Jeremy Keith's Blog, page 5

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.

Salter Cane album launch gig on Friday, 20th June

Mark your calendars: Friday, 20th June ��� that���s when Salter Cane will be launching Deep Black Water at the The Hope And Ruin in Brighton

I can���t wait to get back on stage with the band! These songs sound great on the new album but I can guarantee that they���re going to absolutely rock when we play them live.

Support will be provided by our good friends Dreamytime Escorts, featuring former members of Caramel Jack. They���ve also got a new EP on the way.

Doors are at 8pm.

I���m really, really excited about this. It���s been far too long since Salter Cane were last bringing the noise live on stage. I hope to see you there!

Session spider

Here���s some code to show the distance to the nearest airports on a map.

Here���s a modified version that shows the distance to the nearest Gregg���s. The hub-and-spoke visualisation overlaid on the map changes as you pan around, making it look like a spider bestriding the landscape.

Jonty���s version shows the distance to the nearest Pret a Manger.

I got nerdsniped by someone saying:

@adactio This would be cool for sessions ����

He���s right, dammit! So here you go:

Session spider.

Now you can see how far you are from the nearest traditional Irish music sessions.

It���s using data from the weekly data dumps from thesession.org���I added a GeoJSON file in there.

Pure silliness, but it does make me wonder what kind of actually good data visualisations could be made with all this scrumptious data.

Awareness

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day:

The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with disabilities/impairments.

Awareness is good. It���s necessary. But it���s not sufficient.

Accessibility, like sustainability and equality, is the kind of thing that most businesses will put at the end of sentences that begin ���We are committed to������

It���s what happens next that matters. How does that declared commitment���that awareness���turn into action?

In the worst-case scenario, an organisation might reach for an accessibility overlay. Who can blame them? They care about accessibility. They want to do something. This is something.

Good intentions alone can result in an inaccessible website. That���s why I think there���s another level of awareness that���s equally important. Designers and developers need to be aware of what they can actually do in service of accessibility.

Fortunately that���s not an onerous expectation. It doesn���t take long to grasp the importance of having good colour contrast or using the right HTML elements.

An awareness of HTML is like a superpower when it comes to accessibility. Like I wrote in the foreword to the Web Accessibility Cookbook by O���Reilly:

It���s supposed to be an accessibility cookbook but it���s also one of the best HTML tutorials you���ll ever find. Come for the accessibility recipe; stay for the deep understanding of markup.

The challenge is that HTML is hidden. Like Cassie said in the accessibility episode of The Clearleft Podcast:

You get JavaScript errors if you do that wrong and you can see if your CSS is broken, but you don���t really have that with accessibility. It���s not as obvious when you���ve got something wrong.

We are biased towards what we can see���hierarchy, layout, imagery, widgets. Those are the outputs. When it comes to accessibility, what matters is how those outputs are generated. Is that button actually a button element or is it a div? Is that heading actually an h1 or is it another div?

This isn���t about the semantics of HTML. This is about the UX of HTML:

Instead of explaining the meaning of a certain element, I show them what it does.

That���s the kind of awareness I���m talking about.

One way of gaining this awareness is to get a feel for using a screen reader.

The name is a bit of a misnomer. Reading the text on screen is the least important thing that the software does. The really important thing that a screen reader does is convey the structure of what���s on screen.

Friend of Clearleft, Jamie Knight very generously spent an hour of his time this week showing everyone the basics of using VoiceOver on a Mac (there���s a great short video by Ethan that also covers this).

Using the rotor, everyone was able to explore what���s under the hood of a web page; all the headings, the text of all the links, the different regions of the page.

That���s not going to turn anyone into an accessibility expert overnight, but it gave everyone an awareness of how much the HTML matters.

Mind you, accessibility is a much bigger field than just screen readers.

Fred recently hosted a terrific panel called Is neurodiversity the next frontier of accessibility in UX design?���well worth a watch!

One of those panelists���Craig Abbott���is speaking on day two of UX London next month. His talk has the magnificent title, Accessibility is a design problem:

I spend a bit of time covering some misconceptions about accessibility, who is responsible for it, and why it���s important that we design for it up front. It also includes real-world examples where design has impacted accessibility, before moving onto lots of practical guidance on what to be aware of and how to design for many different accessibility issues.

Get yourself a ticket and get ready for some practical accessibility awareness.

A tiny taxonomy of meetings

Meetings can be frustrating. But they don���t have to be.

A lot of the frustration comes from unmet expectations. You go into the meeting expecting one outcome, and when it doesn���t materialise, you declare the meeting a waste of time. But had you gone into that same meeting with different expectations, perhaps you would emerge from it in a happier state.

We were talking about this at Clearleft recently and I suggested that a simple little taxonomy of meetings might be a good starting point for avoiding frustration.

Divergent meetings

In a divergent meeting the goal is to generate ideas. These meetings often happen early in a project.

Quantity matters more than quality. Plenty of ���yes, and������ rather than ���no, but������ to create lots of suggestions. This is not the meeting to point out potential problems with the suggestions.

Convergent meetings

In a convergent meeting the goal is to come to a decision.

The meeting might begin with lots of options on the table. They need to be winnowed down. Poke at them. Dissect them. Ideally dismiss lots of them.

This is not the time to introduce new ideas���save that for a divergent meeting.

Just having those two categories alone could save you a lot of grief. The last thing you want is someone participating in a convergent meeting who thinks it���s a divergent meeting (or the other way around).

Those two categories account for the majority of meetings, but there���s one more category to consider���

Chemistry meetings

In a chemistry meeting there is no tangible output. The goal is to get to know one another.

In a large organisation this might be when multiple departments are going to work together on a project. At an agency like Clearleft, a chemistry meeting between us and the client team is really useful at the beginning of our partnership.

Again, the key thing is expectations. If there are people in a chemistry meeting who are expecting to emerge with a framework or a list or any kind of output, they���re going to be frustrated. But if everyone knows it���s a chemistry meeting there���s no expectation that any decisions are going to be made.

There you have it. A tiny taxonomy of meetings:

divergentconvergentchemistry

This tiny taxonomy won���t cover every possible kind of meeting, but it probably covers 90% of them.

Ideally every meeting should be categorised in advance so that everyone���s going in with the same expectations.

If you find yourself trying to categorise a meeting and you think ���Well, it���s mostly convergent, but there���s also this divergent aspect������ then you should probably have two separate shorter meetings instead.

And if you���re trying to categorise a meeting and you find yourself thinking, ���This meeting is mostly so I can deliver information��� ���that meeting should be an email.

The closing talks at UX London 2025

It���s just over one month until UX London. You should grab a ticket if you haven���t already!

The format of UX London is quite special. While the focus of each day is different���discovery, design, and delivery���each day unfolds like this���

There are four talks in the morning. You get your brain filled with ideas and learn from fantastic speakers. It���s a single track���everyone���s getting the same shared experience.

Then after a lunch, you choose from one of four workshops. Whatever you choose, it���s going to be hands-on. You can leave your laptop at home.

A day of listening to talks could get exhausting. A workshop that lasts all day could be even more exhausting. But somehow by splitting the day between both activities, the energy level is just right!

That said, we don���t want the day to end with everyone spread across four different workshop rooms. That���s why there���s one final talk at the end of each day.

These closing talks are a bit different to the morning talks. Whereas the focus of the morning talks is on practical skills that you can apply straight away, the closing talks are an opportunity to sit back and have your mind expanded. They���ll be fun and thought-provoking.

Paula Zuccotti is closing out day one with a talk about two of her projects: Every Thing We Touch and Future Archeology:

This talk invites audiences to reconsider the meaning of the objects they encounter every day and reflect on what their possessions might reveal about who we are and what we value, both now and in the years to come.

Sarah Hyndman will wrap up day two with a fun interactive talk about your senses:

Join a live expedition into our inner world to explore why we see, feel and remember.

Finally, Rachel Coldicutt is going to finish UX London with a rallying cry:

Introducing the Society of Hopeful Technologists and discussing how, in modern technology development, your practice is probably more political than you realise.

I can���t wait! Get yourself a ticket for a day or for all three days.

And as a little thank you for tolerating my excitement, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get 20% off your ticket.