2017 Archives

Article — 6 October 2017 — 1,660 words

Why the cruel culture of coding is damaging society

When a former Google engineer’s ill-informed anti-diversity essay became news during the summer, it shone a light on problems with the the tech industry’s makeup. The diversity issue is the tip of the iceberg. A host of cultural problems face the tech scene.

Linknote — 5 October 2017 — 48 words

Human-centred approaches

Optimising the mundane: A lesson in design simplicity

When you ask people who are the most innovative companies, people [tend to say] ‘Apple. Apple’s super innovative’. Actually, they’re not. They sit back and wait and see how people use things – and they take things that exist.

Linknote — 5 October 2017 — 9 words

Digital

Minimum viable products – A practical approach – Andrew Crow

Linknote — 3 October 2017 — 34 words

Digital — Media

The Las Vegas shootings highlighted a nasty flaw in Google’s Top Stories algorithm. It’s one that could be exploited.

Linknote — 2 October 2017 — 7 words

Digital — User experience

Stop shaming your users for micro conversions

Article — 1 October 2017 — 1,208 words

Why it’s time to reclaim our digital lives

Personal — Web

The more we come to understand about the big social media networks’ impact on society, the less appealing it becomes. It’s time we stopped letting them control our digital lives. This is why I will start blogging again.

Article — 15 May 2017 — 486 words

Last week we came home to find a crow flying around our living room

Personal

We’d both had a few jars, but we weren’t imagining this. There was definitely a bird bounding around the bay window.

Article — 22 April 2017 — 767 words

Pastures new

Digital — Personal

Work: SRUC — Scotland’s Rural College, The University of Edinburgh

After almost two years at SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College), I have decided to move on. The opportunity to work with the University of Edinburgh Website Programme was too good to ignore.

Article — 2 March 2017 — 1,339 words

The bumpy road to autonomy

Economics — Technology

Autonomous vehicles — driverless cars — are coming. There will be bumps in the road along the way. But they are essential to fix our cities.

Article — 22 February 2017 — 633 words

How to improve your job stories

Digital — Media — User experience

This month’s digital design digest features a couple of articles about getting the most out of job stories. Plus, promising news from the world of CSS, how the Guardian is increasing its subscriber numbers, and where government goes wrong with digital transformation.

Article — 25 January 2017 — 650 words

Why people are losing trust in the media — and advertisers

Digital — Media — User experience

Why people are losing trust in the media and advertisers, why ugly websites succeed, and why it’s time to ditch PDFs.