What We Do
UnProductive Solutions is an international technology holding company that supports digital technologies designed to challenge the logic of hyper-efficiency.
In a world increasingly experienced through the lenses of algorithms for a market in constant beta testing, UnProductive Solutions invests in services that explore complex personhood over technological determinism.
Our embrace of complex personhood is inspired by Avery Gordon and proposes that a person can simultaneously remember and forget, get stuck in the symptoms of their troubles, get tired and be lazy, and also be straightforward and full of subtle meaning. Our mission is to imagine a technological world that nurtures human connections.
Who We Are
Carla Duffett —
Skeptical Tech Innovator
Carla oversees product standard deviation across all tech departments.
Previously they were Technology Lead for Short-Term Innovation Inc. and Former Futurologist for Open Enterprises Inc.
Sarah Blank —
Visual Linguist
Sarah leads the team in design unthinking and disruptive operations.
She comes to us from her role as Lead Designer of the iPhone EarthX, and President of Anticipatory Meaning.
History of UnPro
UnProductive Solutions Ltd. was established in 2019 with seed funding from ArtsEngine, The Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Institute for the Humanities, the Stamps School of Art & Design, and the University of Michigan Office of Research.
The company was created building on the experiences and expertises developed by our team with our previous venture #exstrange.
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After working within the online marketplace and observing the relational networks that grew from from #exstrange “product” exchanges, we wanted to support the kind of research and development that prioritises human interests and desires within digital services.
UnProductive Solutions is dedicated to delivering services that challenge the values and anxieties that digital services currently impose on people’s lives, and to assert possibilities beyond the narrow visions of their current design.
We distrust the digital economy’s mantra of logic efficiency and standardisation — streamline, outsource, update, monitor, connect — and its quest to seduce with marketing strategies suggesting stories of empowerment, freedom of choice, acceptance of oneself and connection with the environment.
We believe in imaginative e-services that enable connection with others, and the right to be lazy, unproductive, creative, complicated and contradictory.