A Call to Work

Designers (particularly those in Government):

You're busy tinkering with AI, oh-so-thrilled to be on the cutting edge of technology, trying to find use cases for it in complex, difficult problem spaces (spoiler alert: there are no uses cases and you're just burning the planet).

Meanwhile, Japan is busy doing the hard work. They've just celebrated one year of ending the use of floppy disks. Yes, floppy disks.

Their Digital Agency scrapped 1,034 regulations governing the use of floppy disks. Let me spell that out:

One thousand and thirty four policy changes.
One thousand and thirty four regulation edits.
One thousand and thirty four bits of hard, dense, unsexy work.

That's the work the matters. You can't just point AI at a problem like floppy disks and write a clever prompt to make it go away.

You have to do the hard work.

Do
the
Hard
Work

(I think I'm going to turn that phrase into a poster and put in on the wall behind me. Let me know if that's a good idea and you would want one too! Because that will 100% increase the likelihood of me actually doing it. No, I'm not lazy, I just know myself; lots of ideas, too many to execute them all.)

Disservice Standard

HP is garbage. They’re a terrible company that’s actively hostile to its customers.

First, they added a minimum 15 minute waiting time for telephone support calls. Then, they were caught and backtracked.

This was going to be a post about service design, the use of dark patterns, design ethics, and the people who made this decision and the people who went along with it to implement it.

Instead, I'll leave you with this, courtesy of the incomparable Maya Angelou:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Volkswagen At the Movies

If you’ve been to the movies recently, you might have noticed an unlikely co-star: Volkswagen.

They’ve been clumsily, ham-fistedly cramming their vehicles into all kinds of movies*. It's so blatant that I can't imagine it makes anyone think positively about the brand or want to buy a Volkswagen.

Take Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Admittedly, it’s a popcorn blockbuster and by no means a “Good Film of Important Cultural Value” (the clumsy name alone might have given that away).

A still from the movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. A Volkswagen SUV sits in the centre of the frame, perfectly angled and lit like a car commercial.

That said, there’s absolutely no reason for the above shot to exist. It doesn’t end the scene. It doesn’t advance the plot. It’s not important for the audience to see the characters leave in a car.

This shot exists for one reason and one reason only: product placement. It’s an ad, sitting right there in the middle of the movie. The car is perfectly lit, perfectly angled, and dead centre in the frame. It's a glamour shot straight out of the last seconds of a bog-standard car commercial. And it’s there because the studio and Volkswagen think you’re too stupid to notice, or too inured to care.

I don’t mind subtle product placement or even overt product placement, especially when it’s done well. But the example above shows a sheer lack of respect for the audience.

*: I won’t even get into Volkswagen’s partnership with Miraculous Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie because the movie is poor at best, and the placement extends even beyond the film into concept cars and ads with the characters.

The Thing About the iPhone …

… is that it lets people make weird, wonderful things. Weird wonderful things like ¡Suerte! – a short film hosted on Apple’s YouTube channel about a young musician trying to overcome a creative block and find his musical sound.

This, of course, requires a hero’s journey. On his journey, he’s accompanied by a giant fish, meets Death, a mermaid, and then the Devil.

It’s oddly compelling, beautifully done, and proof that the best camera is the one that's with you.

Oh, and it features this beautiful little homage to Kubrick’s The Shining:

A Return to Blogging

The internet used to be fun.

People had personal blogs. They were strange, wonderful things. (I had one too †!) You’d stumble across a new blog through a sidebar link, or someone would email you a link, and you’d find yourself on an entirely new corner of the internet reading a complete stranger’s writing. I remember reading a waiter’s secret diary, the misadventures of someone determined to learn to cook more than just pasta, and a host of others. I read my friends’ blogs while they travelled, mused, or straight up just complained. I had these sites bookmarked (when that was also a thing). The best part? The weirdness. People posted about anything they wanted and nobody was concerned about looking professional or being a subject matter expert.

Blogging on the internet was freeform, it was wild, and it was great.

Slowly (suddenly?) though, personal blogs started to die out. Part of it was monetization – the waiter got a book deal (well done, you!), the chef got a cook book deal (well done, you too!). Posting became less frequent. The idea of writing for yourself seemed to become distasteful, an indulgent or even foolish pastime. After all, why write for yourself when there are Internet Riches waiting for you? All you need to do is optimize for SEO, keep up with the latest Google search trends, keyword stuff some posts, maybe run some ads, definitely get an Amazon affiliate link, and hey, you’re ever closer to Internet Riches. Never mind that the writing got worse, that the passion wasn’t there in the words, and that it all became less interesting.

I miss personal blogs.

Today, there are still some great ones: Jason Kottke, Cabel Sasser, John Gruber, and Louie Mantia to name a few. I have no ambition to join their ranks or be a great blog (whatever that means), but I’m starting mine again, right here.

Bring on the weird.

† It ran on Blogger, long before Google had acquired that service, with third-party commenting functionality provided by [Haloscan][1].↩︎︎

The Service Standard Has Changed

Recently, I was chatting with friends who run a bakery in London, UK. They’re slowly going about re-opening their business as the pandemic restrictions are being lifted. The biggest change they’re making is to accept online orders for pick-up.

This isn’t unique. Many of the independent grocery stores nearby are now offering kerbside pick-up. Fine dining restaurants have adapted their menus to offer delivery-friendly alternatives, such as “cook at home” bundles. Others have innovated in unexpected ways – one particularly clever example of this is Joeys’ offering on Door Dash. In addition to meal kits, they’ll also happily sell you basic groceries from their inventory: milk, cheese, eggs, meat, spirits, and even toilet paper.

The pandemic has changed the service standard. It’s done so in ways that are truly disruptive, regardless of industry or sector. More importantly, it’s changed it in ways that will be lasting.

Because when this is all over, and life returns to normal (for a value of normal that we don’t yet understand),the demand for these services won’t disappear. If today, I can get beer from my favourite, independent brewery delivered to my doorstep, why would I ever go to the liquor store, where I run the risk of it being out of stock? If I can have my favourite coffee beans delivered to my doorstep, why travel across the city to buy them at the one café that stocks them (again, running the risk of them being out of stock)? Every small business needs to be considering ways to ensure they can meet – and continue to meet – the new service standard.

DesignX, Toronto

Before leaving the UK, I started looking around for professional associations, groups, and meetups in Canada.

I eventually found DesignX, Toronto's largest UX and Design community, and it's fantastic. They have a brilliant Slack channel that's teeming with activity. Whatever you're looking for, you'll find it there – be it tips for Sketch, prototyping tutorials, job postings, advice, or leadership guidance.

Preet Singh, the founder of DesignX, and I connected in October and he asked me to present to the community about service design and government services.

Despite getting stuck in traffic (long enough that I began to worry, Preet texted me, and I debated getting out and running!), I made it to the venue, gave my talk, and had a fantastic time meeting as many members of the community as possible. I couldn't have had a better time. 

Read a Twitter Moment of my DesignX presentation→

View the slides from my talk:

Designing for Canada

After a decade in the U.K. followed by a short sabbatical, I'm delighted to announce that I'm going to be the first Chief of Design with the Canadian Digital Service, a new initiative by the Government of Canada.

CDS's mission is straightforward: to design, code, build and deliver simple, easy to use, accessible services for Canadians. When I first met the CDS team, I found a passionate, diverse group of people truly committed to placing user centred design at the heart of everything they do. It's one of the many reasons I'm delighted to join the team and lead the design practice.

Canadians expect web services, like Gmail and Facebook, to be easy to use and accessible. There's absolutely no reason why government services can't be the same. The United Kingdom’s success with GDS and the U.S.’s success with the U.S. Digital Service and 18F are proof of this. During my time with the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom, my team and I designed and delivered services that made thousands of people’s lives easier and, in some cases, saved them money. I'm excited and delighted to have the opportunity to do the same here back at home.

Since the launch of CDS this summer, the team's work and the scope of the projects has dramatically increased. CDS is going to be hiring designers of all kinds over the next couple of months. Please get in touch if you're interested in joining the team.

I firmly believe that there's no better opportunity to make an impact through design. At the Canadian Digital Service, you'll work on projects that matter, in an open, transparent, inclusive, and diverse environment, to make the lives of your fellow Canadians better. It's that simple.

In-App Diversity

For the past few years, I've been using Duolingo to improve my French. I've found it really useful and my proficiency in reading, speaking and comprehension has increased dramatically.

Some time ago, Duolingo introduced stylised illustrations of people speaking the phrases (I suspect this was in order to humanise and bring context to the exercises). While these illustrations must have presented an interesting challenge to the visual designers† as well as the engineers, the thing about them that immediately stood out to me wasn't the style or the execution.

Instead, it was the diversity.

There are illustrations of women, men, girls, boys, people of colour, people of religion, bodybuilders, twins, punks, skaters, hippies, policemen, lumber jacks, zombies, astronauts, and same-sex couples.

Just some of the Duolingo characters

Some of the more unique characters

Some of the more unique characters

Some of these depictions must be intentional. In the above image, a character who looks suspiciously like Hulk Hogan proclaims his embarrassment and two women of colour proudly state their love has no limits ( 🌈 ). And if I'm not wrong, that's Riggs and Murtaugh in the bottom left corner.

I absolutely love this. I can't remember the last time I used an app that actually had so much diversity represented in visual form. I think it's commendable in this day and age, to say nothing of the fact that Duolingo allowed their designers the time and the budget to render these characters.

Hell, they even included a bear.

† From what I can tell, the illustrations are the work of Gregory Hartman and are based on a standard template – libraries of heads and shoulders are mixed and matched with other libraries of facial features and accessories. Fantastic stuff.

Portrait Photography

Following up from my previous post on food photography, here's a portfolio of my commerical portraiture work.

Food Photography

For years, I've run a separate domain and website for my commercial photography. Recently, I made the choice to let that domain expire. But rather than let those photos disappear into the ether, I thought I'd publish them here on my blog.

Here's a selection of my published food photography: 

Choosy Icon

Choosy is one of those tiny pieces of software that quickly becomes indispensable. Its premise is beautifully simple: open the right link in the right browser, every time.

That premise belies its incredibly power though. Choosy also lets you set behaviours and customs actions. Always open mail:to links in Chrome? No sweat. Send a link from Chrome to Safari? Easy. The accompanying extensions – for all of the major browsers – make that a piece of cake.

I was introduced to Choosy by George Brocklehurst, a former colleague and Choosy's creator (when he saw me copying and pasting links between browsers). I used it for years and was dismayed when it finally stopped working because of changes in OSX.

The old version of the Choosy icon

The old version of the Choosy icon

When it came time to update Choosy, I happily took George up on his offer to update the icon. The previous icon felt complicated, especially given how simple Choosy is to use. In fairness, the original icon was a product of its time and reflected Apple's Aqua aesthetic with reflections, gradients, and 3D effects.

My goal for the icon’s redesign was to simplify it as much as possible. It needed to feel elegant, simple, and straightforward.

After some thought, I chose to base the new version on one of the original icon’s triangles. This creates a tie between the original icon and the new one. It's a strong geometric element and communicates the concepts of direction, navigation and movement.

Finding the proper balance of the C to the triangle proved to be a surprising challenge (turns out that mathematical alignment was completely visually wrong). I also found drawing a geometrically perfect triangle with rounded corners very, very difficult (I was trying to use the Pathfinder tool to merge circles with the corners of a triangle and then remove the negative spaces).

Eventually, I realised that Adobe had probably solved this problem. A quick Google search later and I used the incredibly simple “round corners” option. ಠ_ಠ 

In the end, I’m very happy with how the final version turned out. A particularly difficult challenge was ensuring that the icon represented well at all sizes – as small as 16 pixels square, for use in the Apple menu bar and as a favicon (the 16 pixel square version actually has a slightly different layout and font weight to render properly).

The final icon. From left to right at 1024 x 1024, 512 x 512, 256 x 256, 128 x 128, 64 x 64 and the tiny 16 x 16!

And here’s what Choosy looks like when it’s running in your Mac’s menu bar:

You can buy Choosy for $10 USD. It’s worth every penny.