Human-centred decisions
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.
How often do you buy Valentine’s Day gifts? More often than once a week? Less often than once a month?
Stop making people complete terrible surveys that you won’t even be able to interpret the results of!
I return to work regularly today for the first time in almost 25 weeks.
This was longer than anticipated. My planned parental leave was forcibly extended due to my ankle injury. It was further complicated by my tricky recovery. I have more to say about all of that another day.
I approach today with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Balancing work with looking after a one-year-old is a whole new normal. For me at least, it makes the changes in working practices due to coronavirus seem small.
It’s nice to see that Google’s new Web Creators initiative has an RSS feed. Now maybe they could work on a product that helps people subscribe to those RSS feeds to foster this community of web creators…
It’s my birthday today. But I couldn’t really be bothered to organise a physical get-together. Instead, I thought it would be fun to imagine there was some horrific virus that meant we couldn’t really leave the house much, and I had to celebrate it remotely.
Update: This will now take place at 9pm, not 7pm as before.
Join us at 9pm for 40 minutes of free Zoom-based party times.
Bring your own Corona.
I’m in Ikea, where lots of people are buying emergency desks.
We’re looking for a University of Edinburgh PhD student intern to work with us next year. This is an exciting time to join the Website and Communications team, and an opportunity to help us improve high-profile web services like MyEd and the University website. Take a look!
I was in a meeting once where someone pitched a really unrealistic idea. I don’t remember the details exactly. But let’s assume this idea depended on pigs being able to fly.
“But how will the pigs fly?”, we asked.
“Oh, we’ll have an algorithm.”
“OK… But, we don’t understand how the algorithm make the pigs fly?”
“I just said, the algorithm will sort that out.”
“But you haven’t explained how?”
“With the algorithm.”
“Algorithms can’t make pigs fly.”
“Algorithm!”
She spoke to two Apple reps. Both very nice, courteous people representing an utterly broken and reprehensible system. The first person was like “I don’t know why, but I swear we’re not discriminating, IT’S JUST THE ALGORITHM”. I shit you not. “IT’S JUST THE ALGORITHM!”.
— DHH (@dhh) November 8, 2019
Don’t devolve your thinking to an algorithm.
I’ll be speaking at the next IxDA Scotland community meetup about our user research with the Learn Foundations project.
Duncan’s talk will take us through how the University of Edinburgh’s User Experience Service has undertaken a comprehensive programme of user research supporting a project aimed at improving students’ experience accessing course materials digitally. Find out how they developed a programme of multiple user research methods to understand what students really need.
Time: Wednesday 4 December
Venue: Amazon Development Centre, 2–4 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh
Full details about the IxDA community meetup event
Maybe see you there?
I’m doing a couple of talks this week. They are both about the user research we’ve been doing for the Learn Foundations project.
This evening I will be presenting at the Edinburgh UX monthly meetup. It’s a friendly meetup and it’s free, so do come along if you’re interested.
Then on Wednesday I’ll be presenting with my colleagues Karen Howie and Paul Smyth at the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Annual Conference.
I have now implemented a dark mode for this website. Many operating systems are now offering dark mode as a preference. If you have dark mode switched on, this website now displays in a fetching darker colour scheme.
Is there a way to force all mobile apps to open web URLs in my actual browser of choice, instead of the crappy WebView they make you use? This is one thing I am truly fed up with now.
