Good design habits I've been trying to get into some good design habits recently. Every Monday I go through an ever growing checklist. It's a good hack to get my brain back into gear quickly at the start of the week. Here's some of the things I do. Often they aren't needed every … | Continue reading
Inclusive language Candi Williams shared a great post on LinkedIn about inclusive language. It's a great reminder to me that there is always more I can do to choose better words. Dark patterns Deceptive patterns Whitelist Allow Blacklist Deny Sold down the river Betrayed Related: … | Continue reading
Finishing off the prototype I had to simplify a complex page I was prototyping. There were two bits of JavaScript on the page and even though they both worked separately, when I enabled them both, they stopped working. One bit was powering an autocomplete, and the other was power … | Continue reading
Planning for some user research We've decided to do some usability testing on our most recent prototype. We had to narrow the scope to one user group (out of three) and we may only be able fit one round in. But a little bit is better than nothing, and this way, we'll be able to t … | Continue reading
Reflecting on 1 year contracting I've been contracting for just over a year now, and I'm still pleased with my decision to take the plunge. It feels like there is less work around at the moment, so I feel lucky that I've managed to have continuous work. It looks like my first con … | Continue reading
⚠️ Content warning: alcohol use. Finally managed to get to a gig in Bristol. Here are a few photos from the night (and following morning). Thundercat Thundercat at Bristol Beacon Rubbish photo, but really good gig. Small Bar Drinking beers outside at Small Bar We also went to The … | Continue reading
Moving into the prototype phase At the start of the week, I shared our refined requirements with the wider team (including software developers and quality assurance testers) and our business sponsor. We agreed the requirements were more or less correct. We also agreed the rough o … | Continue reading
Refining business requirements I've spent most of this sprint refining and iterating on some new business requirements that the team are being asked to work on. It's been nice to work on something new, after at least 6 months of reworking something old. It's not glamorous work, b … | Continue reading
Space for new work and design debt For what feels like the first time in about 6 months, we have a bit of breathing space. We've been in reactive mode for a long time, responding to questions and issues that have arisen as our design hits the constraints of the platform we are bu … | Continue reading
Design Swansea Cropped I spoke at Design Swansea on Thursday, I’ve shared my talk slides and rough transcript. I put a lot of effort it to the talk, and making it available in multiple ways, so not much energy for weeknoting today. Subscribing to RSS feeds I’ve started using Feed … | Continue reading
Get the slides View slides on Google Slides Hi, my name is Benjy Hi, my name is Benjy and I'm an interaction designer from Swansea. I’m interested in user-centred design in the public sector, inclusive design and accessibility. Link to slides and transcripts Here’s a link to my s … | Continue reading
Super quick weeknotes this week because I want extra time to prepare for my lightning talk at Design Swansea next week. Breaking words in tables I tooted about a problem with breaking words in tables. Looks like it inspired Adrian Roselli to write a whole post about it. This is g … | Continue reading
After 2 days away with the team. I’m reminded that in-person workshops are often amazing (this one included). But… joining video calls in an open plan office full of other people on video calls is a disaster for my productivity and wellbeing. My brain literally can’t do it. I use … | Continue reading
Almost 1500 GitHub commits I spotted that I’ve made almost 1500 commits on GitHub for this site. The first commit was 9 years ago! Back then this site was built using Jekyll, and I was migrating across from WordPress. Some of the blog posts themselves were brought across from my … | Continue reading
Markdown is an incredibly flexible tool that’s part of my daily working practice. Almost everything I write digitally (including this post) starts in Markdown. It’s even influenced the way I write on paper. And all of my design work starts with some form of writing. This post by … | Continue reading
Designing with many dependencies and an unclear scope Despite the team being under lots of pressure in work. We are starting to pick up new things. I’m really trying to avoid past mistakes (rushing work to catch up with over-promised schedules). Part of this is making sure I reac … | Continue reading
Stressful week This week has been stressful. If the ‘how much I’ve moaned at my partner scale’ is anything to go by, then it’s probably about 7 out of 10. The product I’m working on is heading towards a private beta, and I’m constantly worrying about things we could be doing bett … | Continue reading
Design Swansea 60 I went to Design Swansea on Thursday. I hadn’t realised until I’d got there, but it was their 60th event! The talks were by photographer Nick Morrish and his previous life as an in-house photographer at British Airways. And, Lloyd Morgan the founder of video age … | Continue reading
Work has been busy, and very up-and-down this week, so I’m pleased to be heading towards the weekend feeling pretty positive. Prototype rhythm I’m getting into a good prototyping rhythm. I’m working on multiple branches at the same time, with each being focused on a self-containe … | Continue reading
Deadline approaching This week we finished our first sprint of the year. I’m feeling productive, and a bit more like I have enough time to do things properly. Compared to the last few months of last year, which were very full on. But, there is still loads to do. We are aiming to … | Continue reading
Trying weeknotes again I’m struggling to get into a writing habit at the moment, so I’m going to try weeknotes for a while. Although, looking back, it looks like I wrote 12 blog posts last year, which is more than I was expecting. Contracting extension I’ve just got another exten … | Continue reading
My notes on how interaction designers can work with software developers and testers on agile delivery teams. I shared this earlier in the week and wanted to expand on it a bit… … I think the value an interaction designer can bring to how digital products are delivered (as in … wo … | Continue reading
I’ve just started my 6th month as a contractor, and wanted to share some notes around the practicalities of being employed inside IR35. Inside IR35 I’m writing this from the perspective of being inside IR35. This means that I'm not self-employed, or running my own business. I'm e … | Continue reading
Content warning: cancer and death. My cousin Seb died early last year from cancer. He was just a few months older than me. He had moved to New Zealand a few years ago, and we had lost touch. But he was the kind of person that I could reconnect with instantly, no matter how long i … | Continue reading
Here are some work goals I've set myself, now that I've started contracting. The goals at a glance Work with more varied organisations and services Improve my processes and use the best tools Contribute to, and be active in, the wider gov design community Read on for a bit more d … | Continue reading
Contract extensions I've just finished my first 3 months contracting, and have finished on a high by getting an extension for a further 6 months. I think the extension was always a strong possibility, but it was nice to get the paperwork through. Having been on the other side, I … | Continue reading
I'm turning 40 this month, so I thought it was worth marking it with a blog post Lots has happened since I turned 30. 10 years ago, I was still working at a design agency, and struggling to find a fit for my skills, which were a mix UX (user experience), HTML/CSS and graphic desi … | Continue reading
What can interaction designers do to make services more inclusive? Methods for designing digital services that are accessible to people with disabilities are well documented, but what if we take a broader view about how to include other groups that face barriers? (Note, this isn' … | Continue reading
I'm a few weeks in to my first contracting role and so far, so good. It feels like a pure interaction design role, which is really what I was looking for. In my experience these kinds of roles have been quite difficult to find though, and I'm not 100% sure why that is. More thoug … | Continue reading
A round up of things that I'll install first on a new Macbook. I use all of these tools regularly when designing, or require them to get setup. I've written about some of them in more detail in this other post: my interaction design tools. Apps 1Password Chrome Figma Firefox GitH … | Continue reading
Time to clean the stickers off my laptop (again). Quite a good haul this time. See this laptop sticker post from 2018 too. Read on for a description of each sticker, with links to their origin stories or creators' web sites. Descriptions go roughly left to right, top to bottom. D … | Continue reading
Good news, it looks like I've lined up my first contract role. It's a… interaction design role 3 months remote central UK government inside IR35 I haven't seen the contract yet, so it's not 100% certain. I keep reminding myself that delays happen and orgs can change their mind. B … | Continue reading
Hey friends, I've decided to take the plunge and go contracting. I'll be available from October 2024, so if you know of any interesting opportunities kicking off around then, please let me know! What I'm looking for Interaction design, UX (user experience) design or product desig … | Continue reading
A collection of tips for making PowerPoint presentations more accessible. Created (and crowdsourced) by the UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency) Inclusive Design team earlier in the year. Many tips will be useful for other presentation tools too. Make your slides available Share you … | Continue reading
A collection of posts and guides about inclusive design. (It’s only whilst pulling this list together I’ve realised how many of my bookmarks are written by the talented Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah). 6 Principles for Inclusive Design – Lillian Xiao A beginner’s guide to inclusive … | Continue reading
I’ve set myself a challenge to visit all the beaches in Swansea and Gower. We visit some regularly, but loads are completely new to me. No strict rules, I’m going to include beaches I’ve visited recently, to give myself a head start. Very important stats Beaches visited: 12 of 33 … | Continue reading
Inspired by Max Böck, I've decided to add a blogroll to my site. According to IndieWeb, a blogroll is "a list of other sites that you read, are a follower of, or recommend". With Twitter under threat from you-know-who, it's a great time to start publishing on your own domain. Let … | Continue reading
Some books about inclusive design that I'm reading, or are on my wish list. Beyond Sticky Notes – “…your guide to doing co-design, for real.” Design Justice – “An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance coll … | Continue reading
I've been getting into the habit of writing excerpts for my weeknotes, so that they can be used in the social media snippets (or cards) when I share my posts on Twitter. I think they are especially useful for weeknotes as the titles of my weeknotes don't have any specific descrip … | Continue reading
Design Swansea This week was Design Swansea 48. It’s a free meet-up held at the HQ Urban Kitchen near the train station. It’s a really nice venue which serves good coffee, tiny rebel beers and drop bear alcohol free beers. Both talks were great this week. Ryan Stephens is a minds … | Continue reading
Posting from my phone again today as we’ve gone to Liverpool for a friend’s 40th. It’s been a week of highs and lows. My Gran’s funeral It was my Gran’s funeral on Monday, a sad day but she had lived a full life. I enjoyed hearing more about what she achieved. Probation Some bett … | Continue reading
Accessibility best practices Leaning heavily on the GOV.UK Service Manual, and the work that the inclusive design team did whilst I was at UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency), I've been iterating on a list of accessibilty best practices to share with my current team. Everyone under … | Continue reading
First sprint This week my team finished their first sprint without any of the old supplier onboard. It was good to get stuck in. I worked on tickets that I proposed myself, and found accessibility issues that have since been prioritised by the product manager and then fixed by th … | Continue reading
Design Quality Assurance (QA) and device testing This week my devices from Made Tech arrived in the post. I ordered some second-hand devices to do some QAing on the apps. In addition to my personal iPhone, I now have access to an Android phone and tablet, plus an iPad. I found a … | Continue reading
Goodbye old team, hello new sprint It was sprint change over this week, and the last of the old supplier’s team were leaving, including the old designer. So I’m on my own now, so to speak. We did a final run Sketch through to make sure I had all the correct fonts, plugins and lib … | Continue reading
Made Tech design community stuff I got myself some tickets to the UK Gov design system day conference in September. I think the theme is inclusivity – so really looking forward to attending (remotely). At our fortnightly designer community of practice, one of the team did a great … | Continue reading
This was my first week back after my holiday, and I went straight into my first client assignment at Made Tech. I’m also half way through my probation. Native app design For my first assignment, I’ll be working on a native iOS and Android app, and I have just over one sprint to h … | Continue reading
This week we stayed in a static caravan at Broughton Farm, near Llangennith in Gower. Broughton Bay It was very hot again, which made packing a real chore, but when we got there, the weather was perfect for some lazy beach days. The tides were on our side too, especially early on … | Continue reading