Hello again. As you might have notice, the blog has had a revamp. It’s a new theme (WordPress 2025) and a streamlined presence. It’s part of my summer project on digital sustainability (I’ve blogged about this in two separate posts, l…
Category: 23 Things Syndicated
Digital Sustainability Part 2
In my last post I described how I have started to think about how to make my work more environmentally sustainable, and described the practical steps I am taking to achieve this, starting with decreasing my digital footprint. Thanks to everyone who got in touch with comments and tips digital sustainability (I’ve updated the original post now to include these). This is part 2, in which I want to talk about the material, physical stuff…
No Best Way
This post from Larry Cuban (Education Historian) had some pretty coincidental timing. As I’ve been doing more instruction in martial arts, some of the conversation around how best to teach pops up every now and then, whether in small groups face-to-face or in the online martial arts communities I follow. The change in approaches over […]
From wildfires to websites
Yesterday evening after work we drove to the coast, where I took the photo that features on this post. It’s a view of Southerndown Beach, on the south western coast near Cardiff. One of my favourite spots near us and absolutely stunning all year round. The sea breeze and fresh, salty air were a world away from the reality we had woken up to at 3am that morning, smoke and smell of acrid burning filling…
THE FUTURE IS OFFLINE
This post from maique h/t Doug Belshaw, struck a chord, Over the past ten years I’ve used and retreated from various online platforms. Starting with Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica scandals, Twitter after the takeover, etc. Some of their replacements, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc. just didn’t stick for me. The most recent abandoned space for me […]
Answering the 40 questions (2025)
I came across 40 questions by Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian via Doug Belshaw. It’s archived now, but you can see more of his work at Dr Doug Belshaw. The idea is to answer them every year, which I’d intended to do back in December when I book marked it. Early 2026 got away from […]
UX debt has to be paid back
UX debt has to be paid back was originally published in UX Collective on Medium. This article from 2022 feels pretty relevant for today. I often refer to the types of debt we accumulate as instructional design teams / units, mostly referring to technical debt, but I like the framing here of UX Debt that […]
The Vanishing Designer
Scrolling through the UX Collective blogs today (2021) I came across this post, The Vanishing Designer, by Chuánqi Sun. Losing the design diversity means falling into a singular narrative of how design must be done, which grants unfair and self-reinforcing advantage to the mainstream while discouraging, stifling, or even punishing the idiosyncratic designers who […]
The One Percent
What will it take to make your day 1% more… of what you need? Working life for is busy and keeping a grip on things takes a lot of energy and focus. So what do you do when you grip on so tightly that you can’t see beyond what’s in front of you? This post is inspired by some recent coaching sessions which prompted me to reflect on how you can make small, incremental changes…
The Power of (the right) Prompts (Part 2)
In my last post I explored how a journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work. Whether you are writing by hand, typing away on your laptop, dictating into your phone or sketching with pen and paper, I am a BIG fan of journalling (and after over 30 years of journalling for both work and in my personal life, I have tried every which way to make it work). As a…
More than words (Part 1)
A journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work. One of the things I know to be true is that there’s hardly ever a perfect moment when everything is done, your inbox is empty and the ocean of professional life is lies calm and still in front of you; giving you space and time to reset. The closest I ever got to the ideal blank slate day is the start of…
Newsletter, July 2026
Hello! It’s been a busy and highly enjoyable month of travel and conferences for me, and this week I am wrapping up my teaching at Oxford for this academic year and also recording new interviews for the next Reclaim case study. Next week new projects are getting underway for the next few months including work my second book. It was not all work however as I also celebrated my birthday, and went to see The…