Benjy StantonBlog
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What makes a successful usability test?
A weeknote starting 4 November 2024.
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Travelling for user research and design workshops
A weeknote starting 28 October 2024.
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Front-end dev standards
A weeknote starting 21 October 2024.
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Prototype kit and nunjucks special
A weeknote starting 14 October 2024.
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Observing users on site
A weeknote starting 7 October 2024.
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New team and some great gigs
A weeknote starting 30 September 2024.
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A tough week
A weeknote starting 23 September 2024.
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Service assessment looming
A weeknote starting 16 September 2024.
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Worrying about the future of interaction design
A weeknote starting 9 September 2024.
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Contract extensions
A weeknote starting 2 September 2024.
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Back from hols to a team shake-up
A weeknote starting 26 August 2024.
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Design links and live music
A weeknote starting 17 June 2024.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 18 and 19
User acceptance testing, music festivals and snakes.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 17
Some good interaction design habits I'm trying to adopt.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 16
Inclusive language and the contenteditable attribute.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 15
Struggling with JavaScript, usability testing, and design systems.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 14
Planning user research and getting the prototype ready.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 13
Reflecting on 1 year contracting, and nice things to do in Swansea.
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Thundercat at Bristol Beacon
Finally managed to get to a gig in Bristol. Here are a few photos from the night (and following morning).
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 12
Prototyping, beach safety forecasts, digital inclusion, co-design.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 11
Refining business requirements, a uses page, X-GOVUK show and tell, a design system for Wales.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 10
Design debt, mentoring, RSS feeds and white default in autocorrects.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 09
Design Swansea, RSS feeds and Jakob Nielsen.
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3 interaction design things
My slides and talk transcript for Design Swansea Cropped on Thursday 7 March 2024
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 08
Breaking words in tables, visit to Sheffield, remote working and designing Welsh services.
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Why I love remote work
Remote working enables me to be a better parent, a better partner, be happier at work and to do better work.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 07
1500 commits, adding a now page, visiting Sheffield and Axe-con.
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Why Markdown is a great design tool
Different ways I use Markdown to help me design and write.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 06
Designing with uncertainty, accessibility strategy resources, Bombay Bicycle Club.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 05
Stress, stakeholder demos, links without hrefs and Bluesky.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 04
Design Swansea, Shoreline management plans, testing prototypes in other devices, design debt and target size.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 03
Prototyping rhythm, design authority presentations, design histories and Design Swansea.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 02
Deadlines, new laptop, flow diagrams and accessible notifications.
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Weeknotes – series 07 episode 01
Contract extension, joining a design community of practice in Wales and some interaction design bookmarks.
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Helping to get quality code into production as an interaction designer
My notes on how interaction designers can work with software developers and testers on agile delivery teams.
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First 6 months contracting
I’ve just started my 6th month as a contractor, and wanted to share some notes around the practicalities of being employed inside IR35.
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Seb
A collection of memories I have of my cousin Seb who died last year.
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My contracting goals 2023
Here are some work goals I've set myself, now that I've started contracting.
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First 3 months contracting
Contract extensions and cross-gov working
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This is forty
I'm turning 40 this month, so I thought it was worth marking it with a blog post
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Inclusive design for interaction designers
What can interaction designers do to make services more inclusive?
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My first few weeks contracting
My first few weeks contracting, and thinking about interaction design versus service design.
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Setting up a new mac for interaction design
A round up of interaction design software that I'll install first on a new Macbook.
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The stickers on my laptop, 2023 edition
Time to clean the stickers off my laptop (again).
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Lining up my first role
Good news, it looks like I've lined up my first contract role.
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I’m going contracting
Hey friends, I've decided to take the plunge and go contracting.
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Accessible PowerPoint presentations
A collection of tips for making PowerPoint presentations more accessible.
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Inclusive design resources
A collection of posts and guides about inclusive design.
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Visiting all the beaches in Swansea and Gower
I’ve set myself a challenge to visit all the beaches in Swansea and Gower. There are about 39 in total.
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Starting a blogroll
I've decided to start a blogroll. A list of sites that I read or recommend.
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List of inclusive design books
Some inclusive design books that I'm reading, or are on my wish list.
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Showing the post excerpt on blog post lists
A brief look at how I'm using front matter to add blog post descriptions to my site.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 14
Design Swansea, user research and design reviews.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 13
My Gran’s funeral, passing probation, watching service design in gov via Twitter, Liverpool.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 12
A look at the accessibility best practices and exclusion mapping guides I've been working on.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 11
My first sprint, user research with people with access needs, and exclusion mapping.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 10
Device testing, accessibilty at beta phase, and random 8s
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 09
New sprint, writing UCD tickets, design QA (including basic accessibility checks).
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 08
Design system day tickets, user research planning and writing design acceptance criteria.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 07
Native app design, accessibility best practices, and my inclusive design reading list.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 06
Gower beaches, heat wave and pizza
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 05
Summer holiday edition - Alton Towers, Stanton village and Gower beaches.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 04
Paddle boarding, manuals of me, design leadership for introverts.
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My interaction design tools, version 3
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A user manual for me, version 3
A 2022 update to my user manual, based on Cassie Robinson's template.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 03
Extreme heat, end of school, user-centred design training, mobile app design and 1-to-1s.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 02
More onboarding, being in the chalet and getting my kit setup.
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Weeknotes – series 06 episode 01
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Things to do in Swansea
My non-exhaustive list of nice things to do in Swansea. Mostly places that serve pale ale. And beaches. Roughly East to West.
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My first 3 months in the inclusive design team
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Joining NHS test and trace
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A user manual for me, version 2
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Adding some basic CSS
Adding some basic CSS to stop Google shouting at me.
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Switching to Eleventy, but still naked
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Family friendly TV shows with LGBT characters
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Redirect custom domain name from GitHub pages to Netlify
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Checking for visual changes with BackstopJS
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Some personal goals for 2021
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Deploy my Jekyll site to Netlify
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Create a list of sample pages for testing
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Change default branch from master to main
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A plan for accessible maps
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Weeknotes – series 04 episode 04
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Weeknotes – series 04 episode 03
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Weeknotes – series 04 episode 02
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Weeknotes – series 04 episode 01
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A user-centred design and data community
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11ty resources
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Teams who share their accessibility processes in the open
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Accessible close buttons
A short post about designing close buttons with SVG icons and accessible mark-up.
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Generally, it’s better to avoid opening links in new windows or tabs
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My first year at Swirrl
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Pens for UX sketching and note taking
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User research activities for testing interface content
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Making data part of the web sticker
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Books about racism in the UK
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Accessible search form mark-up
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Some personal goals for 2020
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Making data tables more accessible
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User research questions for data users
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What have I accomplished this decade?
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Accessibility checklist
A list of accessibility recommendations; covering typography, content, layout and interaction.
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Using Shortcuts app to add location data to my posts
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Going full Monzo
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Work trips 2019
I've been making a note of all my work trips this year.
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Finally went to Ty Cwrw in Mumbles last night, tried a lovely Tenby Brewing x Tiny Rebel ale
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Coffee beans
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Tiny Rebel beer mat
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Design workshops
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Writing user stories
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Co-working spaces in Cardiff centre
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Remote working pros and cons
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Weeknotes – series 03 episode 05
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Weeknotes – series 03 episode 04
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Weeknotes – series 03 episode 03
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Weeknotes – series 03 episode 02
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Weeknotes – series 03 episode 01
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How to be a more resilient service designer
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Weeknotes – series 02 episode 06
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Weeknotes – series 02 episode 05
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January 2019 bookmarks
My read later list from January.
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Weeknotes – series 02 episode 04
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Weeknotes – series 02 episode 03
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Weeknotes – series 02 episode 02
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Weeknotes – series 02 episode 01
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Christmas day dinner timings 2018
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December 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from December.
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Five things Andy taught me
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A user manual for me
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NaBloPoMo round-up
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Learnt recently that definition lists (DLs) can have multiple definitions (DDs) for every term (DT) and I’m so here for it.
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Nice people saying nice things about the ONS website
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November 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from November.
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Blog stats
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The stickers on my laptop
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I’ve added previous and next links, so users can skip to the posts published before and after this one.
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Speaking at Service Design in Gov 2019
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A quick review of the Netflix She-Ra reboot
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This is a quick test note from my phone. I’m using Working Copy GitHub client for iOS.
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This is a simple note template. A note is a post that is typically short unstructured plain text, written & posted quickly, that has its own permalink page.
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My first “no meeting” day
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Adding h-entry to the posts template
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Getting started with indieweb
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A single word that makes the tricky task of changing nappies so much easier
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Introduction to interaction design in gov
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Leave me feedback
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How improving typography can help us to meet user needs
What is typography? What problems does good typography solve? How do we know poor typography is a real problem?
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100 blog posts
This is my 100th blog post. Here's to 100 more.
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Interaction design tools
The tools that I use every day. Interesting to note the lack of any design apps like Sketch.
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Swn 2018
A quick round-up of the things we got up to at Swn.
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Articles I’ve written that have been published somewhere else
A collection of posts that I’ve written for other blogs.
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Sid’s words
A list of our 2 year old's unique words.
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Good coffee in places we go for meetings and user research
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New design team retro
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Work trips 2018
I've been making a note of all my work trips this year. Here’s a run down of the key things I spotted.
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NaBloPoMo progress
It’s not a dashboard. Definitely not a dashboard.
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Creating the image post layout
A round-up of the key things in my new image post template.
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9 miles to Glasto
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October 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from October.
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September 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from September.
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How to focus in open plan offices
Earlier this week, I asked the Twitter hive mind for tips how to get focussed work done when working in open plan offices.
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A plan for accessible charts
A list of user research findings, accessibility report findings, best practice, resources and good ideas that I’ve collected over the past 2 years.
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How to lead user-centred design
My brief notes from the Government Digital Service (GDS) essentials of leadership training, run by Rebecca Kemp and Ade Adewunmi.
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August 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from August.
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July 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from July.
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June 2018 bookmarks
My read later list from June.
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Weeknotes – series 01 episode 06
Inflatable bowels, Twitter charts and busy, busy days.
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What's the best way to mark-up an SVG map?
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Weeknotes – series 01 episode 05
A trip to GDS to discuss service and graphic design. Plus prototypes, pattern audits and moaning.
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Kicking things off with the graphic design team
Make your work visible, zoom out, and create some great British public service design.
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How to start a service design community
My notes from today’s cross-gov service design call.
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Weeknotes – series 01 episode 04
We got a new graphic designer and a new UX designer. Ryan Dunn popped in too.
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May 2018 bookmarks
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Service walkthrough
Observe a service by going through the stages of the user journey.
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Weeknotes – series 01 episode 03
Featuring service design, accessible maths symbols and pizza.
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Hiring a user experience (UX) designer at ONS
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Weeknotes – series 01 episode 02
Heatwave edition.
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Weeknotes – series 01 episode 01
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April 2018 bookmarks
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March 2018 bookmarks
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February 2018 bookmarks
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My link sharing workflow
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Use fewer layouts
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Add a list of page layouts
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January 2018 bookmarks
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Change date format
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Add SVG icons
Why SVG is best for icons, and which attributes to use.
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Add aria-current to the site nav
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December 2017 bookmarks
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Accessibility for designers
A guide to web accessibility for graphic, visual and UI (user interface) designers.
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We’re hiring 5 graphic designers at Office for National Statistics (ONS)
3 digital designers and 2 brand and print designers in Newport. Closing 22 Jan 2018.
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November 2017 bookmarks
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My first 12ish months
You'll never guess what happened after I joined Office for National Statistics (ONS).
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Disney data
Data from our family trip to Disneyland Paris.
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My 12 year quest to get a public service design job
There have been a lot of 'I'm leaving government posts' recently. It feels a bit weird because I've been trying for years to get in.
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Retrospective (my first 2 months)
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User experience (UX) designer objectives
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User research activity cards
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Work with me at Office for National Statistics (ONS)
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Creating a digital delivery culture
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Visual note-taking with Eleanor Beer
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Things my little girls have taught me about feminism
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User experience (UX) designer skills
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Should designers design content?
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The first UK Government accessibility meet-up
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The New ABCs of Research by Ben Schneiderman
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Port80 2016
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The last ten percent
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Research findings over the long term
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Training for the Welsh 3 Peaks
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Speaking at Design Swansea in April
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Great service design at Premier Inn
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Usability research labs in the UK
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Tools for recording usability tests
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Baby guerrillas
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When things get tedious
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Goodbye WordPress
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What’s the best way to learn UX?
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Finding work and managing money as a freelancer
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Reasons London
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My top albums 2014
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Responsive HTML email talk at Winter LocalHost 2014
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Swansea design meet-up
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My BlogConf slides
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Who inspired me
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Making responsive HTML emails
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Freelancing and switching off
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Notes on creating Twitter, Google+ and Facebook profile page images
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Responsive email design
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Worrying about health
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User experience design
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My name is Benjy and I’m a web designer
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Readable, guessable and hackable urls
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Web design tools
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Why I like to use “smart quotes”
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30 things done before I'm 30
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Stickiness and lumpy bits
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Crafting animation on the web
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Crafting animation on the web an introduction
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Animation as a design material
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Immersive animation on the web
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On knolling
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An excuse for a blockquote
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Design is an actual job
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Designing user experience in casinos
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BBC Newsnight talks graphic design and infographics
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Swansea town sea shanty