Hello, I'm Joseph C Lawrence, a designer who codes, currently in Cape Town.

I'm just going to list a few things that will give you a good idea of the type of designer and coder I am - it has become quite confusing out there. I have over a decade of experience, and an MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of London, and that's really where my interests, skills and experience spring from. I don't do Photoshop, I don't do logos. I do 'Design Thinking', 'User Experience Design' (UX), and 'Interaction Design'. I code in JavaScript, mostly on the front end. I'm fascinated by the way we perceive the world, and experience reality - I understand this to be a continuous, predictive, controlled hallucination. When I design something, I am trying to create an experience in people's minds, so I try to learn as much about minds as possible, which means learning a lot about brains and bodies. This means I am obsessed with neural networks, with Bayes' Theorem and with Daniel Dennett but also with tensegrity structures and robotics.

So you could kind of say I'm all over the place, and I'm happy with that, because knowledge and wisdom are also to be found all over the place. In fact the most potent places to find them are often at the nexus points between different disciplines. I have been at this a while but I'm only just scratching the surface of what being a good designer, a good engineer, a good creator involves. One thing I know for sure is that having a truly open mind is a necessity, as is learning as much as possible, by doing, as well as by watching and reading.

I sometimes write about Design and Cognitive Science at i|am|interface, and you can also connect with me on Twitter and Linkedin.