The Farm Lab is where my thinking about digital design, systems and regenerative futures is grounded in lived experience. I divide my time between two very different environments – the fast-paced world of digital design in the city and my 32-acres farm in regional Victoria where I care for animals and land.
The Farm Lab is where I explore the convergence and tension between the physical and the digital. Through field notes from the farm, observations of land and animal stewardship, small everyday experiments – I reflect on how these lived experiences shape my thinking about digital design, systems and regenerative futures – creating a continual dialogue that informs my work, teaching and long-term approach to design – and in life.
The long weekend gave me a short gap between busy university work to continue working on The Wind Writes project, which explores wind as an interaction agent within a more-than-human interaction design system. Over the past 5 days I’ve been out at the farm installing the weather station – pulling everything together and getting the … Read more
The Wind Writes. That’s the name I’ve given this project. It explores wind as an interaction agent – operating a digital interface through text – removing both human input and AI mediation from the interaction loop. An exploration of more-than-human interaction design, though I feel that term is somewhat of a misnomer, for interaction design … Read more
What if wind could operate a digital interface? I was having my usual morning coffee at the farm yesterday, looking out at the wind turbines in the distance as their blades slowly turned in tandem with the wind. It got me thinking about the qualities of wind. It’s invisible, yet it has an omnipresence – … Read more
We are now three weeks into January 2026. I started work on 2nd January (whilst it’s still quiet) to allow room for deep work. In recent years it has become increasingly apparent to me how work easily spills into every available surface – desks, calendars, weekends, energy and attention – and how that is often … Read more
Left the farm late evening yesterday. When the sky turns orange and the air starts to smell like burnt toast, that’s a sign to leave. I wasn’t in a Watch and Act zone on the VicEmergency app, but there were two active spots close by that kept getting closer. The problem with waiting too long … Read more
It’s been a week since the massive tree limb fell off my gum tree. The powerful gusts last week managed to peel this massive limb off the tree. About 7 meters long. The sun finally came out by noon, I considered procrastinating (my neighbour said I’m the laziest farmer in the world) but eventually, got … Read more
Back from traveling two days ago – a productive trip, but an absolutely long and arduous journey. Happy to be back to farm base. It’s only been a week, but the grass is noticeably greener. The quails have started crowing (signalling the abundance of eggs in forthcoming weeks). The dam and creek has started filling. … Read more
Farm fact – the speckled patterns on quail eggs are akin to fingerprints, unique to individual quail hens. It still amazes me. Each hen lays with the same pattern her entire life, like a built-in signature. I grew up eating quail eggs. It’s very common in Malaysia – we typically hard boil them, served with … Read more
Back to farm sweet farm after a busy work week. It was very productive. But there’s also work waiting at the farm – never-ending list that kept piling up – everything needing maintenance, repair and tending to. I’d fallen behind, but I’m slowly starting to restore order here. Finally got to the chicken coop today … Read more
There’s a quote I like: “Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a 6-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” Paul Harvey said that. No matter how advanced we become, everything comes back to the land. I came back this weekend to … Read more