Tech Culture
Tech Culture

First Direct Trains Customers to be Phishing Victims

Banking security is a big deal and has been all over the news of late. Most of the coverage focusses on digital security and how to avoid having your account hacked. A common culprit is the Phishing attack, where a hacker sends you an email claiming to be from a trusted source, and asking for personal information like your password, mother's maiden name, date or place of birth. Most security savvy companies have got wise to this approach, so on every email they will state clearly that they will NEVER request personal information like this.
Tech Culture

Are we moving towards a post-Agile age?

Agile has been the dominant development methodology in our industry for some time now. While some teams are just getting to grips with Agile, others extended it to the point that it’s no longer recognisable as Agile. In fact, many of the most progressive design and development teams are Agile only in name. What they are actually practicing is something new, different, and innately more interesting. Something I’ve been calling Post-Agile thinking. But what exactly is Post-Agile, and how did it come about?
Tech Culture

Renting software sucks

Back in the the olden days (c. 2000) people used to own software. When a new version of Photoshop or Fireworks came out, you’d assess the new features to decide whether they were worth the price of the upgrade. If you didn’t like what you saw, you could skip a generation or two, waiting until the company had a more compelling offering.
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.