I really enjoyed this chat with Marc:
I recently sat down with Jeremy Keith for a spontaneous conversation that quickly turned into a deep dive into something we both care a lot about: events, community, and why we keep putting ourselves through the joy and pain of running conferences.
This episode of the Shop Talk Show is the dictionary definition of “rambling” but I had a lot of fun rambling with Chris and Dave!
Maureen has written a really good overview of web feeds for this year’s HTMHell advent calendar.
The common belief is that nobody uses RSS feeds these days. And while it’s true that I wish more people used feed readers—the perfect antidote to being fed from an algorithm—the truth is that millions of people use RSS feeds every time they listen to a podcast. That’s what a podcast is: an RSS feed with enclosure elements that point to audio files.
And just as a web feed doesn’t necessarily need to represent a list of blog posts, a podcast doesn’t necessarily need to be two or more people having a recorded conversation (though that does seem to be the most common format). A podcast can tell a story. I like those kinds of podcasts.
The BBC are particularly good at this kind of episodic audio storytelling. I really enjoyed their series Thirteen minutes to the moon, all about the Apollo 11 mission. They followed it up with a series on Apollo 13, and most recently, a series on the space shuttle.
Here’s the RSS feed for the 13 minutes podcast.
Right now, the BBC have an ongoing series about the history of the atomic bomb. The first series was about Leo Szilard, the second series was about Klaus Fuchs, and the third series running right now is about the Cuban missile crisis.
The hook is that each series is presented by people with a family connection to the events. The first series is presented by the granddaughter of one of the Oak Ridge scientists. The second series is presented by the granddaughter of Klaus Fuch’s spy handler in the UK—blimey! And the current series is presented by Nina Khrushcheva and Max Kennedy—double blimey!
Here’s the RSS feed for The Bomb podcast.
If you want a really deep dive into another pivotal twentieth century event, Evgeny Morozov made a podcast all about Stafford Beer and Salvadore Allende’s collaboration on cybernetics in Chile, the fabled Project Cybercyn. It’s fascinating stuff, though there’s an inevitable feeling of dread hanging over events because we know how this ends.
The podcast is called The Santiago Boys, though I almost hesitate to call it a podcast because for some reason, the website does its best to hide the RSS feed, linking only to the silos of Spotify and Apple. Fortunately, thanks to this handy tool, I can say:
Here’s the RSS feed for The Santiago Boys podcast.
The unifying force behind all three of these stories is the cold war:
Eric Meyer and Brian Kardell chat with Jay Hoffmann and Jeremy Keith about Shadow DOM’s backstory and long origins
I enjoyed this chat, and it wasn’t just about Shadow DOM; it was about the history of chasing the dream of encapsulation on the web.
This looks handy: a service to extract the RSS feed of a podcast (y’know—the thing that actually makes a podcast a podcast) from walled gardens that obfuscate the feed’s location: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Soundcloud.
Here’s a handy service that allows you to follow a Mastodon account that updates when a new podcast episode is released from any podcast you like.
Crash!
Did somebody drop something?
Why, yes! It’s a new episode of The Clearleft Podcast. The episode that just dropped is all about onboarding:
How do you introduce users to product features without alienating or patronising them?
It’s a tidy fifteen and a half minutes long, featuring words of wisdom from product designer James Gilyead, content designer Jo Dimbleby, and of course UX designer Krystal Higgins, who literally wrote the book on better onboarding.
I interviewed James and Jo, and used snippets of a talk that Krystal gave at one of our UX events a little while back. Have a listen:
James and Jo talk worked on a project together for Sage where thy prototyped patterns for onboarding users to product features. You can find out more about the project:
The folks at Sage had a hunch that an overview screen might be valuable for their customers. They asked Clearleft to help them test this hypothesis.
Another Clearleftie, Chris How, wrote a chapter for the Customer Onboarding Handbook published by CX Lead. You can get the book and read his chapter called Ongoing Onboarding.
That idea of ongoing onboarding is something James talks about on the podcast, calling it “longboarding”:
We ended up coining the term longboarding to describe a transition from a new user to an established user.
He goes one better with the term “non-boarding”:
Some products you don’t realize have onboarded you. And I think that’s a huge compliment.
Listen to the whole episode to get the full story. And while you’re at it, subscribe to the podcast feed or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I somehow missed this when it came out in January but Amber just pointed me to it—an interview with Chris about HTML web components, available for your huffduffing pleasure.
What podcasting holds in the promise of its open format is the proof that an open web can still thrive and be relevant, that it can inspire new systems that are similarly open to take root and grow. Even the biggest companies in the world can’t displace these kinds of systems once they find their audiences.
It’s so nice to see when someone else finds Huffduffer to be useful!
I did an episode of the Clearleft podcast on innovation a while back:
Everyone wants to be innovative …but no one wants to take risks.
The word innovation is often bandied about in an unquestioned positive way. But if we acknowledge that innovation is—by definition—risky, then the exhortations sound less positive.
“We provide innovative solutions for businesses!” becomes “We provide risky solutions for businesses!”
I was reminded of this when I saw the website for the Podcast Standards Project. The original text on the website described the project as:
…a grassroots coalition working to establish modern, open standards, to enable innovation in the podcast industry.
I pushed back on that wording (partly because I’ve seen the word “innovation” used as a smoke screen for user-hostile practices like tracking and surveillance). The wording has since changed to:
…a grassroots coalition dedicated to creating standards and practices that improve the open podcasting ecosystem for both listeners and creators.
That’s better. It’s more precise.
Am I nitpicking? Only if you think that “innovation” and “improvement” are synonyms. I don’t think they are.
Innovation implies change. Improvement implies positive change.
Not all change is positive. Not all innovation is positive.
Innovation goes hand in hand with disruption. Again, disruption involves change. But not necessarily positive change.
Think about the antonyms of change and disruption: stasis and stability. Those words don’t sound very exciting, but in some arenas they’re exactly what you should be aiming for; arenas like infrastructure or standards.
Not to get all pace layers-y here, but it seems to me that every endeavour has a sweet spot for innovation. For some projects, too little innovation is bad. For others, too much innovation is worse.
The trick is knowing which kind of project you’re working on.
(As a side note, I think some people use the word innovation to describe the generative, divergent phase of a design project: “how might we come up with innovative new approaches?” But we already have a word to describe the practice of generating novel and interesting ideas. That word isn’t innovation. It’s creativity.)
A new organisation with the stated goal of keeping podcasting open.
Their first specification is a consolidation of what already exists. That’s good. We don’t want a 927 situation.
My only worry is that many of the companies behind this initiative are focused on metrics and monetization—I hope they don’t attempt to standardise tracking and surveillance in podcasts.
The Podcast Standards Project, a grassroots coalition working to establish modern, open standards, to enable innovation in the podcast industry.
Define “innovation”.
Boom! The Clearleft podcast is back!
The first episode of season four just dropped. It’s all about design transformation.
I’ve got to be honest, this episode is a little inside baseball. It’s a bit navel-gazey and soul-searching as I pick apart the messaging emblazoned on the Clearleft website:
The design transformation consultancy.
Whereas most of the previous episodes of the podcast would be of interest to our peers—fellow designers—this one feels like it might of more interest to potential clients. But I hope it’s not too sales-y.
You’ll hear from Danish designer Maja Raunbak, and American in Amsterdam Nick Thiel as well as Clearleft’s own Chris Pearce. And I’ve sampled a talk from the Leading Design archives by Stuart Frisby.
The episode clocks in at a brisk eighteen and a half minutes. Have a listen.
While you’re at it, take this opportunity to subscribe to the Clearleft podcast on Overcast, Spotify, Apple, Google or by using a good ol’-fashioned RSS feed. That way the next episodes in the season will magically appear in your podcatching software of choice.
But I’m not making any promises about when that will be. Previously, I released new episodes in a season on a weekly basis. This time I’m going to release each episode whenever it’s ready. That might mean there’ll be a week or two between episodes. Or there might be a month or so between episodes.
I realise that this unpredictable release cycle is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but it’s actually the most sensible way for me to make sure the podcast actually gets out. I was getting a bit overwhelmed with the prospect of having six episodes ready to launch over a six week period. What with curating UX London and other activities, it would’ve been too much for me to do.
So rather than delay this season any longer, I’m going to drop each episode whenever it’s done. Chaos! Anarchy! Dogs and cats living together!
Here’s a short fifteen minute video (and transcript) of an interview I did about accessibility and inclusive design. I quite like how it turned out!
This forthcoming podcast about design engineering sounds like my cup of tea!
From Patrick Tanguay:
A list of small micro-publishers — most of them run by one person — putting out great content through their websites, newsletters, and podcasts.
Well, this is just wonderful! Jim has written copious notes after listening to my favourite episode of season three of the Clearleft podcast, measuring design:
I’m going to have to try really, really hard to not just copy/paste the entire transcript of this podcast. It‘s that good. Don’t miss it.
For over a year now I’ve been recording the audio versions of Jay Hoffman’s excellent Web History series on CSS Tricks.
We’re up to ten chapters now. The audio version of each chapter is between 30 and 40 minutes long. That’s around 400 minutes of my voice: a good six and a half hours of me narrating the history of the web. That’s like an audio book!
The story so far covers:
…with more to come.
The audio is available as a podcast. You can subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s also available from Apple and Spotify.
That’ll give you plenty to listen to while you wait for the next season of the Clearleft podcast.
Season three of the Clearleft podcast is done and dusted. I’m pretty happy with how the six episodes turned out.
Coaching. There was one question at the heart of this episode: what’s the difference between training, coaching, and mentoring? I got some great answers to that question, with some good stories along the way.
Design Engineering. It will come as no surprise that I really enjoyed this episode. This is a topic I think is growing in importance. The relevation for me was the way Trys framed it less as the intersection between design and development, and more about the gap between design and development. And remember we’re looking for a design engineer to join Clearleft.
Design Research. A really fun deep dive, thanks to Steph. I feel like this episode set things up for the next two episodes. Oh, and we’re also looking for a design researcher to join Clearleft.
Innovation. I had lots of great material to draw on here: a panel discussion, conference talks, and interviews. I really like the ensemble nature of the end result.
Measuring Design. My favourite episode of the season, and probably my favourite episode of the Clearleft podcast so far. This episode builds on a hot topic from UX Fest. And just this week, Andy published a blog post that continues the debate. If you only listen to one episode of the season, make it this one.
Design Principles. Needless to say, I enjoyed the heck out of this one. As a well-known nerd for design principles this felt kind of self-indulgent, but in the end there’s not much of me in it (thankfully). In fact it’s more like a case study of the work Clearleft did with Citizens Advice.
I also wrote a bit about each episode when they came out:
Six episodes might not sound like much, but it takes a lot of work to put a season together. It’s rewarding though. And I’m already looking forward to crafting the arc for season four. But that won’t be until the start of next year.
Still, it’s never to early to subscribe so you’ll be the first to hear the newest episodes. Subscribe to the RSS feed or on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The final episode of season three of the Clearleft podcast is out. Ah, what a bittersweet feeling! On the hand it’s sad that the season has come to an end. But it feels good to look back at six great episodes all gathered together.
Episode six is all about design principles. That’s a topic close to my heart. I collect design principles.
But for this podcast episode the focus is on one specific project. Clearleft worked with Citizens Advice on a recent project that ended up having design principles at the heart of it. It worked as a great focus for the episode, and a way of exploring design principles in general. As Katie put it, this about searching for principles for design principles.
Katie and Maite worked hard on nailing the design principles for the Citizens Advice project. I was able to get some of Maite’s time for her to talk me through it. I’ve also got some thoughts from my fellow Clearlefties Andy and Chris on the topic of design principles in general.
It’s nineteen minutes long and well worth a listen.
And with that, season three of the Clearleft podcast is a wrap!