// Information Appliances
Every function a device can perform is something your brain has to hold open as a possibility.
A short one about Jef Raskin, the Canon Cat, and why a device that only does one thing asks less of you than one that does everything.
Also: a language with only one variable, a phone that used to do one thing at a time, and the iPod again.
// The Discipline of No
More money was supposed to buy better decisions. Mostly it buys the excuse to skip making one.
A short one about Seth Godin, Yahoo’s homepage, and why more resources should mean fewer decisions, not more products.
Also: a search box with nothing else on it, a company that said yes to everything, and the part of the job that doesn’t scale with funding.
// System Personas and UCD
An AI agent doesn’t care about your brand guidelines. It cares whether you’re useful. And how efficient.
User-centered design gets a new kind of user. Not a persona you write for a user, a system standing in the queue as one.
Also: screen readers, search spiders, and a word the web has been using since the nineties without noticing what it meant.
// Emoticomp Revisited
I wrote about giving machines personality fifteen years before any of them could actually talk back.
Emoticomp again, this time asking what held up and what didn’t, now that every AI product on earth has a personality whether it wanted one or not.
Also: what I got right, what I got backwards, and the one thing I didn’t see coming at all.
// System Personas
I called it a system persona in 2011. Now I call it a CLAUDE.md file.
A short one. On rereading an old post and realising I already had the answer, over a decade before I needed it.
Also: what an object wants, and why an AI agent needs to know.
// An Ocean of Artificial Intelligence
Optimise everything toward the same metrics and you get the same product.
Fourth of five, following on from Rocket Boots for Terrible Ideas. About what homogenisation does to trust, once every option looks and behaves the same, and why that makes leaving easy and staying meaningless.
Also: the same coffee shop in Berlin, Bucharest and Cape Town, enshittification, and why there’s no hook left for customer intent.
// Rocket Boots for Terrible Ideas
Creativity is powered by friction.
Third of five, following on from My Reconditioned iPod. About what happens to creative work when the friction gets designed out of it. Design systems, Figma agents, and the difference between producing output and having something to say.
Also: a frozen risotto, a component library nobody had to think about, and why the operating was never the differentiator.
// IDHD
We didn’t lose our attention spans. We lost the moment where we decided what to pay attention to.
A post about the attention economy, the intention economy we could have had, and what the distance between them has quietly done to creativity, trust, and the future we’re building.
Also: a reconditioned iPod, rocket boots for terrible ideas, and an ocean of artificial intelligence.
// Default Mode
I was called a daydreamer at school. It wasn’t a compliment.
I think it’s the most important skill I have. And I feel it has atrophied.
// Are You an Artist?
Two different strangers asked me the same question. I wasn’t ready for it either time.
A post about identity, creative practice, and the masks we wear to avoid answering things honestly.
Also: Supersonic festival, Halima Cassell’s ceramics, and a coffee shop conversation I’m glad I had.
// CLI Personality
When every interaction happens through plain text, it’s hard to get brand attributes across. Copywriting and tone of voice do some of the work. I wanted to know what else could.
// Dreaming Aloud
My brain started fizzing again. I hadn’t felt that in years.
An old post, brought in from Medium. About noticing the same energy that was around from 2010 to 2014, before the NDAs closed in, and what a Turner Prize-nominated artwork in Eastbourne had to do with getting it back.
Also: a Tumblr notebook, Discordia, and a clock that started all of this.
// Awesome Accessibility
The best accessibility features don’t look like accessibility features. They just look like good design.
A short one, brought in from Medium. About a Nike shoe with a collapsible heel, and the case for building access in from the start instead of bolting it on at the end.
Also: the curb-cut effect, and why “well done, more of this” is basically the whole argument.
// Emoticomp
Give a smart object a personality and people stop being afraid of it. Get the personality wrong and it’s worse than having none.
An old post, brought in from my old journal. From January 2011, before anyone said Internet of Things out loud. About giving connected objects character, and everything that can go wrong when you try.
Also: a rabbit that couldn’t read the news, a MacBook that breathes, and fourteen rules for being polite if you’re a thing.
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