Read

Bluesky now has over 20M people!! 🎉

“We’ve been adding over a million users per day for the last few days. To celebrate, here are 20 fun facts about Bluesky.” It’s happening quite fast over there now. Very interesting to watch it happen. Like a sped up evolution of Twitter. Every few months is a year of two. For me, it’s feeling a bit 2013 / 2014 right now. And I’m trying not to be pessimistic about what happens next. See Anil Dash’s post below.

No one’s coming. It’s up to us. Dan Hon

Another sharp thought from Russell, and one that was forming in my mind but not fully emergent until reading this. My main thought: Google Docs are basically webpages with a CMS at the top. Something I wish Squarespace, WordPress.com etc. would learn from

The whole piece is quotable, but these paragraphs caught my current train of thought… “The ability to systemically affect entire societies in such short timespans isn’t something that I believe we’re intuitively geared up to deal with without very, very deliberately engaging Kahneman’s System 2.”

“If technology is the solution to human problems, we need to do the human work to figure out and agree what our problems are and the kind of society we want. Then we can figure out what technology we want and need, to bring about the society we want.”

Block Carefully. Dustin Curtis

“…users should be given some insight into how their behavior impacts the content they are shown. It’s not always intuitive.” Quite an amazing understatement. There’s a lot in this piece I’d like to unpack in a longer post as I think it displays an interesting mix of sharp comment and naive empathy. Technical issues are clearly understood, but I feel there’s an inadvertent condescension in suggesting that simply showing users how algorithms work would meaningfully empower them. As if giving a tech briefing would have everyone fully understanding the implications of their behaviour. Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh, but this pulls at my annoyance with the way tech folk so readily update the terms and conditions of their products, while users and regular people have never been asked to engage in considering their own. Behaviours have been forced on users. It’s a bit late to suggest all they need now is a little insight in order to use features in ‘the correct way’. I’ll be coming back to this soon.

Docs are the new something. Russell Davies

Another sharp thought from Russell, and one that was forming in my mind but not fully emergent until reading this. My thought being that Google Docs are basically webpages with a CMS at the top. Something that Squarespace, WordPress.com etc could learn from

Seven lessons from leading a large design team

“Designers are pathological problem solvers, their profession necessitates the belief that every problem can be solved”. Ace post. Points that I hope are familiar to all design leaders, even if we can’t phrase it as well as Martin. A must read, for those being managed as well as the managers.

Word of the Day is as beautiful as it is underused. ‘Confelicity’. Susie Dent

“…finding joy in the happiness and success of others,” I’ve been after this word for years. I always clumsily explained the feeling as an odd mixture of ‘nice’ envy, admiration, and pride.

Why is progressive enhancement often ignored? Chris Yoong

“Who decides this is not important?” I have so many thoughts on this subject, but Chris has done a better job than I could have in gathering reflections and possible reasons that progressive enhancement is so often ignored. Or, completely forgotten about in some areas.

Why Companies Do “Innovation Theater” Instead of Actual Innovation. Tendayi Viki

“While breakthrough ideas and technologies are important for innovation, they are not sufficient in themselves… Business plans are a problem because they treat innovation as if it is an execution challenge.” I’m still researching the ideas of ritual, theatre, and cargo cults within business, specifically in design environments.

I came across the term ‘innovation theatre’ and then found this and another old article. The term seems to have dropped from popularity, but that doesn’t mean the issue has gone away. This fact, in turn, makes me think of buzzword fatigue, and how that’s its own kind of ritualistic behaviour, with terms falling from trend before their ideas are absorbed, because a new and more cool sounding term has appeared (with the false promise that it will resolve any issues associated with the last term).

See:

Multimedia Design (1980s–1990s)
New Media Design (1990s)
Web Design (1995–2005)
Digital Design (2005–2010s)
Interaction Design (2000s–2010s)
UX Design (2000s–Present)
Service Design (2010s–Present)
Experience Design (XD) (2010s–Present)
Product Design (2010s–Present)

Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’

lol lol lol. It took me a few days to realise this news was actually true. But to be honest, I’m still not totally sure. This post is a joke, and Bryce P. Tetraeder isn’t real, but from what can tell, the Onion really has bought InfoWars!

Toolkits are a bit like toothbrushes – everybody wants one but nobody wants to use someone else’s. Matthew McStravick

“Part of the reason for this is that designers rarely take into account the circumstances and behaviours of the people they hope will use them. This results in many toolkits not being accessible in the right format, at the right time for the right people”. A great little provocative post. The same goes for canvases, methodologies, processes and all sort of other formats I feel.

…senior designers who just want to do strategy…

“They don’t want to do planning and delivery work.They don’t want to manage people. They don’t want to deal with company politics.” Call me a naive strategist, but how is it ‘doing strategy’ if you don’t get involved in the process? Sounds more like magical thinking. And reminds me again of designers that don’t want to ‘sell design’.

The dangers of oversimplifying identity. Rob Alderson, Design Week

I almost avoided this piece due to my US news fatigue (its main title is “A lesson from the US – identity is complex”), but glad I read on, as I don’t think this key point can be stressed enough: “People are complicated, contradictory and unpredictable”. The potential of the design process is completely hampered if designers don’t honestly reflect on this.

Don’t call it a Substack. Anil Dash

“We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons.” It’s easy to forget or lose track of the many active strategies in place to destroy the open web. So many platforms (practically all of them?) are basically attempts to treat creatives like frogs in slowly boiling water. This piece from Dash is a useful reminder of the even deeper issues with Substack in this sense.

Listen

Big Soup. Luke Vibert

This old gem randomly came to mind. Such a good album. It’s reminded me though how much music is still missing from the streaming services. Along with – as a friend pointed out – the ability to search by label. Anyway. Favourite track: Fused into Music

Listen/Watch

Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night 2024

“Do Psychopaths rule the world? How do we define normal? Are you friends with a psychopath? Are you worried YOU might be one?”. I’ve read and enjoyed the book so this was a nice 15 year celebration event to see. Apt timing also. Makes me think that we all need to resist the book and sharpen our skills in psychopath detection.

Watch

Scavengers Reign Season 2 teaser – Cancelled by Netflix 😩

Gutted to hear that Scavengers Reign Season 2 won’t be commissioned by Netflix. The teaser they made for it looked as awesome as the first series. Hope the creators stays as tenacious as this post suggests. “… this is not the end…”

Over the Garden Wall | 10th Anniversary Stop Motion Short

How did I not know of Over the Garden Wall before now?! It looks amazing. And judging by the care that’s gone into this stop motion celebration of it, it was clearly loved by a lot of people.

HAND DRAWN CGI: Animating the Terrahawks Title Sequence

Such a great video to stumble upon. Caused me some serious flash back whiplash though! Amazing to be reminded of how clever and crafty animation and motion graphics used to be. Also, what a lovely guy Kevin seems to be. He tells the story so well. Clearly someone that loved his craft. A few follow ups from this: He mentions Rod Lord who did the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy TV series animations that inspired a lot of these techniques. And the existence of Japanese Terrahawks opening titles!. By the way, if you’re too young to know this show, here’s the first Terrahawks episode, but know this – the Zelda and Yung-Star characters gave me nightmares. But I loved the Zeroids and the Cubes, especially the noughts and crosses at the end, as noted in the video. OK, on more deep digression in rabbit hole this video tool me down. The Zeriod named Sergeant Major Zero was voiced by Windsor Davies, who I remember well from 80s repeats of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. In it, he was roughly the age I am now. I’m having a hard time processing this.

why do iphones do this? Gus Johnson

Another to file under UX is a joke.

Look

Annie Atkins, designing graphic props for filmmaking

A friend reminded me of the beautiful work of Annie Atkins. The kind of work I dreamed of creating back in my more graphic design focused days. Amazing craft and quality – Oh no! I’ve just seen that she does a course. Need to exercise restraint and not sign up. Don’t need more distracting projects right now. Dammit.

Reference

“Design is everything and everywhere”. Antionette D. Carroll

A mic drop definition in the ‘what is design’ conversation. Love it. 100% agree. The quote goes on: “All of our systems, all of our communities, all of our experiences have been by design,

Use

How to report scam texts and mobile calls to 7726

Just found out about this service from Ofcom, after finally researching what I should do when I receive a scam call. No idea how effective it is, but feels good to do something at least