Assume nobody else has any idea what they’re doing either Aaron Swartz Original post

Ducks swim calmly and smoothly along, obscuring the fact that below the surface they may be paddling frantically. That’s the analogy used by Louise Kidney commenting on a post I wrote last year to describe how joined up government may be working in practice. The best that government can be is to provide that seamlessRead… Read more »

It’s a holiday cliché. The car is packed, the boot is full, the journey is under way – and then there is a flat tyre. Luggage is piled on the hard shoulder until the spare wheel is finally unearthed. It happened to me last week. Except that it was a plane not a car, andRead… Read more »

If something makes sense within the organisation but sounds mad outside it, then that’s a good sign that something might be wrong with the culture. Ian Leslie Original post

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web Design for GOV.UK, Moorhouse — Notes on design, technology and creativity As a designer, I’ve always placed a premium on graphic design as a key differentiator between good and bad products. Which it often is. But in the process of making a large scale agile productRead… Read more »

The semiotics of plumbing is a slightly unlikely topic, but having not long ago discussed the affordance of soap dispensing, I now turn to the tricky question of how to turn on a tap. There follows a ludicrously detailed description of an utterly trivial process. If that prospect does not fill your heart with joy,Read… Read more »

The gov.uk team have released a new version of their home page. It’s now quite a long way from the simplicity of where they started – but kudos to them for respecting the discipline of user focused design. But looking at the page, one small thing struck me (well, one thing other than the otherRead… Read more »

The controversy machine is bigger than the reality machine. White House staffer quoted by Michael Lewis Original post

What does service mean in a public service? How do we know how good it should be, and how do we know whether that is good enough in principle or in practice? That shouldn’t on the face of it be too hard to work out, but the answer is often more elusive than it firstRead… Read more »

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web The Information Needs of the Indoctrinated Audience In any web project, the glamour audience that gets all the attention is the new audience – the previously unknown visitors that know little about you, and need to learn from scratch. We spend so much time on theseRead… Read more »