(This post has been sitting in draft for a few months. Today I was tagged in a discussion about researching with vulnerable/distressed people and I just pressed publish. The post started out as an email I sent to the UK GDS User Research mailing list on the topic of doing user research with vulnerable people.) […]
Author archives: bernard
Fixing fn button controls on your POP_OS laptop post-update 18.10
I’ve been using my XPS 13 developer machine more and more over the past few months after recently installing POP_OS (Ubuntu based with a very nice and usable Gnome 3 theme). Last week I updated to POP_OS 18.10, which brought lots of changes. One of those unexpected changes was the function (F buttons) stopped controlling […]
ACM – Y U NO ♥ UX PPL?
(This is an open letter to The Association of Computer Machinery) Dear ACM Events team, This is a light-hearted constructive criticism of your events sign-up form. It is meant to be helpful. In a previous life I was an engineer but I went to the light side and became a Human-Computer Interaction professional. My profession […]
Enabling remote desktop acces to POP_OS from Mac OS
I’ve recently installed POP_OS on my Dell XPS laptop. I want to use it to continue experimenting with open source Design applications, and other things. I want to get remote desktop access, so I can securely access it remotely over the same network. To do this I’ll need two things: to setup an SSH tunnel […]
Adventures with impersonal recruitment agents
Adventures with impersonal recruitment agents: No, "Hello Bernard, how are you?". "No, nice to meet you." Opening line: "Good afternoon, Your profile looks well aligned to some requirements I have." Translates to: "You look like a 2×4 plank. I need a 2×4 wooden plank." — Bernard Tyers (@bernardtyers) August 29, 2018
Internet Freedom Festival 2018 – Introverts meetup
Details Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Time: 14:00 – 15:00 Room: Patio Naranjos Duration: 1 hour Description (From the IFF Schedule) “This meetup brings together individuals that identify as introverts. Meetups are one hour informal events focused on allowing people to meet and greet.” I’ve volunteered to lead the Internet Freedom Festival Introvert meetup at this years IFF. […]
Using Apple Magic mouse with Ubuntu sometimes causes unwanted behaviours
One of the main annoyances with my new Ubuntu machine is not so much the fault of Ubuntu, or the Dell hardware – but the lack of a decent pointing device. As much as I complained originally, I like my Apple Magic Mouse. My muscle memory has formed, ergonomically it’s (reasonably) comfortable. So annoying! The […]
Can’t extract rar files on Ubuntu?
I’m trying to extract a RAR file (a type of compressed file) on my new Ubuntu machine. I use the built-in archive manager application and keep getting this error message: Originally I thought it was a problem with the file (maybe corrupt), but after doing some DuckDuckGo’ing I found a […]
Useful Gnome extensions for UX professionals
As I wrote before, I’m conducting an experiment of working with only Open Source software in my day-to-day User Centred Design profession. One of the good things with OS X software was the abundance of useful, single use applications which helped in work. Using Linux, this shouldn’t be impossible to achieve either. The flavour of […]
Slack and government
Anyone working in, or following digital services in (any) government, is probably aware of the use of Slack 1)https://www.slack.com/ as an ephemeral instant messaging service by people working in digital services. If they’re aware of that, then they’re also probably aware of the Freedom Of Information request recently submitted to the UK governments Cabinet Office, […]