Reference
What I’d hand you if you asked.
No shelf here is comprehensive, and none is trying to be. Each holds the few things that changed how I think, plus the one or two that are the best doors in for someone arriving cold. Each shelf holds exactly eight items — not because that’s a magic number, but because having a constraint forces me to choose what’s really significant.
Ways in
Four ways into the library
Concept index
The glossary begins with a term. The concept index begins with a problem: ten situations and the concepts that might explain them.
Browse by problemGlossaries
3 glossaries: every term the guides define, where it is taught, and what to read next.
Jump to the glossariesShelves
14 shelves of books and sources, each entry with a line in my own words.
Jump to the shelvesIdeas I haven’t sufficiently explored
Five subjects I know I don’t know. A first map of each, and the reading waiting for the right occasion.
See the unchartedRules
What makes this a library
- Nothing is here because it is famous. Several famous things are deliberately absent.
- Every entry carries one line in my own words on why it matters. No publisher blurbs.
- Every shelf names its best door in for a newcomer.
- Anything superseded is removed, not archived.
Professional
9 shelves
Learning science
Every other shelf here assumes an answer to how people learn. This one makes that answer explicit, so the rest can be argued with.
8 entriesLearning spaces
Because the room is already making decisions about who can speak and who can be seen, and most briefs treat it as an empty container.
8 entriesEducational technology
Every generation of technology arrives certain it is different. This shelf is the record of the previous ones saying the same thing.
8 entriesMaker education
Because building something is the fastest way to discover what you actually understand, and the slowest thing to argue for in a curriculum meeting.
8 entriesComplexity education
Because schools are not machines with broken parts, and almost every improvement plan is written as though they are.
8 entriesDesign thinking
It is the method I was schooled in and the one I am most wary of, because it is easy to run the workshop and skip the thinking.
8 entriesBehavioural insights
Because most educational design assumes people act on what they know, and the gap between knowing and doing is where the work really is.
8 entriesUI/UX and interaction design
A national platform is a room too. The same question applies — what does its structure make easy, and who does that leave out?
8 entriesVisual communication
If a framework cannot be drawn it is probably not finished. This shelf is how I test that claim on my own work.
8 entriesPersonal
5 shelves
Mahjong
A game held together by convention rather than documentation, which is exactly why writing it down is interesting.
8 entriesContract bridge
The best-designed information problem I know of, and the literature is unusually well written for a games shelf.
8 entriesBooks
Science fiction is the only literature that treats a designed system as a character. That is closer to my working life than most realism.
8 entriesCartoons
The most unforgiving compression problem in visual communication, and the only medium where failure is immediate and unmistakable.
8 entriesCoffee
A daily ritual that turns out to be a measurement problem, where the variable deciding the outcome is usually the one nobody is adjusting.
8 entriesGlossaries
Five glossaries: one for each series of guides, three for the sets of inspirations
The shelves hold what I read. These hold the vocabulary of what I wrote: every term the guides define, where each is referred to, and what to read next.
The craft glossary
The vocabulary of making a learning product, from abandonment to zero-downtime release. Each term links to the place in its guide where it is referred to.
1002 terms from 22 guidesThe context glossary
The vocabulary of how education works, from ability grouping to zone of proximal development. Each term links to the place in its guide where it is referred to.
756 terms from 24 primersThe field guides glossary
Every bias, collective fallacy, faulty argument and working default in the field guides, in one A to Z. Each name opens its entry.
759 entries from 4 guidesThe phrasebooks glossary
Every term in Instruments and Moves, Marks and Measures, Stacks and Sprints and Shots and Cues, in one A to Z. Each term opens its volume at the slide that holds it.
1,749 terms from 9 volumesThe playbooks glossary
Every method in Briefs and Blueprints, in one A to Z, with the other names each goes by. Each method opens its volume at the slide that holds it.
223 methods from 4 volumes- A definition, in the words of the guide the term comes from.
- The place in that guide where the term is referred to, so the definition can be read in context. A term from the guide’s field that the guide does not use is marked as such.
- Two or three works to follow up, drawn from the guide's own references.