Jeremy Keith's Blog, page 5

The line-up for UX London 2025

Check it out���here���s the line-up for UX London 2025!

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This is going to be so good! Grab a ticket if you haven���t got one yet.

UX London takes place over three days, from June 10th to 12th at a fantastic venue in the heart of the city. To get the full experience, you should come for all three days. But you can also get a ticket for individual days. Each day has a focus, and when you put them all together, the whole event mirrors the design process:

Day one: DiscoveryDay two: DesignDay three: Delivery

Each day features a morning of talks, followed by an afternoon of workshops. The talks are on a single track; four consecutive half-hour presentations to get you inspired. Then after lunch, you choose from one of four workshops. All the workshops are two and half hours long and very hands-on. No laptop required.

On discovery day you���ll have talks in the morning about research, content design, strategy and evaluating technology, followed by workshops on discovery and definition and behavioural design.

On design day there���ll be talks on interface design, a healthcare case study, inclusive design, and typography, followed by workshops in the afternoon on data visualisation and ethics.

Finally on delivery day you���ll get talks on conversion design, cross-team collaboration, convincing stakeholders, and improving design critiques, followed by workshops on facilitating workshops and getting better at public speaking.

Every workshop is repeated on another day so you���ll definitely get the chance to attend the one you want.

Oh, and at the end of every day there���ll be a closing keynote. Those are yet to be revealed, but I can guarantee they���re going to be top-notch!

Right now you can get early-bird tickets for all three days, or individual days. That changes from March 15th, when the regular pricing kicks in���a three-day ticket will cost ��200 more. So I���d advise you to get your ticket now.

If you need to convince your boss, show them this list of reasons to attend.

See you there!

Hosted

Research By The Sea was last Thursday. I���m still digesting it all.

In short, it was excellent. The venue, how smoothly every thing was organised, the talks ���oh boy, the talks!

Benjamin did a truly superb job curating this line-up. Everyone really brought their A-game.

As predicted, this wasn���t a day of talks just for researchers. It was far more like a dConstruct. This was big, big picture stuff. Themes of hope, community, nature, technology, inclusion and resilience.

I overheard more than one person in the breaks saying ���this was not what I was expecting!��� They were saying it in a very positive way, though I wouldn���t be surprised if there were a silent minority in the audience who were miffed that they weren���t getting a day of practical research techniques devoid of politics.

As host, I had the easiest job of the day. All I had to do was say a few words of introduction for each speaker, then sit back down and enjoy every minute of every talk.

The one time when I had to really work was the panel discussion at the end of the day. I really enjoy moderating panels. I���ve seen enough bad panels to know what does and doesn���t work. But this one was tough. The panelists were all great, but because the themes were soooo big, I was worried about it all getting a bit too high-falutin���. People seemed to enjoy it though.

All in all, it was a superb day. If you came along, thank you!

Gotta be honest, #ResearchByTheSea is one of the best conferences I���ve been to in yeeeeeears. So many good, useful, inspiring, thoughtful, provocative talks. Much more about ethics and power and possibility than I���d expected.

Loved it. Thank you, @clearleft.com!

��� @visitmy.website

The web on mobile

Here���s a post outlining all the great things you can do in mobile web browsers today: Your App Should Have Been A Website (And Probably Your Game Too):

Today���s browsers are powerhouses. Notifications? Check. Offline mode? Check. Secure payments? Yep, they���ve got that too. And with technologies like WebAssembly and WebGPU, web games are catching up to native-level performance. In some cases, they���re already there.

This is all true. But this post from John Gruber is equally true: One Bit of Anecdata That the Web Is Languishing Vis-��-Vis Native Mobile Apps:

I won���t hold up this one experience as a sign that the web is dying, but it sure seems to be languishing, especially for mobile devices.

As John points out, the problems aren���t technical:

There���s absolutely no reason the mobile web experience shouldn���t be fast, reliable, well-designed, and keep you logged in. If one of the two should suck, it should be the app that sucks and the website that works well. You shouldn���t be expected to carry around a bundle of software from your utility company in your pocket. But it���s the other way around.

He���s right. It makes no sense, but this is the reality.

Ten or fifteen years ago, the gap between the web and native apps on mobile was entirely technical. There were certain things that you just couldn���t do in web browsers. That���s no longer the case now. The web caught up quite a while back.

But the experience of using websites on a mobile device is awful. Never mind the terrible performance penalties incurred by unnecessary frameworks and libraries like React and its ilk, there���s the constant game of whack-a-mole with banners and overlays. What���s just about bearable in a large desktop viewport becomes intolerable on a small screen.

This is not a technical problem. This doesn���t get solved by web standards. This is a cultural problem.

First of all, there���s the business culture. If your business model depends on tracking people or pushing newsletter sign-ups, then it���s inevitable that your website will be shite on mobile.

Mind you, if your business model depends on tracking people, you���re more likely to try push people to download your native app. Like Cory Doctorow says:

50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that’s a felony (Jay Freeman calls this ‘felony contempt of business-model’).

Matt May brings up the same point in his guide, How to grey-rock Meta:

Remove Meta apps from your devices and use only the mobile web versions. Mobile apps have greater access to your personal data, provided the app requests those privileges, and Facebook and Instagram in particular (more so than WhatsApp, another Meta property) request the vast majority of those privileges. This includes precise GPS data on where you are, whether or not you are using the app.

Ironically, it���s the strength of the web���and web browsers���that has led to such shitty mobile web experiences. The pretty decent security model on the web means that sites have to pester you.

Part of the reason why you don���t see the same egregious over-use of pop-ups and overlays in native apps is that they aren���t needed. If you���ve installed the app, you���re already being tracked.

But when I describe the dreadful UX of most websites on mobile as a cultural problem, I don���t just mean business culture.

Us, the people who make websites, designers and developers, we���re responsible for this too.

For all our talk of mobile-first design for the last fifteen years, we never really meant it, did we? Sure, we use media queries and other responsive techniques, but all we���ve really done is make sure that a terrible experience fits on the screen.

As developers, I���m sure we can tell ourselves all sorts of fairy tales about why it���s perfectly justified to make users on mobile networks download React, Tailwind, and megabytes more of third-party code.

As designers, I���m sure we can tell ourselves all sorts of fairy tales about why intrusive pop-ups and overlays are the responsibility of some other department (as though users make any sort of distinction).

Worst of all, we���ve spent the last fifteen years teaching users that if they want a good experience on their mobile device, they should look in an app store, not on the web.

Ask anyone about their experience of using websites on their mobile device. They���ll tell you plenty of stories of how badly it sucks.

It doesn���t matter that the web is the perfect medium for just-in-time delivery of information. It doesn���t matter that web browsers can now do just about everything that native apps can do.

In many ways, I wish this were a technical problem. At least then we could lobby for some technical advancement that would fix this situation.

But this is not a technical problem. This is a people problem. Specifically, the people who make websites.

We fucked up. Badly. And I don���t see any signs that things are going to change anytime soon.

But hey, websites on desktop are just great!

Re-dConstruct

From 2005 to 2015 Clearleft ran the dConstruct event here in Brighton (with one final anniversary event in 2022).

I had the great pleasure of curating dConstruct for a while. I���m really proud of the line-ups I put together.

It wasn���t your typical tech event, to put it mildy. You definitely weren���t going to learn practical techniques to bring back into work on Monday morning. If anything, it was the kind of event that might convince you to quit your job on Monday morning.

The talks were design-informed, but with oodles of philosophy, culture and politics.

As you can imagine, that���s not an easy sell. Hence why we stopped running the event. It���s pretty hard to convince your boss to send you to a conference like that.

Sometimes I really miss it though. With everything going on in the tech world right now (and the world in general), it sure would be nice to get together in a room full of like-minded people to discuss the current situation.

Well, here���s the funny thing. There���s a different Clearleft event happening next week. Research By The Sea. On the face of it, this doesn���t sound much like dConstruct. But damn if Benjamin hasn���t curated a line-up of talks that sound very dConstructy!

Every minute you are here by Steph.What happens when we listen to the birds? by Tamsin.Picking up the pieces by Cennydd.Considering intersectionality and lived experience in inclusive design by Priyanca.In defence of refusal by Michael.

Those all sound like they���d fit perfectly in the dConstruct archive.

Research By The Sea is most definitely not just for UX researchers���this sounds to me like the event to attend if, like me, you���re alarmed by everything happening right now.

Next Thursday, February 27th, this is the place to be if you���ve been missing dConstruct. See you there!

Reason

A couple of days ago I linked to a post by Robin Sloan called Is it okay?, saying:

Robin takes a fair and balanced look at the ethics of using large language models.

That���s how it came across to me: fair and balanced.

Robin���s central question is whether the current crop of large language models might one day lead to life-saving super-science, in which case, doesn���t that outweigh the damage they���re doing to our collective culture?

Baldur wrote a response entitled Knowledge tech that���s subtly wrong is more dangerous than tech that���s obviously wrong. (Or, where I disagree with Robin Sloan).

Baldur pointed out that one side of the scale that Robin is attempting to balance is based on pure science fiction:

There is no path from language modelling to super-science.

Robin responded pointing out that some things that we currently have would have seemed like science fiction a few years ago, right?

Well, no. Baldur debunks that in a post called Now I���m disappointed.

(By the way, can I just point out how great it is to see a blog-to-blog conversation like this, regardless of how much they might be in disagreement.)

Baldur kept bringing the receipts. That���s when it struck me that Robin���s stance is largely based on vibes, whereas Baldur���s viewpoint is informed by facts on the ground.

In a way, they���ve got something in common. They���re both advocating for an interpretation of the precautionary principle, just from completely opposite ends.

Robin���s stance is that if these tools one day yield amazing scientific breakthroughs then that���s reason enough to use them today. It���s uncomfortably close to the reasoning of the effective accelerationist nutjobs, but in a much milder form.

Baldur���s stance is that because of the present harms being inflicted by current large language models, we should be slamming on the brakes. If anything, the harms are going to multiply, not magically reduce.

I have to say, Robin���s stance doesn���t look nearly as fair and balanced as I initially thought. I���m on Team Baldur.

Michelle also weighs in, pointing out the flaw in Robin���s thinking:

AI isn���t LLMs. Or not just LLMs. It���s plausible that AI (or more accurately, Machine Learning) could be a useful scientific tool, particularly when it comes to making sense of large datasets in a way no human could with any kind of accuracy, and many people are already deploying it for such purposes. This isn���t entirely without risk (I���ll save that debate for another time), but in my opinion could feasibly constitute a legitimate application of AI.

LLMs are not this.

In other words, we���ve got a language collision:

We call them ���AI���, we look at how much they can do today, and we draw a straight line to what we know of ���AI��� in our science fiction.

This ridiculous situation could���ve been avoided if we had settled on a more accurate buzzword like ���applied statistics��� instead of ���AI���.

There���s one other flaw in Robin���s reasoning. I don���t think it follows that future improvements warrant present use. Quite the opposite:

The logic is completely backwards! If large language models are going to improve their ethical shortcomings (which is debatable, but let���s be generous), then that���s all the more reason to avoid using the current crop of egregiously damaging tools.

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.

Anyway, this back-and-forth between Robin and Baldur (and Michelle) was interesting. But it all pales in comparison to the truth bomb that Miriam dropped in her post Tech continues to be political:

When eugenics-obsessed billionaires try to sell me a new toy, I don���t ask how many keystrokes it will save me at work. It���s impossible for me to discuss the utility of a thing when I fundamentally disagree with the purpose of it.

Boom!

Maybe we should consider the beliefs and assumptions that have been built into a technology before we embrace it? But we often prefer to treat each new toy as as an abstract and unmotivated opportunity. If only the good people like ourselves would get involved early, we can surely teach everyone else to use it ethically!

You know what? I could quote every single line. Just go read the whole thing. Please.

Making the new Salter Cane website

With the release of a new Salter Cane album I figured it was high time to update the design of the band���s website.

Here���s the old version for reference. As you can see, there���s a connection there in some of the design language. Even so, I decided to start completely from scratch.

I opened up a text editor and started writing HTML by hand. Same for the CSS. No templates. No build tools. No pipeline. Nothing. It was a blast!

And lest you think that sounds like a wasteful way of working, I pretty much had the website done in half a day.

Partly that���s because you can do so much with so little in CSS these days. Custom properties for colours, spacing, and fluid typography (thanks to Utopia). Logical properties. View transitions. None of this takes much time at all.

Because I was using custom properties, it was a breeze to add a dark mode with prefers-color-scheme. I think I might like the dark version more than the default.

The final stylesheet is pretty short. I didn���t bother with any resets. Browsers are pretty consistent with their default styles nowadays. As long as you���ve got some sensible settings on your body element, the cascade will take care of a lot.

There���s one little CSS trick I think is pretty clever���

The background image is this image. As you can see, it���s a rectangle that���s wider than it is tall. But the web pages are rectangles that are taller than they are wide.

So how I should I position the background image? Centred? Anchored to the top? Anchored to the bottom?

If you open up the website in Chrome (or Safari Technical Preview), you���ll see that the background image is anchored to the top. But if you scroll down you���ll see that the background image is now anchored to the bottom. The background position has changed somehow.

This isn���t just on the home page. On any page, no matter how tall it is, the background image is anchored to the top when the top of the document is in the viewport, and it���s anchored to the bottom when you reach the bottom of the document.

In the past, this kind of thing might���ve been possible with some clever JavaScript that measured the height of the document and updated the background position every time a scroll event is triggered.

But I didn���t need any JavaScript. This is a scroll-driven animation made with just a few lines of CSS.

@keyframes parallax { from { background-position: top center; } to { background-position: bottom center; }}@media (prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference) { html { animation: parallax auto ease; animation-timeline: scroll(); } }}

This works as a nice bit of progressive enhancement: by default the background image stays anchored to the top of the viewport, which is fine.

Once the site was ready, I spent a bit more time sweating some details, like the responsive images on the home page.

But the biggest performance challenge wasn���t something I had direct control over. There���s a Spotify embed on the home page. Ain���t no party like a third party.

I could put loading="lazy" on the iframe but in this case, it���s pretty close to the top of document so it���s still going to start loading at the same time as some of my first-party assets.

I decided to try a little JavaScript library called ���lazysizes���. Normally this would ring alarm bells for me: solving a problem with third-party code by adding ���more third-party code. But in this case, it really did the trick. The library is loading asynchronously (so it doesn���t interfere with the more important assets) and only then does it start populating the iframe.

This made a huge difference. The core web vitals went from being abysmal to being perfect.

I���m pretty pleased with how the new website turned out.

Deep Black Water

Back in July 2023 I went into the studio along with the rest of Salter Cane.

We had been practicing a whole lot of new songs for over a year beforehand. Now we were ready to record them.

We went in with a shared approach. We were going to record everything live. We were going to prioritise the feeling of a particular take over technical accuracy. And we weren���t going to listen back to every take���that can really eat into the available time and energy.

This approach served us really well. We had an incredibly productive couple of days in the studio collaborating with Jake Rousham, who we had worked with on our previous album. We ended up recording eleven songs.

After that burst of activity, we took our time with the next steps. Chris recorded additional vocals for any songs that needed them. Then the process of mixing everything could start.

After that came the mastering. We hired Jon Sevink���fiddler with the Levellers. He did a fantastic job���the difference was quite remarkable!

We decided to keep two songs in reserve to have a nine-song album that feels just the right length.

The album is called Deep Black Water. It���s available now from all the usual digital outlets:

BandcampSpotifyApple Music UKApple Music USAmazon UKAmazon US

We decided not to make any CDs. We might make a vinyl version if enough people want it.

I really, really like how the album turned out. These are strong songs and I think we did them justice.

I hope you���ll like it too.

Blog Questions Challenge

I���ve been tagged in a good ol���-fashioned memetic chain letter, first by Jon and then by Luke. Only by answering these questions can my soul find peace���

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

All the cool kids were doing it. I distinctly remember thinking it was far too late to start blogging. Clearly I had missed the boat. That was in the year 2001.

So if you���re ever thinking of starting something but you think it might be too late ���it isn���t.

Back then, I wrote:

I���ll try and post fairly regularly but I don���t want to make any promises I can���t keep.

I���m glad I didn���t commit myself but I���m also glad that I���m still posting 24 years later.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I use my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and MySQL. Before that I had my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and static XML files.

On the one hand, I wouldn���t recommend anybody to do what I���ve done. Just use an off-the-shelf content management system and start publishing.

On the other hand, the code is still working fine decades later (with the occasional tweak) and the control freak in me likes knowing what every single line of code is doing.

It���s very bare-bones though.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that���s part of your blog?

I usually open a Mardown text editor and write in that. I use the Mac app Focused which was made by Realmac software. I don���t think you can even get hold of it these days, but it does the job for me. Any Markdown text editor would do though.

Then I copy what I���ve written and paste it into the textarea of my hand-cobbled CMS. It���s pretty rare for me to write directly into that textarea.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

When I���m supposed to be doing something else.

Blogging is the greatest procrastination tool there is. You���re skiving off doing the thing you should be doing, but then when you���ve published the blog post, you���ve actually done something constructive so you don���t feel too bad about avoiding that thing you were supposed to be doing.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to posting something. I find myself blogging out loud to my friends, which is a sure sign that I need to sit down and bash out that blog post.

When there���s something I���m itching to write about but I haven���t ���round to it yet, it feels a bit like being constipated. Then, when I finally do publish that blog post, it feels like having a very satisfying bowel movement.

No doubt it reads like that too.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I publish immediately. I���ve never kept drafts. Usually I don���t even save theMarkdown file while I���m writing���I open up the text editor, write the words, copy them, paste them into that textarea and publish it. Often it takes me longer to think of a title than it takes to write the actual post.

I try to remind myself to read it through once to catch any typos, but sometimes I don���t even do that. And you know what? That���s okay. It���s the web. I can go back and edit it at any time. Besides, if I miss a typo, someone else will catch it and let me know.

Speaking for myself, putting something into a draft (or even just putting it on a to-do list) is a guarantee that it���ll never get published. So I just write and publish. It works for me, though I totally understand that it���s not for everyone.

What���s your favourite post on your blog?

I���ve got a little section of ���recommended reading��� in the sidebar of my journal:

SplitWeb! What is it good for?SeamsHyperdriveDesign doingIron Man and me

But I���m not sure I could pick just one.

I���m very proud of the time I wrote 100 posts in 100 days and each post was exactly 100 words long. That might be my favourite tag.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I like making little incremental changes. Usually this happens at Indie Web Camps. I add some little feature or tweak.

I definitely won���t be redesigning. But I might add another ���skin��� or two. I���ve got one of those theme-switcher things, y���see. It was like a little CSS Zen Garden before that existed. I quite like having redesigns that are cumulative instead of destructive.

Next?

You. Yes, you.

Research By The Sea

I���m going to be hosting Research By The Sea on Thursday, February 27th right here in Brighton. I���m getting very excited and nervous about it.

The nervousness is understandable. I want to do a good job. Hosting a conference is like officiating a wedding. You want to put people at ease and ensure everything goes smoothly. But you don���t want to be the centre of attention. People aren���t there to see you. This is not your day.

As the schedule has firmed up, my excitement has increased.

See, I���m not a researcher. It would be perfectly understandable to expect this event to be about the ins and outs of various research techniques. But it���s become clear that that isn���t what Benjamin has planned.

Just as any good researcher or designer goes below the surface to explore the root issues, Research By The Sea is going to go deep.

I mean, just take a look at what Steph will be covering:

Steph discusses approaches in speculative fiction, particularly in the Solarpunk genre, that can help ground our thinking, and provide us���as researchers and designers���tenets to consider our work, and, as humans, to strive towards a better future.

Sign me up!

Michael���s talk covers something that���s been on my mind a lot lately:

Michael will challenge the prevailing belief that as many people as possible��must��participate in our digital economies.

You just know that a talk called In defence of refusal isn���t going to be your typical conference fare.

Then there are talks about accessibility and intersectionality, indigenous knowledge, designing communities, and navigating organisational complexity. And I positively squeeled with excitement when I read Cennydd���s talk description:

The world is crying out for new visions of the future: worlds in which technology is compassionate, not just profitable; where AI is responsible, not just powerful.

See? It���s very much not just for researchers. This is going to be a fascinating day for anyone who values curiosity.

If that���s you, you should grab a ticket. To sweeten the deal, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get a chunky 20% of the price ��� ��276 for a conference ticket instead of ��345.

Be sure to nab your ticket before February 15th when the price ratchets up a notch.

And if you are a researcher, well, you really shouldn���t miss this. It���s kind of like when I���ve run Responsive Day Out and Patterns Day; sure, the talks are great, but half the value comes from being in the same space as other people who share your challenges and experiences. I know that makes it sound like a kind of group therapy, but that���s because ���well, it kind of is.

Elektra

I���ve been reading lots of modern takes on Greek classics. So when I saw that there was going to be a short of run of Sophocles���s Electra at Brighton���s Theatre Royal, I grabbed some tickets for the opening night.

With Brie Larson taking on the title role in this production, it���s bound to be popular.

I didn���t know anything about this staging of the play���other than it was using the Anne Carson translation���which is how I like it. I didn���t know if it was going to be modern, retro, classical or experimental.

It turned out to be kind of arty, but not in a good way. Arty like art school with all the clich��s.

The production somehow managed to feel packed with gimmicks but also seriously underbaked at the same time. There must have a been a lot of ���yes, and������s during the workshopping, but no subsequent round of ���no, but������s. So we got lots of ideas thrown at the wall like spaghetti. Very few of them stuck.

Instead of enhancing the core text���which is, thankfully, indestructable���most of the gimmicks lessened it. It���s like they were afraid to let the play speak for itself and felt like they had to do stuff to it. Most of it ended up creating an emotional distance from the story and the characters.

It wasn���t bad, per se, but it definitely wasn���t good. It was distinctly mediocre.

Now, take all of this with a big pinch of salt because this is just my opinion. The very things that turned me off might tickle your fancy. Like the way it was half way to being a musical, with characters singing their dialogue in that monotone way that they do in Les Mis (but this is like Les really Mis). And the vocal effects that did nothing for me might be quite effective for you.

Even as I was watching it, I was thinking to myself, ���Well, this isn���t really for me, but I can kind of appreciate that they���re trying to experiment.���

But then towards the end of the play, it went too far. Over the PA came samples of reporting of recent news stories; graphic, grisly, and crucially, real. If you���re going to attempt something like that, you need to earn it. Otherwise you���re just cheapening the real-world suffering. This play absolutely did not earn it.

Elektra has finished its run in Brighton and is now heading to London where it���s supposed to play until April. I���m curious to see how it goes.