Duncan Stephen

Article — 18 November 2017 — 1,609 words

A summer of cycling for Pedal for Scotland

This year I took part in Pedal for Scotland, an annual charity cycle from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I had never cycled anything like that distance before.

Article — 13 November 2017 — 1,239 words

Facebook and Twitter are repeating the catastrophic mistakes of past designers

Architecture — Digital — Technology

Architects had to face up to the problems that eventually emerged with bold modernist designs. Now Facebook and Twitter need to wake up to the fact that their platforms are damaging society.

Article — 7 November 2017 — 455 words

Alex and I are now engaged!

Personal — Travel

On Saturday 4 November, we had been together for 2 million minutes. So I whisked Alex off for a mystery trip to the north east of Scotland.

Article — 31 October 2017 — 308 words

Stop adding complexity – be an undesigner

Digital — Human-centred approaches

How do you make something better? Human instinct often tells us we should add something to improve it. But this evidence shows we should stop adding complexity.

Article — 26 October 2017 — 382 words

Why you shouldn’t follow your passion

Business — Society

It’s something we want to believe. But if work was meant to help you follow your passion, you wouldn’t have to be paid for it.

Article — 12 October 2017 — 327 words

The open web has rough edges, but this is why we need to protect it

Digital — Web

Native apps, social media networks and big content silos are slick. But the whole idea about the web — the reason it has been so successful — is that it is open and democratic.

Article — 9 October 2017 — 383 words

Nobel economics prize: Richard Thaler and behavioural economics

Digital — Economics — User experience

Richard Thaler has won the Nobel economics prize for his work in behavioural economics. Knowing about this area is essential if you are a designer, to help you gain an understanding of what makes people tick.

Article — 6 October 2017 — 1,660 words

Why the cruel culture of coding is damaging society

Business — Digital — Technology

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.

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.