Cade is the founder of The New Design Congress, an international research organisation forging a nuanced understanding of technology's role as a social, political and environmental accelerant. He studies, writes, consults and speaks regularly on topics such as digital power structures, privacy, information warfare, resilience, internet economies and the digitisation of cities.

Publications

Projects

  • Dana: Research tools for an uncertain world
    A New Design Congress major project, details tba, ongoing
  • The Para-Real: Finding the future in unexpected places
    A major research project and exhibition series by New Design Congress, produced with C/O Berlin and others, ongoing
  • Underscore: an integrated creative infrastructure platform
    A major New Design Congress research project, ongoing
  • Scrpt: Collaborative audio annotation system
    A research project between New Design Congress and PEN America, 2021
  • The Treaty of Finsbury Park
    An exhibition collaboration between New Design Congress and Furtherfield, 2020-2022
  • Backchannel: Relationship-based digital identity system
    A research project between New design Congress and Ink & Switch , 2021
  • Junkipedia: Mis- and disinformation platform
    A threat modelling & design systems consultation by New Design Congress, 2021
  • Txt: a small word processor that keeps your work safe with well-documented encryption.
    A New Design Congress software prototype, 2020
  • Signalbots: Secrets Distribution and Social Graph Protection for Private Groups
    A New Design Congress consultation with OTF and Simply Secure, 2020

Media Appearances

Speaking / Teaching

Timeline (pre-New Design Congress)

  • Tactical Tech Lite
    An automated infrastructure project that makes Tactical Tech's work accessible to audiences in adversarial situations, in places with poor connectivity, or unusual or difficult to support hardware. Read more about this via the press release. In collaboration with Laurent Dellere, Jacopo Anderlini and Danja Vasiliev.
    Berlin, September 2019

  • Weaponised Design: An Investigative Workshop
    Debut of a new participatory Weaponised Design workshop, in which participants explore the politics of design by investigating and exploiting publicly available algorithms. Completed in collaboration with Tactical Tech and Kings College Faculty of Digital Humanities.
    Open Rights Group Conference, London, July 2019

  • Design Ethics @ Speculative Futures, Berlin
    A guest lecture at Speculative Futures on how 'design ethics' threatens to neutralize both the critique of outcomes and to limit the potentials of design speculation to contribute to a radically reimagined world.
    Speculative Futures, Berlin, July 2019

  • Web of Trust Introduction to PGP and Key-Signing Party
    An arts-tech focused introduction to Web of Trust and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), tracing its origins to the early cypherpunk movement. Supported an introductory PGP key-signing Cryptoparty. With Sarah Friend, Cory Levinson and Sam Hart. Held at Trust.
    Web of Trust Berlin, June 2019

  • Something Or Other: LCC Lecture Series
    Guest lecture at the London College of Communication on how 'Design Ethics' prevents deep examination of systemic inequalities and power structures.
    London College of Communication, London, April 2019

  • Tactical Tech: Organisation Rebrand
    Fifteen year rebrand of Tactical Tech – a berlin-based NGO, with a focus on unifying the organisation's aesthetics and capturing the creativity of the organisation's many team members. With Daisy Kidd, Ida Flik and Philipp Dollinger at Tactical Tech.
    Tactical Tech, Berlin, May 2019

  • Phantasms of Decentralization? Conversations about Commoning with Coming Media
    Participation in "a speculative conversation about a more radical commoning using recent and forthcoming information technologies, including the entanglement of technologies with alternative forms of living together from different scales and levels, such as networking (goods, communication), decision making, predicting/modelling, automation driven post-scarcity economies, tracking, and negotiating situated value."
    Transmediale, Berlin, January 2019

  • The Data Detox Kit
    Project lead for an influential 8 day project that raises public awareness of surveillance capitalism, helps people critically analyse the role of data collection in their lives, and aids them in limiting or removing themselves from these surveillance systems.
    Tactical Tech, Berlin, 2018-2019

  • DACIDA Talks: On Weaponised Design
    A livestream talk for DACIDA, an online community that gathers creative, open-minded fellows with the goal of exploring, sharing experiences and starting a dialogue about what it means to be an artist in the 21st century. Organised by the NGO "Gradska Gerila" with the support of the Goethe-Institut Belgrade.
    Berlin, November 2018

  • Radical Networks
    A longer talk about Weaponised Design at Radical Networks – a festival and a conference designed to foster critical discussions around policy, DIY networking and the future of the Internet.
    Spektrum, Berlin, October 2018

  • Hyper Island
    Guest lecture at Hyper Island's Stockholm campus about weaponised design, and the greater politics of infrastructure.
    Hyper Island, Stockholm, September 2018

  • Ghost in the Machine
    A talk on Weaponised Design alongside complementary talks on Live Action Role Play by Susan Ploetz, and artificial intelligence ethics by Joshua Johnson.
    Trust, Berlin, July 2018

  • XYZ
    Design direction for a the XYZ project, a space to publish practical tools to navigate digital security and privacy from a gender perspective, in collaboration with Semanur Karaman.
    Gender & Tech Institute / Tactical Tech, Berlin, March 2018

  • Efficiency and Madness Postgraduate Semester
    Co-developed and lectured the winter 2017/2018 semester of Universität Potsdam's Designschule post-graduate programme. With Stephanie Hankey, Marek Tuszynski and Varoon Bashyakarla.
    Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, September 2017 – February 2018

  • CoinJar Exchange
    Creative and design direction for a professional cryptocurrency trading platform and related branding. In collaboration with Ignatius Gilfedder.
    CoinJar, Melbourne & Berlin, February 2018

  • SpiderOak.com
    Creative direction for SpiderOak and its suite of products. A two year focus on design research within an information security context, covering the entire company's communications, strategy and products. In collaboration with photographer Ward Roberts, and, for a time, Isobar Chicago, SpiderOak's design team mixed information security, aesthetics and design to develop new approaches of authenticating and communicating securely.
    SpiderOak, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, July 2015 – January 2017

  • Semaphor.app
    Led design on an end-to-end encrypted collaboration platform. Tested a series of aesthetic and user experience concepts informed by ongoing user research and learnings from Kloak, an earlier project.
    SpiderOak, Chicago & Kansas City, June 2016

  • Nervous Design: Building Anxiousness Into Interfaces
    A showcase of design experiments that explore how user-hostile security and privacy can become the centre of a designer’s practice.
    Digital Designer's Toolbox, Melbourne, May 2016

  • Encryptr.app
    Redesign and rebrand of a light-weight open source synced password manager after its acqusition by SpiderOak.
    SpiderOak, Chicago & Kansas City, December 2015

  • Kloak.app
    A white-list first microblogging social media app, highly private and designed with a novel form of inter-personal verification between users. Developed in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, specifically researching asynchronous key exchange.
    SpiderOak, Chicago & Kansas City, September 2015

  • Signal
    Four month volunteer research project with Open Whisper Systems on for the popular encrypted messenger app, Signal. This prototype led to me contributing to the push to complete Signal 2.0 in Hawaii.
    Open Whisper Systems, Melbourne & Kauai, January 2015

  • CoinJar
    Creative Director at Australia's most successful cryptocurrency startup, overseeing design and product direction as the company transitioned from a small startup to a fully fledged new-finance platform. Oversaw the design and development of the company's suite of early-stage crypto products, including personal wallet apps for desktop and handheld devices and the CoinJar Swipe debit card.
    CoinJar, Melbourne, December 2013 - July 2015

  • Metaverse Nails
    Design & branding for a cyberpunk Shanghai/Melbourne-based augmented reality fashion label.
    Metaverse Makeovers, Shanghai, Busan, & Melbourne, April 2013