Our environments shape us.
We are the first species on earth with the power to shape our environment.
So, what do we want to become?
Kasey Klimes · Systems Designer · Brooklyn
Founder of Primitive
Decision infrastructure for coordinated intelligence
IYKYK
If English is a programming language, then why isn't your codebase in English?
The weather app for touching grass
My product strategy consultancy focused on team alignment and collective decision-making.
Guest lecture for interaction design students at SVA.
My graduate course for product design students at Harbour Space in Barcelona.
Every gift you give this holiday season will (most likely) be disposable garbage. Most likely, so will every gift you receive. That’s not your fault or the f...
people making tools for people
I try my best to give my students practical non-obvious advice they can use to jumpstart their careers upon graduation.
Project-based learning tool exploring LLM user experiences and Montessori methods in software
I consult with lots of product teams, but this was one of my favorite collaborations.
What happens when we combine inclusionary zoning with a land value tax?
This is the village in Germany where my parents met in the 1980s. It is called Imsbach, population: 971. The longest walk you can take...
Frenchy's last day in Brooklyn.
Nor should they.
Over the weekend, Scott Alexander wrote a post titled Change My Mind: Density Increases Local But Decreases Global Prices.
A knowledge-base for the evolution of economic thinking
What do grey wolves have to do with economic policy?
There's just one thing missing.
Lead UX research for world-scale augmented reality
For years, I’ve heard some variation of the following lament from clients, collaborators, and friends with startups:
Modern Study was a monthly salon for omnivorously curious people that I hosted in my living room and online. It grew to 100+ designers, technologists, artists, scientists, etc. across five continents.
Despite Christopher Alexander’s notable application of complexity theory in design during the 60's and 70's, the two fields have mysteriously grown apart. ...
It's easy to watch the unraveling of our political discourse and believe that, somehow, people have simply lost the moral character they once possessed. But people haven't changed. What's changed are the environmental rules that govern our interactions...
Experimental feature for Google
A platform for the synthesis and visualization of public life data from over 70 cities
In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed the Memex, a machine that would provide an "enlarged intimate supplement to one's memory" by compressing and storing all of on...
I earned my Master's degree in City Planning at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design, with an emphasis on urban design.
In March I attended the RadicalxChange conference in Detroit, where “data as labor” was celebrated as a core tenet of a nascent social movement. This idea ga...
A strange thing happens when human systems grow. They have a tendency to be guided less by relationships between humans and more by relationships between cap...
Deaton and I arrived in Viñales just before noon, completely oblivious to the naivete that would soon have us freaking out...
It’s not me. There’s nothing I can do. I’ll lose my job if I don’t do it. And look – suppose you kill me? They’ll just hang you, but long before you’re hung ...
Interactive visualization accompanying my UC Berkeley masters thesis
Thoughts are exogenous. What we think about from moment to moment is influenced–consciously or subconsciously–by our job, our friends and family, our educati...
A proposal for transforming excess vehicular space into human-scaled development
I attended Montessori schools as a kid. For those unfamiliar with the teaching philosophy, it’s less about “teaching” in any formal sense and more about prov...
Talk at Latin American Open Data Conference
I have an admission to make: I can’t keep up with politics.
Graduate urban design project proposing removal of an underutilized freeway
Imagine two households. The first household, the Millers, make a combined income of $100,000 a year–decent, livable, but modest compared to many of their n...
Public space improvement strategy for pedestrian experience amid increased urban density
Land is a strange commodity. The economic relationship between taxes and supply is usually very simple; increased taxes are registered by the market as incre...
A Historical Portrait of Sprawl in 51 US Cities
Report chapter examining how building scale influences urban vitality
GPS tracing survey and mobility research for campus infrastructure planning
Public Space/Public Life Report
A platform for interfacing with vacancy.
As a teenager I had a twee af music project with Jeremy Clark and a scrappy analog recording studio that I cobbled together in my parent's basement.
I used to be a coffee salesman. Sometimes I'd get to do cool things like travel to origin, meet the farmers, and buy green coffee.
Jolene
