Jeremy Keith's Blog, page 2

Portugeating

Hi Chris. You mentioned you were off to Portugal soon to explore Lisbon and Porto and I promised I���d send along some food tips from my previous visits.

I���ll skip over the obvious. No doubt you���ll seek out pasteis de nata in Lisbon. And I���m sure someone will convince you to have a francesinha in Porto (perhaps at the tail end of a beery night out).

Personally, I think one of Portugal���s treasures is its tinned fish. Find a spot where you can peruse a selection and have a tin with a beer or a glass of excellent Portugese wine.

In Lisbon there���s Sol E Pesca, just down the street from the Time Out market.

In Porto there���s Prova, though the focus is there is more on cheese.

A lot of the best tinned fish will hail from Matosinhos, a northern suburb of Porto. I recommend making your way up there.

Check out the fish market there, which is also the former home to a digital design school where I spent a week teaching a few years back. At lunch time you can pick out a fish from the market and take it straight to Taberna Lusitana to have them cook it for you.

In the evening, every place in Matosinhos hauls a grill out onto the street to cook sardines. It smells wonderful!

Take every opportunity that comes your way to eat the local percebes���goose barnacles���hand-harvested in risky conditions from the Atlantic coastline.

There are lots of seafood restaurants in Matosinhos but I can personally recommend O Gaveto. Myself and Jessica were enticed in by the owner one evening as we stood outside admiring the fish tank. We ended up having an astoundingly delicious seafood rice.

We also witnessed a mysterious gathering of robed figures bedecked with chains who ate from a large pot filled with a dark mixture. When we asked our waiter about it, he told us it was ���the brotherhood of the lamprey!���

Oh, and when you���re in Porto you absolutely must have tripas �� moda do Porto���an excellent tripe stew that costs next to nothing and tastes great no matter where you get it.

If you���re eating out along the waterfront, there���s a spot a little further along from the usual touristy spots called Vinhas d���Alho. Get one of the outside tables if you can for a great view of the Port places across the river. Pick out one you like the look of and go for a Port tasting.

Even if you don���t go for a Port tasting, be sure to have a Port Tonico at some point���it���s like a more refreshing version of a gin and tonic, made with white Port.

That���s all I can think of right now. I���m afraid I can���t give you an address for the most memorable meal I had in Porto:

The most unexpected thing I ate in Porto was when I wandered off for lunch on my own one day. I ended up in a little place where, when I walked in, it was kind of like that bit in the Western when the music stops and everyone turns to look. This was clearly a place for locals. The owner didn���t speak any English. I didn���t speak any Portuguese. But we figured it out. She mimed something sandwich-like and said a word I wasn���t familiar with: bifana. Okay, I said. Then she mimed the universal action for drinking, so I said ���agua.��� She looked at with a very confused expression. ���Agua!? N��o. Cerveja!��� Who am I to argue? Anyway, she produced this thing which was basically some wet meat in a bun. It didn���t look very appetising. But this was the kind of situation where I couldn���t back out of eating it. So I took a bite and ���it was delicious! Like, really, really delicious.

Donegal to Galway to Clare

After spending a week immersed in the language and the landscape of Glencolmcille, Jessica and I were headed to Miltown Malbay for the annual Willie Clancy music week.

I could only get us accommodation from the Monday onwards so we had a weekend in between Donegal and Clare. We decided to spend it in Galway.

We hadn���t booked any travel from Glencolmcille to Galway and that worked out fine. We ended up getting a lift from a fellow student (and fellow blogger) heading home to Limerick.

Showing up in Galway on a busy Saturday afternoon was quite the change after the peace and quiet of Glencolmcille. But we dove right in and enjoyed a weekend of good food and music.

But I missed speaking Irish. So on the Sunday afternoon we made a trip out to Spiddal for lunch just so we could say a few words as Gaeilge.

We also got some practice in every morning getting coffee at the Pl��m��s cafe. You get a ten-cent discount for ordering in Irish. What a lovely little piece of behaviour design���a nice gentle nudge!

From Galway we made our way down to Miltown Malbay where the Willie Clancy festival was in full swing. We were staying out in Spanish Point, so we could escape the madness of the town each evening. Mind you, there was plenty going at the Armada hotel too.

The hotel was something of an extravagance but it was worth it���we had a beautiful view on to the beach at Spanish Point and our room was tucked away far from the wild shenanigans in the hotel bar (not to mention the c��il��s on the other side of the hotel!).

I have to admit, I got quite overwhelmed the first day I ventured into Miltown proper. It’s easy to have a constant state of FOMO, constantly searching for the best session. But once I calmed down and accepted the situation, I had a lovely time at some really nice sessions.

Last time we were in Miltown Malbay was three years ago ���and three years before that. Maybe we’ll be back in another three years.

I don’t know, though. It kind of felt like going to the South By Southwest after it got crazy big and the host town could no longer bear the weight of the event.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed our two-week excursion down a stretch of the Wild Atlantic Way from Donegal to Galway to Clare.

Gleann Cholm Cille

I had never been to Donegal before my trip to Glencolmcille to spend a week there learning Irish.

I had heard it���s beautiful there. But pictures don���t really do it justice. When our bus was winding its way down into the valley, it looked breathtaking, laid out before us like a green haven where we���d spend the week immersed in the language as well as the landscape.

The reason I say that pictures don���t do it justice is that the light is constantly changing, like in the Lake District or the Dingle peninsula. The beauty is formed of equal parts geography and meteorology.

We had a day to explore before the language courses begin. We strolled along the beach. We walked down winding paths to find ancient burial tombs and standing stones.

Then it was time to knuckle down and learn Irish.

Oideas Gael provides seven levels of learning, increasing in experience. Jessica went in at level one and I was amazed by how much she had picked up by the end of the week. I figured I’d go in at level three or maybe four, but after hearing a description of all the levels, I actually decided to try level five.

It turned out to be just right. There was lots to learn, and I definitely need to make sure I keep working on it, but the teacher was great and my classmates were lovely.

Tar ��is an cursa, t�� n��os m�� ealois agam, t�� n��os m�� taith�� agam, ach an rud is t��bhachta��, t�� n��os m�� f��in-mhuin��n agam. After the course, I have more knowledge, I have more experience, but most importantly, I have more self-confidence.

And after a day of learning Irish, it was nice to unwind in the evening with a pint in the local pub, where there was also a session every single night. Not only were the musicians top-notch, they were also very welcoming to this blow-in mandolin player.

All in all, it was a wonderful and fulfilling week.

Beidh m�� ar ais ar��s! I’ll be back again!

Irish odyssey

I���ve been taking some time off after UX London. That was a big project I was working towards all year and it went great, so I think I���ve earned a reward for myself.

My reward is to head off to Ireland to immerse myself in the language and music. A week at an Irish language school in Donegal followed by a week at an Irish music festival in Clare, with a little weekend in Galway in between.

First I had to get to Donegal. My plan was: fly from Gatwick to Dublin; get the train from Dublin to Sligo; spend the night in Sligo; take a couple of buses to get to my destination in Donegal.

I fell at the first hurdle.

I consider myself a fairly seasoned traveller at this point so I���m kicking myself that I somehow messed up the time of that flight to Dublin. I showed up after the bag check had closed. That���s when I realised I was off by an hour.

The next available flight to Dublin wasn���t until late in the evening. Jessica and I contemplated spending all day waiting for that, then spending the night in Dublin, and then doing all the overland travel the next day.

But we didn���t do that. We went to Belfast instead. As it turned out, we had a great evening there at a lovely piping session that only happens on the last Friday of the month���the very day we were there. It was meant to be.

The next day we got the train to Derry, then a bus to Letterkenny, and then eventually another bus to Donegal town (the first one just didn���t show up���probably because Donegal were playing a semi-final match at the time), and finally the bus from Donegal town to Glencolmcille.

I had never been to Donegal before. Everyone always goes on about how beautiful it is. They are not wrong. The closer we got to Glencolmcille, the more our breath was literally taken away by the stunning landscape.

So here we are. We���re both doing Irish language classes. It���s all very challenging and very rewarding at the same time.

Best of all, we���re doing it in this unbelievably beautiful place.

This is the just the start of my little odyssey on the west coast of Ireland and it���s already absolutely wonderful ���apart from that unexpectedly bumpy start.

Live

Ever since Salter Cane recorded the songs on Deep Black Water I���ve been itching to play them live. At our album launch gig last Friday, I finally got my chance.

It felt soooo good! It helped that we had the best on-stage sound ever (note to the bands of Brighton, Leon at the Hope and Ruin is fantastic at doing the sound). The band were tight, the songs sounded great live, and I had an absolute blast.

I made a playlist of songs to be played in between bands. It set the tone nicely. As well as some obvious touchstones like 16 Horsepower and Joy Division, I made sure to include some local bands we���re fond of, like The Equitorial Group, Mudlow, Patients, and The Roebucks.

UX Londoners

A bunch of the UX London speakers have been saying very nice things about the event over on LinkedIn. I���m going to quote a few of them for my future self to look at when I���m freaking out about curating the next event���

Valentina D’Efilippo:

Still buzzing … UX London smashed all expectations!

Huge shoutout to Jeremy Keith and the entire Clearleft team for their tireless efforts in making this event truly special. Three days packed with inspiration, insights, and true gems ��� I left feeling inspired, grateful, and already looking forward to next year’s event!

Eleni Beveratou:

Huge thanks to my fellow speakers for the inspiring talks, and to the team at Clearleft (Jeremy Keith, Louise Ash, and so many more!) for putting together such a brilliant event.

Videha Sharma:

I’ve loved learning and sharing this week! Feeling super inspired and looking forward to building new friendships!

Carolina Greno:

Last week in UX London I got to witness event planning mastery, I was in awe. Things ran smoothly and people were united under a premise: to share knowledge and build community.

This doesn���t happen by chance, it���s the mastery that pros like Jeremy and Louise bring to the table.

Sayani Mitra

Bold, thought-provoking talks. Hands-on workshops that challenged and stretched thinking. And a real sense of community that reminded me why spaces like this matter so much.

Nina Mathilde Dyrberg:

The conference was packed with inspiration, thoughtful conversations, and a strong focus on accessibility and inclusivity. Thank you Luke Hay, Jeremy Keith, Louise Ash, and the whole Clearleft team for creating such a welcoming and inspiring space!

Craig Abbott:

Jeremy Keith, Richard Rutter, Louise Ash, Chris How, Sophie Count, Luke Hay and the rest of Clearleft, take a bow! Hands down one of the best conference experiences I���ve had!

The curation was excellent, the talks complimented each other so well, it was almost like we���d all met up and rehearsed it beforehand!

��n��Ol��wa Ab����d��n:

A huge thank you to Jeremy Keith, Louise Ash and the Clearleft team for the opportunity and the brilliant conference you���ve put together.

It���s been inspiring to experience every moment of it.

Laura Dantonio:

Shoutout to the organisers for curating such a rich experience���3 themed days focused on Discovery, Design, and Delivery.

We remember through stories. And this event was full of them. Already looking forward to next year.

And I���m just going to quote Rachel Rosenson���s post in its entirety:

Spoke at UXLondon last week���and while the talks were great, it was something off-stage that really stuck with me.

After the Day 1 talks wrapped, a bunch of us speakers grabbed a drink, and someone pointed out: Every single speaker that day���every one���was a woman. 5 talks. 4 workshops. All women.

And it wasn���t a ���Women in Tech��� day. It was just��� the conference.

No one made a fuss. No banners. No ���look at us go!���

Just incredible women, giving incredible talks, like it was the most normal thing in the world. (Spoiler: it should be.)

Jeremy Keith mentioned how frustrating it is that all-male line-ups are still so common���and how important it is to actively design for inclusion. Major props to Jeremy and the Clearleft team for curating a line-up that was intentional without performativity.

It was refreshing. No tokenism. No checkbox energy. Just great voices on great stages. And a big honor to be one of them.

That was UX London 2025

UX London happened last week.

Working on an event is a weird kind of project. You spend all your time and effort on something that is then over in the blink of an eye.

I���d been preparing for this all year. 95% of my work happened before the event���curating the line-up, planning each day. There wasn���t all that much for me to do at the event itself other than introduce the speakers and chat with the attendees.

Maybe it was because there was very little left in my control, but the night before the event I found myself feeling really anxious and nervous. I was pretty sure the line-up was excellent, but anything could happen. I really wanted everyone to have a great time, but at that point, there wasn���t much more I could do.

Then the first day started. Every talk was superb. Everyone got really stuck into their workshops. By the end of the day, people were buzzing about what a great time they���d had.

My nervousness was easing. But that was only one day of three.

The second day was just as good. Again, every talk was superb. I began to suspect that the first day wasn���t just a fluke.

The third day confirmed it. Three days of top-notch talks���nary a dud in the whole line-up!

It was, dare I say it, the best UX London yet. Not just because of the talks and workshops. The attendees were absolutely lovely! There was a really good buzz throughout.

By the end of the event I felt a huge sense of relief.

For this year���s UX London, I put a lot of time and effort into curating the line-up. There were some safe bets. There were some risky bets. They all paid off.

I���m incredibly grateful to all of the fantastic speakers and workshop hosts who really gave it their all. And I���m so, so grateful to everyone who came. It���s a tough time for events right now, and I really appreciate every single person who made it to this year���s UX London. Thank you!

The only downside to pouring my heart and soul into this year���s line-up is that I left nothing in the tank for next year. I���m already starting to worry���how am I going to top UX London 2025?

Uses

I don���t use large language models. My objection is to using them is ethical. I know how the sausage is made.

I wanted to clarify that. I���m not rejecting large language models because they���re useless. They can absolutely be useful. I just don���t think the usefulness outweighs the ethical issues in how they���re trained.

Molly White came to the same conclusion:

The benefits, though extant, seem to pale in comparison to the costs.

Rich has similar thoughts:

What I do know is that I find LLMs useful on occasion, but every time I use one I die a little inside.

I genuinely look forward to being able to use a large language model with a clear conscience. Such a model would need to be trained ethically. When we get a free-range organic large language model I���ll be the first in line to use it. Until then, I���ll abstain. Remember:

You don���t get companies to change their behaviour by rewarding them for it. If you really want better behaviour from the purveyors of generative tools, you should be boycotting the current offerings.

Still, in anticipation of an ethical large language model someday becoming reality, I think it���s good for me to have an understanding of which tasks these tools are good at.

Prototyping seems like a good use case. My general attitude to prototyping is the exact opposite to my attituted to production code; use absolutely any tool you want and prioritise speed over quality.

When it comes to coding in general, I think Laurie is really onto something when he says:

Is what you���re doing taking a large amount of text and asking the LLM to convert it into a smaller amount of text? Then it���s probably going to be great at it. If you���re asking it to convert into a roughly equal amount of text it will be so-so. If you���re asking it to create more text than you gave it, forget about it.

In other words, despite what the hype says, these tools are far better at transforming than they are at generating.

Iris Meredith goes deeper into this distinction between transformative and compositional work:

Compositionality relies (among other things) on two core values or functions: choice and precision, both of which are antithetical to LLM functioning.

My own take on this is that transformative work is often the drudge work���take this data dump and convert it to some other format; take this mock-up and make a disposable prototype. I want my tools to help me with that.

But compositional work that relies on judgement, taste, and choice? Not only would I not use a large language model for that, it���s exactly the kind of work that I don���t want to automate away.

Transformative work is done with broad brushstrokes. Compositional work is done with a scalpel.

Large language models are big messy brushes, not scalpels.

Tools

One persistent piece of slopaganda you���ll here is this:

���It���s just a tool. What matters is how you use it.���

This isn���t a new tack. The same justification has been applied to many technologies.

Leaving aside Kranzberg���s first law, large language models are the very antithesis of a neutral technology. They���re imbued with bias and political decisions at every level.

There���s the obvious problem of where the training data comes from. It���s stolen. Everyone knows this, but some people would rather pretend they don���t know how the sausage is made.

But if you set aside how the tool is made, it���s still just a tool, right? A building is still a building even if it���s built on stolen land.

Except with large language models, the training data is just the first step. After that you need to traumatise an underpaid workforce to remove the most horrifying content. Then you build an opaque black box that end-users have no control over.

Take temperature, for example. That���s the degree of probability a large language model uses for choosing the next token. Dial the temperature too low and the tool will parrot its training data too closely, making it a plagiarism machine. Dial the temperature too high and the tool generates what we kindly call ���hallucinations���.

Either way, you have no control over that dial. Someone else is making that decision for you.

A large language model is as neutral as an AK-47.

I understand why people want to feel in control of the tools they���re using. I know why people will use large language models for some tasks���brainstorming, rubber ducking���but strictly avoid them for any outputs intended for human consumption.

You could even convince yourself that a large language model is like a bicycle for the mind. In truth, a large language model is more like one of those hover chairs on the spaceship in WALL��E.

Large language models don���t amplify your creativity and agency. Large language models stunt your creativity and rob you of agency.

When someone applies a large language model it is an example of tool use. But the large language model isn���t the tool.

The landing zone

Also sprach Wittgenstein:

Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.

Or in English, thus spoke Wittgenstein:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Language and thinking are intertwined. I���m not saying there���s anything to the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis but I think George Lakoff is onto something when he talks about political language.

There���s literal political language like saying ���tax relief������framing taxation as something burdensome that needs to be relieved. But our everyday language has plenty of framing devices that might subconsciously influence our thinking.

When it comes to technology, our framing of new technologies often comes from previous technologies. As a listener to a show, you might find yourself being encouraged to ���tune in again next week��� when you may never have turned a radio dial in your entire life.

In the early days of the web we used a lot of language from print. John Allsopp wrote about this in his classic article A Dao Of Web Design:

The web is a new medium, although it has emerged from the medium of printing, whose skills, design language and conventions strongly influence it. Yet it is often too shaped by that from which it sprang.

One outdated piece of language on the web is a framing device in two senses: ���above the fold���. It���s a conceptual framing device that comes straight from print where newspapers were literally folded in half. It���s a literal framing device that puts the important content at the top of the page.

But there is no fold. We pretended that everyone���s screens were 640 by 480 pixels. Then we pretended that everyone���s screens were 800 by 600 pixels. But we never really knew. It was all a consensual hallucination. Even before mobile devices showed up there was never a single fold.

Even if you know that there���s no literal page fold on the web, using the phrase ���above the fold��� is still insidiously unhelpful.

So what���s the alternative? Well, James has what I think is an excellent framing:

The landing zone.

It���s the bit of the page where people first show up. It doesn���t have a defined boundary. The landing zone isn���t something separate to the rest of the page; the content landing zone merges into the rest of the content.

You don���t know where the landing zone ends, and that���s okay. It���s better than okay. It encourages you design in a way that still prioritises the most important content but without fooling yourself into thinking there���s some invisible boundary line.

Next time you���re discussing the design of a web page���whether it���s with a colleague or a client���try talking about the landing zone.