Why are UX take home tasks so crap?

Time to read: 9 minutes The UX industry suffers from a delusion: that the take-home task is a good way to understand what each candidate for a job is capable of. This isn’t 100% wrong, but it sure as hell is flawed!! I’ve written about why I think this is flawed, included some examples of – REAL – good and […] continue reading »

How BA failed at maths, humanity, and service design

Time to read: 5 minutes I’ve been on FOUR BA flights since 27th December 2016. This only matters because the last one was a VERY different experience from the first three. The first two were First Class (we used avios, sit back down), and awesome. On my last and fourth one, however, I discovered BA’s new policy of not serving […] continue reading »

Books of 2016

Time to read: 4 minutes In 2016, I discovered goodreads again (I signed up for it in 2012), and found their “book challenge” section, which I promptly set up with a goal of 30 books. Turns out, 2016 was a good year for books! We got new bookcases to make ours happy. Our books are happier and we are happier! […] continue reading »

Sketchbook Mondays: Cup sleeve and card holder

Time to read: 2 minutes One of the problems I’ve always had is that I my hands are hyper-sensitive to heat. In itself this is small, but in 2017, I decided to stop having milky coffees. I’ve never digested milk very well, and it was time to stop it again. So it would be mostly americanos for me in 2017! […] continue reading »

Linear calendar for 2017!

Time to read: 2 minutes Download the 2017 Linear Calendar Here it is, a few weeks late, but brought back to life for two simple reasons: I ran out of the last one A friend who uses my linear calendar to plan for her business asked me for the next one! To use it, print on any printer that prints […] continue reading »

Three ways to get some user testing done in group workshops

Time to read: 4 minutes I’ve just spent six weeks on a completely insane project. The aspect I want to write about is how this insane project had no scope for (or understanding of) user testing, even though we needed to do some. And this article is about three “hacks” I devised to get some user feedback regardless of what […] continue reading »

Losing my faith in Apple…

Time to read: 3 minutes I have been evangelising for Apple since the second iPad hit the shelves in Spring 2011. (A camera! Reading! Doodling! Watching stuff!! Big screen!! Photo-notes!!!)  Today, this ends. It’s not my fault that I will no longer be praising the advantages of Apple hardware. It’s Apple’s. One small choice they made is a direct insult […] continue reading »

Scripted copy paste in LaTeX – A (dirty?) content reuse trick

Time to read: 3 minutes I had a report to write, and in that report I had sections on topics, each of which had action points. And it would have been useful to have one big fat list of all the action points in one place, rather than all over the sections. My boss specifically requested this, as it would […] continue reading »

Two heads are better than one

Time to read: 6 minutes I’ve been working with someone. This is note-worthy, because I have mostly worked alone. Most companies today think that one UX Architect is enough to fix All The Things going wrong in a project. We are UX co-leads on a Big Fat Software Rewrite project. On our first day, a Monday, we were told that […] continue reading »