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Tuesday, March 28th, 2023

Design transformation on the Clearleft podcast

Boom! The Clearleft podcast is back!

The first episode of season four just dropped. It’s all about design transformation.

I’ve got to be honest, this episode is a little inside baseball. It’s a bit navel-gazey and soul-searching as I pick apart the messaging emblazoned on the Clearleft website:

The design transformation consultancy.

Whereas most of the previous episodes of the podcast would be of interest to our peers—fellow designers—this one feels like it might of more interest to potential clients. But I hope it’s not too sales-y.

You’ll hear from Danish designer Maja Raunbak, and American in Amsterdam Nick Thiel as well as Clearleft’s own Chris Pearce. And I’ve sampled a talk from the Leading Design archives by Stuart Frisby.

The episode clocks in at a brisk eighteen and a half minutes. Have a listen.

While you’re at it, take this opportunity to subscribe to the Clearleft podcast on Overcast, Spotify, Apple, Google or by using a good ol’-fashioned RSS feed. That way the next episodes in the season will magically appear in your podcatching software of choice.

But I’m not making any promises about when that will be. Previously, I released new episodes in a season on a weekly basis. This time I’m going to release each episode whenever it’s ready. That might mean there’ll be a week or two between episodes. Or there might be a month or so between episodes.

I realise that this unpredictable release cycle is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but it’s actually the most sensible way for me to make sure the podcast actually gets out. I was getting a bit overwhelmed with the prospect of having six episodes ready to launch over a six week period. What with curating UX London and other activities, it would’ve been too much for me to do.

So rather than delay this season any longer, I’m going to drop each episode whenever it’s done. Chaos! Anarchy! Dogs and cats living together!

Monday, March 27th, 2023

More speakers for UX London 2023

I’d like to play it cool when I announce the latest speakers for UX London 2023, like I could be all nonchalant and say, “oh yeah, did I not mention these people are also speaking…?”

But I wouldn’t be able to keep up that façade for longer than a second. The truth is I am excited to the point of skittish gigglyness about this line-up.

Look, I’ll let you explore these speakers for yourself while I try to remain calm and simply enumerate the latest additions…

A smiling white woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing a bright red top in a pink chair in front of a bright blue wall. A studio portrait of a white woman with long straight light brown hair wearing a black top. A smiling black man with glasses and close-cropped hair and beard wearing a leather jacket outdoors.

The line-up is almost complete now! Just one more speaker to announce.

I highly recommend you get your UX London ticket if you haven’t already. You won’t want to miss this!

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

Jeepers Frigging Cripes Crypto and NFTs are so stupid and dumb and bad and I can’t even. I’m out. Goodbye. Burn it down please. - Chris Coyier

Literally every experience I have in this world is gross at best and criminally evil at worst. Who it benefits that actually needs the benfefit is vanishingly few.

Here are some rhetorical questions from Chris:

How many years into this are we with no practical use cases for the world? How many resources have to be burned before this is seen?

Wednesday, March 15th, 2023

Another three speakers for UX London 2023

I know I’m being tease, doling out these UX London speaker announcements in batches rather than one big reveal. Indulge me in my suspense-ratcheting behaviour.

Today I’d like to unveil three speakers whose surnames start with the letter H…

  • Stephen Hay, Creative Director at Rabobank,
  • Asia Hoe, Senior Product Designer, and
  • Amy Hupe, Design Systems consultant at Frankly Design.
A professional portrait of a smiling white man in a turtleneck jumper and suit jacket with close-cut dark curly hair that's beginning to show signs of grey. An outdoor portrait of a smiling dark-skinned woman smiling with shoulder-length black hair. A smiling white woman with long dark hair sitting on the sofa in a cosy room with a nice cup of tea.

Just look at how that line-up is coming together! There’ll be just one more announcement and then the roster will be complete.

But don’t wait for that. Grab your ticket now and I’ll see you in London on June 22nd and 23rd!

Tuesday, March 14th, 2023

Craft vs Industry: Separating Concerns by Thomas Michael Semmler: CSS Developer, Designer & Developer from Vienna, Austria

Call me Cassandra:

The way that industry incorporates design systems is basically a misappropriation, or abuse at worst. It is not just me who is seeing the problem with ongoing industrialization in design. Even Brad Frost, the inventor of atomic design, is expressing similar concerns. In the words of Jeremy Keith:

[…] Design systems take their place in a long history of dehumanising approaches to manufacturing like Taylorism. The priorities of “scientific management” are the same as those of design systems—increasing efficiency and enforcing consistency.

So no. It is not just you. We all feel it. This quote is from 2020, by the way. What was then a prediction has since become a reality.

This grim assessment is well worth a read. It rings very true.

What could have become Design Systemics, in which we applied systems theory, cybernetics, and constructivism to the process and practice of design, is now instead being reduced to component libraries. As a designer, I find this utter nonsense. Everyone who has even just witnessed a design process in action knows that the deliverable is merely a documenting artifact of the process and does not constitute it at all. But for companies, the “output” is all that matters, because it can be measured; it appeals to the industrialized process because it scales. Once a component is designed, it can be reused, configured, and composed to produce “free” iterations without having to consult a designer. The cost was reduced while the output was maximized. Goal achieved!

Tuesday, February 28th, 2023

The next four speakers for UX London 2023

I am positively giddy with excitement to tell you about some more speakers you can look forward to at UX London 2023:

A smiling dark-skinned young woman with long hair wearing a black T-shirt and a green pendant in front of a light background. A smiling light-skinned woman with long dark hair wearing a comfy-looking blue top. A smiling light-skinned man with a shaved head illuminated in front of a pitch black background. A smiling woman with wavy blonde hair, pale skin and light blue eyes wearing a dark outfit in front of a light background.

I have more confirmed speakers but I’m going to be a tease and save them for a separate announcement soon. You can expect more of the same: smart, fabulous people with all kinds of design experience that they’re going to share with you at UX London.

But why wait for another speaker announcement? Get your ticket to UX London 2023 now!

Thursday, February 23rd, 2023

Investing in RSS - Web Performance Consulting | TimKadlec.com

Same:

Opening up my RSS reader, a cup of coffee in hand, still feels calm and peaceful in a way that trying to keep up with happenings in other ways just never has.

Tuesday, February 21st, 2023

UX London 2023 scholarship programme

If you’re a western white guy like me, you’re playing life on its easiest setting. If you’re also a designer, then you should get a ticket to UX London. You can probably get work to pay for it. Share this list of reasons to attend with your boss if you have to.

If, on the other hand, you don’t benefit from the same level of privilege as me, you might still be able to attend UX London 2023. We’re running a scholarship programme.

“We” in this case is Clearleft. But as we also need to at least break even on this event, there are only a limited number of scholarship spots available.

Now, if your company were in a position to pony up some moolah to sponsor more diversity scholarship places, we would dearly love to hear from you—get in touch!

If you think you might qualify for a diversity scholarship, fill in this form before May 19th. We’ll then notify you by May 26th, whether you application is successful or not. And if you’re worried about the additional costs of travel and accommodation, I’m sure we can figure something out.

Wondering if you should apply? It’s hard to define exactly who qualifies for a diversity scholarship, but basically, the more your life experience matches mine, the less qualified you are. If you are a fellow able-bodied middle-aged heterosexual white dude with a comfortable income, do me a favour and don’t apply. Everyone else, go for it.

Monday, February 20th, 2023

Redesigning UX London

I’ve been redesigning UX London. I don’t mean the website. I mean the event itself.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing too radical. It’s not like we’re changing the focus of the event, which remains a nerdfest for all things design-related.

But there are plenty of other opportunities for tweaking a conference like this: the format, the timings, the location.

For 2023 we’re not changing the location. Tobacco Dock worked out well for last year’s event, although it is very expensive (then again, so is anywhere decent in London). Last year there were a lot of unknowns in play because it was our first time using the venue. It feels good that this year we don’t have to go through quite as much uncertainty.

The most obvious change to UX London this year is the length. The event will last for two days instead of three.

Running a three-day event was a lot of work, so this helps relieve the pressure. It was also asking a lot of attendees. That’s why we also offered one-day tickets. For the people who couldn’t commit to three days at a conference, there was the option to pick and choose.

But that brought its own issues. Instead of everyone having the same shared experience, the audience was a bit fractured.

Now that we’ve slimmed it down to two days, we’re selling the same two-day tickets for everyone. No more single-day tickets; no more partial attendance. Judging by the way ticket sales have been going, this is a very welcome move.

(Even before announcing any speakers, we had already sold a healthy amount of tickets. That’s probably testament to the great reputation that UX London has built up over the years. I need to make sure I don’t squander that good will. No pressure.)

On the subject of everyone having a shared experience, there’s something about the format of UX London that’s bothered me for a while…

Each day is split into two halves. In the morning, you’ve got inspirational talks. That’s one single track. Then in the afternoon, you’ve got hands-on practical workshops. They happen in parallel.

That makes for a great mix, but the one downside is that the day ends with the audience split across the different workshops.

This year I’m tweaking the format slightly. We’ll still have a single track of talks in the morning followed by multiple workshops in the afternoon, but I’m shortening the workshop length slightly to fit in one last talk at the end of the day. That way, everybody will come back together again after their workshops to participate in a shared experience.

The audience will converge at the beginning of the day, diverge in the afternoon, and this time we’ll converge again at day’s end.

The workshops are a big part of what makes UX London stand out. But they also pose a big design challenge. How do you ensure that everyone gets to attend the workshops they want?

We could make people pick their workshops in advance. But then you end up with the office Christmas dinner party problem—you know the one; everyone has to choose their meal way in advance, and then on the day, no one remembers what they ordered.

Besides, if we make people choose in advance, it’s not fair on people who buy their ticket close to the event.

In the end, using a first-come, first-served strategy on the day has worked out best. But it’s not ideal. You could miss out on attending your first choice of workshop if you’re not fast enough.

This year we’re trying something new. Each afternoon there’ll be a choice of workshops, as always. But this time, it’ll be the same workshops on both days. That way, every attendee gets a second chance to get to the workshops they want. And it’ll help reduce the FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out. It still won’t be possible to attend all the workshops without cloning yourself, but this way, you get to attend half of them.

To recap, here’s the redesigned format for UX London 2023:

  • It’s a two-day event on June 22nd and 23rd—there are no individual day tickets.
  • There are talks in the morning, workshops in the afternoon, and one final talk at the end of the day.
  • The workshops will be repeated each day so nobody misses out on the workshop they want.

The line-up is coming together nicely. I’ve got more confirmed speakers, who I don’t want to reveal just yet. But trust me, you won’t want to miss this!

Oh, and you should probably grab your ticket this week if you haven’t already: early-bird pricing ends on midnight on Friday, February 24th.

Tuesday, February 14th, 2023

The first four speakers for UX London 2023

Please put your fingers on the desk in front of you and move them up and down rapidly in the manner of a snare drum…

I’m very happy to announce the first four speakers for UX London 2023:

A tan-skinned young man with short hair and a neatly trimmed beard wearing glasses, a baseball cap and jacket smiles in front of a wall. A brown-skinned woman with short hair and a colourful yellow top wearing a virtual reality headset looking to one side. A studio portrait of a clean-shaven light-skinned man with short dark hair in a white shirt. An outdoor portrait of a brown-skinned woman with shoulder-length black hair and glasses.

This is shaping up nicely! You can expect some more speaker announcements before too long.

But don’t wait too long to get your ticket—early-bird pricing ends this month on Friday, February 24th. Then the price goes up by £200. If you need to convince your boss, here are some reasons to attend.

I very much look forward to seeing you at Tobacco Dock on June 22nd and 23rd this year!

Tuesday, January 24th, 2023

Software and its Discontents, Part 2: An Explosion of Complexity | Kellan Elliott-McCrea: Blog

Talking primarily to engineering leaders, but also CEOs, VCs, ICs, and other practitioners, the most common response to the question of “has something substantially changed?” is that software, counter intuitively, has gotten harder to build. This is counter intuitive because the tools are orders of magnitude better, the amount of work you can cheaply outsource is nearly miraculous, computers are so damn fast and cheap these days, the quality of resources, much of it free, is off the charts, and the talent pool has exploded, and shows every sign of being smarter and better educated than ever. But software has gotten harder to build in one very particular and important way: it’s gotten more complex.

Kellan nails it:

We’ve developed an aesthetics of complexity: the sense that a good system is a complex one, that you should prefer a SPA over a web page, a distributed system over a simple one, a service over a config file, the idea if you aren’t on the latest technology you’re wasting your time, and potentially damaging your career.

Friday, January 20th, 2023

Hand-thrown frontends - Robb Owen

I’ve personally never really seen frontend as an assembly job. Lego is admittedly awesome, but for me the mental model of assembling Lego bricks in the required order until a Jira ticket can be marked as “done” feels too linear and too rigid for how I like to work. And that’s not to mention the pain that comes when you have to partially dismantle your bricks to correct some earlier misstep.

I like the pottery analogy.

Monday, January 9th, 2023

A post by Clearleft on LinkedIn

This is design engineering.

Monday, January 2nd, 2023

A fuzzy tabby cat curled up asleep and content on a pink crocheted blanket.

Having a nice lazy day, much like Coco. #NotMyCat

Why Not Mars (Idle Words)

I’ve come to believe the best way to look at our Mars program is as a faith-based initiative. There is a small cohort of people who really believe in going to Mars, the way some people believe in ghosts or cryptocurrency, and this group has an outsize effect on our space program.

Maciej lays out the case against a crewed mission to Mars.

Like George Lucas preparing to release another awful prequel, NASA is hoping that cool spaceships and nostalgia will be enough to keep everyone from noticing that their story makes no sense. But you can’t lie your way to Mars, no matter how sincerely you believe in what you’re doing.

And don’t skip the footnotes:

Fourth graders writing to Santa make a stronger case for an X-Box than NASA has been able to put together for a Mars landing.

Wednesday, December 7th, 2022

Leading Design San Francisco 2023

My upcoming appearance at An Event Apart next week to talk about declarative design isn’t the only upcoming trip to San Francisco in my calendar.

Two months from today I’ll be back in San Francisco for Leading Design. It’s on February 7th and 8th.

This event is long overdue. We’ve never had Leading Design in San Francisco before, but we were all set to go ahead with the inaugural SF gathering …in March 2020. We all know what happened next.

So this event will be three years in the making.

Rebacca is doing amazing work, as usual, putting together a fantastic line-up of speakers:

They’ll be sharing their insights, their stories and their ideas — as well as some of their pain from past challenges. It’s all designed to help you navigate your own leadership journey.

I’ll be there to MC the event, which is a great honour for me. And I reckon I’ll be up to the challenge, having just done the double whammy of hosting Leading Design London and Clarity back-to-back.

I would love to see you in San Francisco! If you’ve attended a Leading Design event before, then you know how transformational it can be. If you haven’t, then now is your chance.

Early bird tickets are still available until mid December, so if you’re thinking about coming, I suggest making that decision now.

If you know anyone in the bay area who’s in a design leadership position, be sure to tell them about Leading Design San Francisco—they don’t want to miss this!

Saturday, December 3rd, 2022

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

UX London 2023

I am very excited to announce that UX London will be back in 2023!

We’re returning to Tobacco Dock. Save the dates: June 22nd and 23rd.

Wait …that’s only two days. Previously UX London was a three-day event and you could either go for all three days or get a ticket for just one day.

Well, that’s changing. UX London 2023 will be condensed into a two-day event. You get a ticket for both days and everyone shares the experience.

I’m very excited about this! I’m planning to make some other tweaks to the format, but the basic structure of each day remains roughly the same: inspirational talks in the morning followed by hands-on workshops in the afternoon.

As for the who’ll be giving those talks and running those workshops …well, that’s what I’m currently putting together. For the second year in row, I’m curating the line-up. It’s exciting—like a planning a heist, assembling a team of supersmart people with specialised skillsets.

I can’t wait to reveal more. For now though, you can trust me when I say that the line-up is going to be stellar.

If you do trust me, you can get your super early-bird ticket, you’ve got until this Friday, December 2nd.

The super early-bird tickets are an absolute steal at £695 plus VAT. After Friday, you’ll be able to get early-bird tickets for the more reasonable price of £995 plus VAT.

Keep an eye on the UX London website for speaker announcements. I’ll also be revealing those updates here too because, as you can probably tell, I’m positively gleeful about UX London 2023.

See you there!

Thursday, November 17th, 2022

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

Craft — PaulStamatiou.com

I often use the word quality when referring to apps, products and services I hold in a high regard but another word that often comes up in this context is craft. Craft, as in something that is handcrafted where something someone spent a lot of time on and maybe even embedded their own personal touches and personality in it. Often something handcrafted feels more premium.