David Dylan Thomas

David Dylan Thomas

author, speaker, filmmaker

David Dylan Thomas has given presentations on the intersection of design, bias, and social justice at TEDNYC, SXSW Interactive, Confab, LavaCon, UX Copenhagen, Artifact, and the Wharton Web Conference. His book Design for Cognitive Bias was recently published in the A Book Apart series. His work combines more than ten years of content strategy experience in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail with a deep understanding of bias cultivated by researching and producing over a hundred episodes of The Cognitive Bias Podcast.

circle triangle square.001

How has being curious impacted your life?

Being curious has made my life. I’ve always been curious about how the world works. It led me to make movies. It led me to write my book. It led me to advocate for inclusive design. There’s very little in my life that has not been impacted by curiosity.

In your own words, what is curiosity?

Curiosity is a reverence for that which you do not know. It’s an acknowledgment that learning never ends. And it’s an insatiable desire to know more. It is a meal that never ends for a hunger that never fades. But in a fun way. Not a starve-y way.

Curiosity is a reverence for that which you do not know. It’s an acknowledgment that learning never ends.

What habits or practices do you have that cultivate curiosity?

I make it part of my routine to visit websites that are designed to pull me out of my lane. A simple example is Window Swap. It literally shows you a window on to some other part of the world by showing you webcam footage looking out through some rando’s window. From all over the world. I look at that thing once a day to remind myself that there are many more views (literally) than my own and many parts of the world that I may never visit or think about but I should.

Let’s take a windowsnap