Tech Culture

Design Practice

Why can’t designers solve more meaningful problems?

Every few months, somebody in our industry will question why designers don't use their talents to solve more meaningful problems; like alleviating the world from illness, hunger or debt. This statement will often be illustrated with a story of how a team from IDEO or Frog spent 3 months in a sub-saharan village creating a new kind of water pump, a micro-payment app, or a revolutionary healthcare delivery service. The implication being that if these people can do it, why can’t you?

Tech Culture

Universal wage

Stories of mass underemployment due to the rise of Artificial Intelligence have been popping up all over the place the past 18 months. It would be easy to dismiss them as crack-pot theories, were it not for the credibility of their authors; from scientists like Stephen Hawkins to industrialists like Elon Musk.

Running an agency

We won the moral argument but did we lose the business case for UX?

When we first started Clearleft 10 years ago, the bulk of my effort was focussed on explaining to clients what user experience design was, the extra value it offered, and why design needed to be more than just moving boxes around the screen.

Tech Culture

The Industrialisation of Design (or why Silicon Valley no longer hires UX designers)

Despite having their roots in Silicon Valley, UX designers are a rare breed inside traditional tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter. In some cases they are so rare that other designers claim UX design doesn’t even exist. As a result I thought it would be interesting to explore where this attitude has come from, to see if it can hint at where our industry is heading.

Design Practice

Digital Education is Broken

Ever since I started blogging in the early the naughties, the emails came in. At first in dribs and drabs, one every few months. However by the end of the decade they were one or two a week. Emails from disgruntled students who had spent up to £9k a year on tuition fees, and even more on living expenses, to find themselves languishing on a course that was woefully out of date.

Running an agency

Why do agency account managers exist?

If you've work with a large design agency before, you've probably been assigned an account manager. They tend to be super charismatic people who are good at forming interpersonal relationships, and build a bridge between you and the agency. However you may also wonder what they actually contribute to the project, and why they appear on your bill at the end of the month.