User Research No design without (user) research; A great talk (with video) by Belén Barros Pena given at 2019 Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) conference in Saarbrucken. The talk was about why and how to incorporate design research practices into free software projects, but it applies to all projects. The tool we use to turn around […]
Author archives: bernard
Reading list & useful things I found for 19-25 August
Accessibility We need to talk about dyslexia at work; a nice blogpost about dyslexia in the work place and how to improve support for people who live and work with dyslexia. Brexit User Research A beginners guide to getting into user research; A ma-hoosive list of resources (in the form of a Notion.so note) about […]
Reading list & useful things I found for 12-18 August
Interesting things to read The Diversity Redemption Do you write a blog? Do you have opinions about things? If so, your “honest opinion” is defined by legislation (in the UK). You are not a brand; Thank God someone finally said it. Quotes Ashley Fowler from @USABLE_tools reiterated during “Designing for extreme risks” workshop that a […]
UK Web accessibility after Brexit?
I saw a message today to a mailing list (essentially) asking – what impact does Brexit have on the accessibility of UK websites – specifically UK government (anything that ends in .gov.uk). A worrying, but understandable question. The answer came that websites will still have to comply with the: UK Equality Act Public Sector Bodies […]
My portable research kit
(Post is in draft. This is the beginning. Check back later..) Everyone wants to build a usability research lab. You don’t always need one. You can do a lot with some low cost equipment. Building a research lab I’ve built small-scale labs when I worked in government. They are not a build and forget type […]
Doing ethical research with vulnerable users
(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.) […]
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