(I found this in my inbox during a clearout…) A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Prada suit, Gucci shoes, Dior sunglasses and D+G tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd, “If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one? Read more...

It feels quite weird to be writing this, but I’m leaving IOP Publishing after nearly eight years: my longest-running job by a country mile. I’m going to Digerati Studio, a Web agency in Bath; no more train-induced commuter stress for me. I’m leaving just as the first project I worked on at IOPP – the Magazines Online Subscriptions system – is being retired, which I feel is poetic: a complete project lifecycle. Read more...

(This is turning into a marathon: parts one, two, three and four precede this one. I can’t guarantee your sanity should you choose to read that lot.) Joshua Porter: Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design bq. “Rationality be damned…” We (humans) work on limited information to make a decision - the Bandwagon Effect. h4. Heuristics Heuristics are a shortcut to making a decision. They’re useful (else we would likely never make a decision, make a decision very, very slowly and/or go insane in the process) but they are subject to cognitive bias_Bias. Read more...

Off the train; voices in a garden. I look and see barbeque smoke. Up the hill, more smells of outdoor cookery; further on, it blends with the aroma of the chip shop. A beautiful reminder of the summer we never had.

(Parts one, two and three precede this…) After the workshop ended, a few of us decamped to Komedia Bar for an ale; at 7pm it was time for the emerging tradition that is the Pre-Pre-Party Burgers, next door at Gourmet Burger Kitchen. GBK had reserved half the restaurant for dConstruct attendees, so it wasn’t too difficult to get a seat. I stuck my coat on an empty chair on a table otherwise occupied by Ross, Mark and Adnan, all of whom were fine burger-eating company, despite having never met me before in their lives ;) Read more...

(See part one for some fascinating travel and eating anecdotes, and part two for the first half of Joshua Porter’s workshop) Designing for sign-up Contrary to what I (and presumably others) thought, this isn’t about the sign-up form! It’s more to do with the need to articulate the core value of what’s being offered to the user. In pseudo-physics terms, it’s about converting potential energy into kinetic energy. Research has been done that suggests that sign-up is nine times harder than we think it is: Read more...

(If you’re short on things to do, part one contains fascinating details of my journey and dinner) Thursday morning brought a slight respite from the high winds and torrential rain of the previous night. Breakfast in the hotel was really, really good: muesli/dried cranberries and yoghurt followed by my choice of Eggs Benedict. Oh, and the Smoothie of the Day. Looking at the map, I reckoned that Clearleft’s offices (the location of the workshops) were about half a mile away - I estimated a 10 minute walk. Read more...

Last week I made the annual pilgrimage to Brighton for dConstruct - one of the UK’s leading grass-roots Web conferences. Now in its fourth year, the theme of the conference this time was “Designing the social Web”, a topic increasingly of relevance to what we do at IOP Publishing. “Social Software” is merely software that gets better the more people use it; it’s not necessarily about creating the next Facebook or MySpace, and many (though not all) sites could benefit from social features. Read more...