2021 Archives

Article — 9 November 2021 — 1,032 words

Be usable, not consistent, not uniform

Consistency is often seen as a slam-dunk argument in favour of an initiative. But if you don’t know what you want to a design to be consistent with — and why — then consistency risks confusing your users.

Article — 21 October 2021 — 1,758 words

Design approaches aren’t sufficient to be human-centred

Social science — User experience

Many designers talk about user-centred design. But design approaches alone aren’t sufficient to ensure we are human-centred. Design approaches can be used carelessly — or even maliciously — to centre the designer and sideline the user.

Article — 27 September 2021 — 86 words

List of things Google Assistant thinks I want to do instead of make oat milk

Technology

Occasionally I make my own oat milk. When I run out of oat milk, I ask Google Assistant to remind me later in the day to make oat milk. It normally misunderstands me. Interestingly, it misunderstands me in a variety of different ways.

Article — 23 August 2021 — 988 words

Overlaps between user experience and other disciplines — a benefit, not a problem

Content design — Information architecture — User experience — User research

Have you ever been told that by doing human-centred work you’re stepping on someone else’s toes? I have heard it a number of times. More and more people are exploring the apparent overlaps between human-centred approaches and other disciplines.

Linknote — 30 July 2021 — 86 words

Content design — Service design — User experience — User research

Ask us anything — UX Glasgow

Illustration of people with question marks above their heads

Join me at next week’s UX Glasgow ask us anything event. I will be on a panel of eight human-centred professionals answering your burning questions about user experience, interaction design, user research, content design and service design.

You’ll have the opportunity to join two or three breakout sessions with rooms for your choice of topic.

To help us prepare, please if you have the time take two minutes to fill in our short questionnaire where you can submit your questions in advance.

Article — 22 July 2021 — 743 words

I’ve broken my ankle

Personal

At the weekend I broke my ankle while playing bubble football on a stag do.

Article — 2 July 2021 — 1,431 words

Pace layers in experience design — Stabilise innovation by understanding people’s needs

Social science — Society — Technology — User experience

Innovation falls flat when it doesn’t respond to a human need. Use human-centred approaches to understand people’s fundamental motivations and needs. These are the stabilising forces for innovation.

Article — 18 June 2021 — 1,429 words

Why I talk about human-centred approaches

Human-centred approaches — Service design — User experience

It is difficult to find a phrase that exactly describes my work and the way I approach it. I’ve started to talk about human-centred approaches. This post explains what I mean by that.

Linknote — 19 May 2021 — 144 words

User experience — User research

Work: The University of Edinburgh

How to avoid common mistakes in user engagement — Website and Communications Blog

Have you ever participated in a user engagement session designed for you to share your views, but felt that you weren’t properly included, or that your views wouldn’t be acted on? Fed up with bad surveys and poorly planned focus groups?

Most of us want to engage with our users and stakeholders. We all want to make sure our users have a voice in projects that will affect them. But the approach you take can have a major effect on the success or failure of your engagement.

There are some basic truths about human behaviour that we know from psychology and other social sciences. But in many projects, these basic truths tend to be ignored.

Read this post on my team’s blog for tips on how to avoid the pitfalls of poorly planned user engagement, and how to make user research effective.

Article — 12 May 2021 — 1,268 words

Why content is more important than code

Accessibility — Content design — Information architecture — Technology — User experience

…and what I don’t mean by that.

Linknote — 6 May 2021 — 43 words

Service design — User experience

Work: The University of Edinburgh

Demonstrating the impact of human-centred approaches — Further reflections from the UCD Gathering conference — Website and Communications Blog

The second of my two posts on my work team’s blog about UCD Gathering, the remote conference I attended in October.

This blog post covers the third theme I wanted to highlight: how we can better demonstrate the business impact of human-centred approaches.

Linknote — 29 April 2021 — 117 words

Content design — Service design — Technology — User experience

Lessons on readability and bias — Reflections from the UCD Gathering conference — Website and Communications Blog

Back in October, I had the opportunity to attend the UCD Gathering conference, a new virtual event for practitioners of user-centred design in all its forms. Over on my work blog, I have published the first of two posts reflecting on what I learned.

This first post covers two themes:

Being aware of bias, and other cognitive considerations
Improving readability of content

The post also mentions my own session at the conference, about our user research into the needs of staff and students working with course materials online. The Learn Foundations project has proved fortuitous in that it has helped schools move their teaching online and prepare for hybrid teaching in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.