies. Like these.

A growing, and slightly obsessive, collection of modular synthesizers

Copyright Richard Banks, 2020