Technology

Article — 9 December 2025 — 1,844 words

Resisting Conway’s law through more thoughtful mapping

Business — Digital — Information architecture — User experience

Organisational structures and information architectures are both often visualised in artefacts described as “maps”. These constrained visualisations may embed siloed ways of working, and create problems for our users.

Article — 1 November 2025 — 797 words

How did we let the web get this bad?

User experience — Web

Recently I had to intensively research a couple of topics involving potential purchase decisions. My experience was utterly miserable.

Article — 2 October 2025 — 555 words

The forgotten purpose of agile — Empowered teams responding to change

Business — Technology — User research

The ideas behind agile tend to be squashed down to two words: “move fast”. But the Agile Manifesto says nothing about moving fast.

Article — 26 September 2025 — 1,247 words

Autonomy, independence, federation, WordPress and concrete

Personal — Web

I have had to make some behind-the-scenes changes to this website. In the process, I am planning to make it more interoperable with the fediverse and indieweb standards — and I am sticking with WordPress.

Article — 11 August 2025 — 1,745 words

Life beyond the folder system

Digital — Information architecture — Technology — Web

The folder metaphor is so intuitive to generations of computer users that they can struggle to think of any other way of using a computer. Yet for younger generations, the idea is completely alien.

Article — 2 May 2025 — 1,271 words

Keeping it real in the age of artificial intelligence

Society — Technology

Amid technology-focused hype cycles, the job of human-centred practitioners is to remind everyone: the main reason people use technology is to enhance our connections with other humans in the real world.

Article — 9 April 2025 — 2,620 words

The pain in a name — Is information architecture right to call itself architecture?

Architecture — Information architecture — Technology

I have long felt uneasy about modern occupations associating themselves with high-status traditional professions. This has been brought into sharp focus for me since I started a role last year focusing heavily on information architecture, to the annoyance of my wife Alex, who is an actual architect.

Article — 25 February 2025 — 1,679 words

Object-oriented approaches in action

Information architecture — User experience — Web

Work: Scottish Government

There are several benefits of building a content model in an object-oriented way. This post walks through those benefits, and demonstrates a real-life example of how this approach works on a well-known website.

Article — 4 February 2025 — 1,406 words

There’s no such thing as a technology problem

Business — Social science — Society — Technology — Web

Information has become the forgotten half in “information technology”. Tech companies are struggling because they aren’t focusing on the human problems they need to solve.

Note — 21 November 2024 — 66 words

Personal — Technology

You can now follow me on Bluesky: @duncanstephen.net.

As with my other social media accounts, its main purpose will be to let my followers know when I have posted something on my blog. But if you’re on Bluesky, feel free to follow me there.

While you’re at it, check out the other ways you can follow me and my blog. My favourite way is RSS.

Photo — 31 October 2024 — 7 words