Duncan Stephen

Article — 27 March 2016 — 2,089 words

History and high tension: a long weekend in Berlin

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.

Article — 27 January 2016 — 179 words

Why it is always worth considering the simplest solution — even if you are Google

Digital — Technology

A couple of separate stories about Google today remind us that simpler is often better.

Article — 20 January 2016 — 1,074 words

Why hamburger menus can be good for you as part of a healthy balanced diet

Digital — User experience — Web

There is an interesting debate in the design community right now about the hamburger menu. Given two extremes of opinion, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Article — 28 December 2015 — 465 words

Check out this amazing film of Kirkcaldy in 1975

Personal

A fascinating and honest snapshot of Kirkcaldy — good and bad — from 40 years ago.

Article — 26 November 2015 — 892 words

Moved to Edinburgh

Personal

I have been fairly quiet on this blog recently, mostly because things have been pretty busy in real life. The biggest piece of news is that I have now moved to Edinburgh, and moved in with Alex.

Article — 8 October 2015 — 666 words