Twice as nice: Introducing the NHS.UK Eleventy Plugin
With the NHS.UK Eleventy Plugin you can focus on writing content instead of writing code.
Categories
Posts tagged ‘design’
Now available in blue
As teams at GDS prepare to launch a refreshed brand for GOV.UK on 25 June, so the X-GOVUK community has been updating its projects in preparation for this go-live date.
These are my drawings
Goodbye Dribbble.
Small dents in the IndieWeb
I’ve been on a bit of a mission lately.
A cohesive and unified identity for IndieWeb protocols
Noodling on nodes.
Apple’s Black Mirror
What fresh hell is this?
Rapidly prototype with data using this set of helpful template filters
Introducing a plugin for the GOV.UK Prototype Kit that adds a helpful collection of Nunjucks template filters. Rapidly modify and transform data while ensuring it follows the GOV.UK style guide.
Me, but online
My as yet unpublished interview for the website Me, But Online.
Write documentation using markdown and publish it using GOV.UK styles
The GOV.UK Eleventy Plugin makes it easy to start writing documentation rather than spend time building a website for it.
The new MacBook Pro
Good things come to those who wait.
I’m loving angels instead
A remarkable present for my 40th birthday.
The Clearleft podcast and the decline of design
The first season of the Clearleft podcast concluded this week, and in what feels like a rare event these days, I need to have a little rant about what I heard.
People > Process
Only one thing determines the quality of software.
Look around you
For all their claims of changing the world, it would seem designers have not only failed to address its more pressing problems, but exaggerated many of its existing ones.
Several people are outraged
Slack has a new logo, and everyone hates it.
Future Ethics by Cennydd Bowles
If design is the application of ethics, then anyone designing digital products should see their role in a new light after reading this book.
Workplace topology
Some wise words from Danielle:
The end result of our attempts to work together efficiently by breaking things down is that the topologies of our workplaces are left with gaps and overlaps.
I love this post, not least because it offers a new perspective on the work we do and provides a model for talking about how different teams can better collaborate with each other. There’s much to agree with in this piece, although I found the following to be especially true:
Recognising the gaps and overlaps is only half the battle. If we apply tools to a people problem, we will only end up moving the problem somewhere else.
Some issues can be solved with better tools or better processes. In most of our workplaces, we tend to reach for tools and processes by default, because they feel easier to implement. But as often as not, it’s not a technology problem. It’s a people problem. And the solution actually involves communication skills, or effective dialogue.
Undersold
Another identity from the offices of Pentagram that elicits a feeling somewhere between despair and indifference.
Brands renewed
An appreciation for identity programmes that seek to refine rather than reinvent.
Convenience isn’t digital
Ben Holliday:
Buying your fresh fruit and veg at local market is a valuable social connection. When I take my daughters to our local food market on Saturday’s they get to interact with our local community. The market sellers always chat to them. They often count the money (cash) when we pay, and help work out the change. One lady that serves us asks them what they’re doing for the rest of the weekend, and they learn to interact with other adults that aren’t their family or school teachers.
I can get supermarket fruit and veg delivered to my door (probably more cheaply), but this convenience comes at a cost of social value.
There is always a cost to convenience. As a business, the question is where you offset your costs. It’s 2017, and Amazon have just bought Whole Foods Market. What does that really say about our interactions with our local shops and markets?
My question for companies like Amazon is how will they think about the social value of what they sell in the future? Or, how will they think about offsetting the social cost of the speed and convenience they’re prepared to offer? My expectation is that they won’t think about these things at all.
Amazon’s answer appears to be unmanned stores where your every move is tracked, all for the supposed convenience of not having to use a checkout.
The real potential of emerging technology should be how it helps us to design for increased social value. I don’t want to live in a world where everything is so seamless and so fast that most moments pass me by.
Amen to that.
Moving slowly and fixing things
Three aspects of my personality have proven pertinent.
Hostage situation
Why do some designers choose to work for ‘evil’ corporations – and what happens to them when they get there?
Designing systems, part 3: components and composition
The final part of my three-part essay based on the talk I gave at Smashing Conference. I look at how we might build components and consider their wider composition.
Designing systems, part 2: layers of longevity
In this second part of my three-part essay based on the talk I gave at Smashing Conference, I propose a model for thinking about design systems.