2016 Archives

Article — 17 May 2016 — 1,303 words

Protecting the web as a democratic medium

Why are writers publishing their content to platforms like Medium when it threatens to undermine the do-it-yourself culture that made the web great?

Article — 4 May 2016 — 901 words

Avoiding bias in design

User research

One of the biggest challenges designers face is avoiding bias. We all have perspectives that subconsciously affect our decisions. In the case of design, those choices we don’t even realise we are making can have big consequences.

Article — 29 April 2016 — 94 words

Reflections on six years of IWMW

Digital — Web

Work: SRUC — Scotland’s Rural College

A guest post about the Institutional Web Management Workshop.

Article — 20 April 2016 — 808 words

Why digital security is increasingly important

Uncategorised

Online security has always been important. But a number of recent stories have shown why it is becoming even more important all the time.

Article — 12 April 2016 — 1,173 words

Why your emojis are getting lost in translation and what you can do about it

Accessibility — Digital

You’ve probably been using some emojis wrongly without realising it.

Article — 6 April 2016 — 712 words

Why inclusive design benefits all your users

Accessibility

This first edition looks at why designers should take so-called edge cases seriously, to the benefit of all users.

Article — 27 March 2016 — 2,089 words

History and high tension: a long weekend in Berlin

Personal — Travel

This month Alex and I took a long weekend break in Berlin. Despite almost getting caught up in something nasty, we had a brilliant time.

Article — 7 March 2016 — 1,467 words

Web developers need to shape up and declare war on webpage obesity

Accessibility — Digital — Web

As an industry, web professionals have failed their users. It’s time to stop building bloated and inaccessible pages.

Article — 4 March 2016 — 1,013 words

Implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress

Digital — Web

I was bracing myself for a difficult experience. Instead, I found myself amazed at how easy it is to make your WordPress site compatible with AMP.

Article — 3 March 2016 — 1,051 words

What the Accelerated Mobile Pages project tells us about the sorry state of web publishing

Digital — Web

The web is in a bad state of health right now. Web publishers and developers can blame themselves.

Article — 27 February 2016 — 1,217 words

6 lessons I learned while moving to WordPress multisite

Web

I didn’t think moving to WordPress multisite was going to be easy, and sure enough I hit some bumps along the way. Here are six big lessons I learned.

Article — 11 February 2016 — 1,059 words

Path dependence in user experience: why it’s OK that phones are different to calculators

User experience

Designers like to fret about the differing keypad layouts on calculators and phones. But economics tells us it may not be such a problem after all.