Category Archives: articles

Re-cycling difficulties in London

[Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes] Serco staff struggle to cope with the overflow bike parking near Waterloo Station by London’s South Bank. They were having to free up some docking stations so people could check their bikes in. The … Continue reading

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Don’t let distance get in the way of your user research

[Reading time: 2 - 3 minutes] There’s an advertising campaign at the moment for Blackberry, the smartphone company, using the tag line “Closeness has nothing to do with distance.” These days we can all carry our loved ones around in … Continue reading

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Traffic lights and inclusive design

Why are there three separate lights in the standard traffic light setup? Why are they vertically arranged? In a nutshell: don’t rely on colour alone to convey meaning in your information design. Continue reading

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What is a hashtag?

[Reading time: 2 - 3 minutes] [Encouraged by a friend after I wrote this explanation in Facebook, I'm posting it here and planning to start writing more than 140 characters again every so often] A hashtag is a type of … Continue reading

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How would a butterfly inspire your next design?

[Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes] That’s the question currently on the homepage of Ask Nature, a new web-based resource which catalogues the many ways we can learn from nature when we’re trying to solve problems. The project is run … Continue reading

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Enterprising times – a case for search best bets

[Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes] Reading the e-Consultancy interview with Lou Rosenfeld on the importance of site search analytics, I was reminded of when I was product manager of intranet (or enterprise) search at the BBC. It was back … Continue reading

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Keeping up to date with East Dulwich on the internet: Part 4 – Delicious RSS feeds

[Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes] This series of short articles explains some simple and free ways to use the internet to keep tabs on the subjects you’re interested in. I’m using East Dulwich as the example subject. Previously: Part … Continue reading

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Keeping up to date with East Dulwich on the internet: Part 3 – Twitter tracking

[Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes] In this series of short articles, I’m looking at different ways of subject-tracking on the internet. Previous articles covered Google Alerts and Technorati Watchlists. This article is about Twitter and its tracking feature, using … Continue reading

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Keeping up to date with East Dulwich on the internet: Part 2 – Technorati Watchlists

[Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes] How do you keep on top of everything everyone’s saying about East Dulwich, or any other subject, online? In this series of short articles I’m going to run through a few things you can … Continue reading

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Keeping up to date with East Dulwich on the internet: Part 1 – Google Alerts

[Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes] How do you keep on top of everything everyone’s saying about East Dulwich, or any other subject, online? In this series of short articles I’m going to run through a few things you can … Continue reading

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