Read

Devastated by the sudden loss and passing of our dear friend Vicky. She was a kind, thoughtful and all round amazing person. So much integrity and sincerity.

Unbelievably sad news that the awesome and inspiring Vicky Teinaki has died. I wrote this a few days before hearing about Vicky’s death. My admiration and love of her work remains. She was clearly a widely loved and respecting individual. See more of her influence in the main link above.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.

I’ve only just gotten around to starting this book after liking Yuval’s previous books (although Sapiens remains the must read imo). I’m halfway through and feeling fairly depressed. Not totally. But it’s hard not to succumb to the compelling history and examples he uses to set up the damning of the trajectory of AI. I’ll keep reading though. As I must admit to not completely subscribing to all his thoughts. At least, there are potential and silver linings he’s not totally dashed in me yet.

Evolution of tap design serves as a prime example of where capitalism and design have gone wrong.

Taps and the case of boring magic in design by Ben Terrett for Public Digital. Good to get a little write up from Ben after his talk last year. Feels more like a post that wants to instigate more conversation, which I’m totally here for! Tap design is the perfect example of the issue with the design industry right now. An accessible lens through which to ponder “what the heck do designers think they’re doing!?”

How I Replaced Notion with Reminders, Numbers, and Notes, by Joan Westenberg.

Gift link via @joanwestenberg on Bluesky, because ironically? Sadly? Or maybe it’s just me? This great post supporting the straightforward use of apps you already have, rather than paying yet more subscripts for bloated versions of basically the same thing, AND risking your work and content to the whim of third party services that will likely end up changing and doing you over (for Joan that was Evernote)… is written on Medium, where it is now hidden unless you “Create an account to read the full story.” Anyway, I’m all in with the ideas here, even if not where it’s posted. More support to my own feelings about basic apps. And more evidence that we need to be positing our stuff in places that we control. AKA Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

Why is the UX Job Market Such a Mess Right Now? — A Comprehensive Explanation, by Jared Spool.

This does a good job summarising important details about UX, the UX industry, recent economic history effecting the UX industry, and what might happen next. I feel interestingly unsure about who the ideal audience is for this piece though. At times I thought I’d like to share it with graduates and less experienced designers, but I don’t think it’s written for them. Whoever, I like the pragmatic and documentary nature of it. Mixing our interest with the ethical and aspirational facets of UX design, with the reality of the economic and social world that it has to exist within as an offering. We can’t think or plan the future of design effectively without understanding the wider world.

Brian Eno on AI walking dog.

A nice read on AI. I specifically like this bit: “Does it matter that what we’ve scraped off the ether to feed our AIs is not by any means the whole of the world’s knowledge, but just the part that happened to have been published in printed books by the small sliver of the English-speaking world that happened to publish them—and made them available to AI bots? What kind of sausage is that? Surely Weisswurst, made of available scraps on the butcher’s floor.” A good and loaded metaphor. I can see how it argues well for and against what Eno is saying. It reminds me of the LLM and BSE metaphor that’s becoming more apparent. With AI not being trained on content made by AI.

A (updated, slightly rephrased and added to) blueprint for modern digital government?

I contain multitudes. Hope, that this blueprint will be followed by solid implementation plans and really effective action. Excitement, for all the folk I know within GDS and its orbit, and the opportunities this might open up for them to work on. Scepticism, for how much this echos what we’ve already said and heard and read over and over again. Understanding, for the fact that these things have to be said over and over again, because not everyone has heard, and far from all the work has been done. Relief, for what feels like the addition / increased focus on integration, long-term investment and the continually changing tech landscape. And grappling (if I’m allowed that as an emotion?), with the tension I feel between desperately wanting this to be realised, and fearing that ministers will lose their will, and fall foul to buzzword and vanity projects, rather than holding fast on the step-by-step path toward brilliant boring magic. That said, and with my bias fully in place, I feel confident that Peter Kyle’s dyslexia will bring the kind of lateral and creative thinking that’s been missing. Thank you, to all those with more conventional neurotypes that have gotten us this far in revolutionising the experience and accessibility of government. But I think we need new ways of thinking to take us to the next level 😅

The helpful explainer on DeepSeek that I didn’t know I needed from Maggie. I’ve had my head out of the main news fire hose for a while now and so the first I heard of DeepSeek was reading this. I now feel I know all I need to know for now. And feel a slightly positive pang for this news meaning good things for the environmental fear surrounding AI. More brilliant work from Maggie. Love this format of summarising notes and learning.

First hand experience and advice on accessible and thoughtful onboarding experiences, from Neurodiverse Connection.

“Every person deserves an environment where their unique needs and strengths are accommodated…” A great explainer for leaders/HR teams. Empathetically, I wonder if there’s a form of neurodiversity in people that struggle to see the benefit of advice like this?

9 lessons learned from working in a non-Neurodivergent-affirming environment.

“Every person deserves an environment where their unique needs and strengths are accommodated…” A great explainer for leaders/HR teams. Empathetically, I wonder if there’s a form of neurodiversity in people that struggle to see the benefit of advice like this? This feels related to thoughts that listening to ‘Lessons on designing with care’ below caused in me. There’s something in neurodivergent types needing to recognise that the people who struggle to understand, accommodate and empathise with people who are different to them, are struggling with their own ‘burden of knowledge-like’ cognitive challenges. How do we help them, to help us?

Listen

Lessons on designing with care, with Laura Parker, Jane McFadyen and Rachel Edwards.

100% echoing iainbroome.com’s hearty recommendation of this. Predominantly a content design lens on trauma and dyscalculia, but the conversation creates a brilliantly layered argument for more care and active empathy in all areas of design. Not just Content/Service/UCD. Sign up to Iain’s newsletter for more content design focused links like this: plainenglish.club

Listen/Watch

A perspective that makes the strange familiar, and the familiar strange. James Suzman for Big Think.

“Anthropologists, I think, are based on having this double perspective of being in one world and from another, and then being able to look back in the world that they’re from. And frankly, I think it would be good if we still lived in a world where people could experience another way of living and being to the point that it makes the strange familiar, and the familiar strange.” This is the ideal perspective of a designer. The ability to not simply given up on the world we have right now. Not just accepting everything we have as normal. Or existing as the only possible natural order of things. Instead, to allow seemingly strange ideas in, and rigid ideas out. To develop a view that everything could be different. Also, “In may ways humans are kind of evolutionary freaks”, is a brilliant way to start any video / essay / string of thoughts.

Do Audiobooks Count As Reading? John Green says a wonderfully convincing yes!

I love this so much I pulled it out into its own post. Which is something I keep wanting to do. Time to review this format. decide if it’s working well, or if I’m not!

For balance… Audiobooks are NOT Real Books.

Brilliantly done. And makes some genuinely good points in addition to the above, and in relation to the consumption and taking on of any information.

Watch

Inside Sydney Architect’s Small DIY Transforming Apartment.

I love small spaces. The Never Too Small channel has some great examples. Limitations cause creativity and questioning of actual needs.

Look

A wikipedia list of individual rocks.

I love that things like this exist. And love the people that make them even more.

The ultimate source of information about the moon.

Bartosz Ciechanowski makes amazingly detailed and interactive webpages on a whole host of subjects. I thought I had already posted about his pages on the Mechanical Watch, GPS and Cameras and Lenses but clearly not. Absolutely wonderful work. Reminds me of the internet we used to have. And that we could have more of if we try.

Beautiful sites and conditions in the Welsh mountains, by Hike Britain.

So lucky to have been walking Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) on this day. Absolutely amazing scenes. I think I finally understand hiking.

Use/Buy

Start your happy blog (and the most easy to use website presence) with PIKA.

One of the most thoughtful, and so in turn, one of the best blogging platforms I’ve ever seen. I’ve know about Pika for a while, but only just looked more closely, and it’s doing so many of the things I’ve been imagining and thinking an indieweb tool should do. I want to hope big things for it, but I’m scared of jinxing things! Sod it! It’s a potential Twitter, Substack, WordPress and Squarespace killer!

Create links that highlight text on the destination page.

Just add #:~:text= followed by a direct paste of the copied page content you want to highlight. Looks like this trick has been possible since around 2020, perhaps? I learned via this post from Sharon Dale.

Think

Elephant metaphors seem to be everywhere, just as I was planning to use them more myself. Maybe elephant metaphor satiation point is nigh?

Can’t remember how, but I ended up with page in my tabs for the book Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change. Then via a newsletter, I’ve queued up an episode of an unrelated Talk to the Elephant podcast.

What if Paperclip Maximisers were tasked to maximise GPUs?

Maybe the Paperclip Maximiser Theory is happening, but with Nvidia GPUs. An AI, programmed with the objective of producing as many as possible, has manipulated billionaires and destabilised the world in order to create a craze for more processing power. I bet it’s annoyed with DeepSeek if so.

Final report decks and the doorway effect.

I wonder if a similar phenomenon occurs when a project team passes through their final deck presentation. “People tend to forget items of recent significance immediately after crossing a boundary, and often forget what they were thinking about or planning on doing…”