We have a fascinating opportunity for a University of Edinburgh undergraduate student to join our team as an intern this summer. The job has a cool title: nudge intern — or behavioural insights intern if you want to be a little more formal about it. If you’ve read the book…

The BBC gameshow Cyberzone, first broadcast this week 29 years ago, is not fondly remembered — or even remembered much at all. But it is culturally relevant for two reasons. Firstly, it is the origin of the 1990s catchphrase “awooga”. It is commonly attributed to John Fashanu from ITV’s Saturday…

There is a harmful myth that pervades design decision-making. It’s an assumption that, on the surface, seems so sensible that few people ever question it. And yet when applied carelessly it can cause real harm. Consistency. It is so often seen as a slam-dunk argument in favour of an initiative…

Note: Reading the articles I link to is more important than reading this blog post. As a reminder to read or bookmark the other articles, I list the links again at the bottom of the post. Many designers talk about user-centred design. When used with care and intention, design approaches…

Have you ever been told that by doing human-centred work you’re stepping on someone else’s toes? I have heard it a number of times. More and more people are exploring the apparent overlaps between human-centred approaches and other disciplines. Overlapping responsibilities can be a big problem if you’re perceived to…

I recently wrote about why content is more important than code, but how neither of them are as important as people’s needs. Code serves content. Content serves people’s underlying needs. User needs ⟶ Content ⟶ Code In the course of writing that post, I realised that this sequence can be…

It is difficult to find a phrase that exactly describes my work and the way I approach it. I’ve started to talk about human-centred approaches. This post explains what I mean by that. Human-centred approaches include user experience, service design, design thinking, interaction design, lean thinking… Anything that puts humans…

The printing press was the most important technology for the distribution of content — until it wasn’t. Now print is seen as increasingly irrelevant, usurped by digital distribution methods. We know this. And yet some people still obsess more about the technology than the content. My response to a recent…

Over the past year, I have worked to re-shape the team I lead at the University of Edinburgh, hiring people into new content design roles. (I say new roles, although strictly speaking we evolved them from existing but outdated job titles and descriptions.) Content design is a relatively new discipline…