iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

In fact, we put in a slightly phoney loading animation, made by our brilliant frot end dev Graham, based on a physics engine. Our research showed that the app was *too* fast – results were loading in about 30ms, which is about 7 times faster than humans can […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Screenshot of an animated loading engine that describes an infinity symbol in little blue dots. Below the text reads Getting everything ready...

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

Service landscape map template Service landscape maps capture and illustrate that wider context and allow us to see the complexity at play, and to develop a better understanding of the user’s whole experience. #serviceDesign #maps […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

A colourful diagram with a series od connected blobs representing stages of a journey, each with a series of circles representing activities

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

This is a service landscape map. Service landscape maps depict the different stages users go through when accessing a service as connected blobs, with the activities they do as circles within those blobs. #serviceDesign #maps

A colourful diagram depicting how users move through a service.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

Browsers (and, through them, assistive technologies) get accessibility information through something called the accessibility tree. This is a kind of stripped-down version of the Document Object Model (DOM), a representation of the web page that browsers use to render the page.

The accessibility tree for the homepage of design.scotentblog.co.uk. The accessible name is shown in the panel on the right

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2026

Um ... @jensimmons Safari Technology Preview Release 250 (WebKit 21626.1.2.19.2) This is BBC.co.uk / .com

Screenshot of BBC.co.uk homepage showing massive whitespace between headings and content.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 20/07/2026

Back where I want it to be. The #accessibility score is a bit of an underestimate. Automated tools always flag that we don't have a text-decoration: underline; rule in our #CSS for anchors. In fact we use a box-shadow rule to achieve the same effect with some […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Screenshot of a lighthouse report showing a score of 98/100 for performance, 97 for accesssibility and 100 for best practices and SEO.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 15/07/2026

@jensimmons STP 247 blocks (or fails to play) content from BBC iPlayer It works fine in Safari. Haven't had time to debug, trying to watch the game :)

BBC iPlayer screen with the error: Something went wrong!

Please check your connection and try reloading the page

Retry

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 12/07/2026

On 1 March 2018, I put these boots on. It was the day the "Beast from the East" storm hit Scotland. 1 March 2018. 20cm of snow. There were no trains. No buses. No traffic. It's about a 5km walk. I was the only person in the office that day.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 10/07/2026

This is the roof at Wemyss Bay station in #Scotland. (It's pronounced weems bay, from the Gaelic uaimh which means cave.) It's where you get the ferry to Bute in the Firth of Clyde. It's beautifully designed: architecturally stunning radial roof supports but […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Wemyss Bay train station. A circular wood-panelled ticket office radiates cast-iron beams supporting the glass roof. All the people in the image are wearing shorts and t-shirts or summer frocks.

Detail of the roof showing the radial supports in a sweeping curve. There is a light fitting at the top and centre.

Another view of the roof structure, taken from a somewhat haphazard angle so everything is swooping downwards from right to left.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 17/06/2026

And on minor roads, very little traffic. Plus this @bodhipaksa

A bird fled from left to right over a rock formation.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2026

If you'd asked me 18 months ago if I could do a 15 mile (25km) bike ride, I'd have laughed and said I couldn't ride a bike for 15 metres. Today I did a 15 mile bike ride round the East Neuk of Fife. #Cycling #BikeTooter #Fife

Map of the route I took from Callardyke to Fife Ness via Kilkenny and Crai.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

I mean, this is ... not bad. For a wee blog. Just ditch third party javascript (especially Google Analytics) and suddenly everything looks brighter. #WebPerf #A11y #accessibility #seo

A lighthouse report for design.scotentblog.co.uk showing scores of 100/100 for performance, accessibility, best practice and SEO.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

As you do your research, compile a table of the user needs you discover. You can add as many columns, of whatever type, as you need. Record which persona/user(s), and which stage in the journey it occurs. You’ll end up with a table something like this.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 26/02/2026

Added a new tool to our toolbox. Available for Miro, Illustrator or as a PDF. design.scotentblog.co.uk/toolbox/#:…

A colourful diagram depicting how an individual user might negotiate a path to a desired outcome, interacting with a number of services along the way. The diagram also captures which other actors are involved in this journey.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 14/02/2026

Yeah, this great #apple No-one, ever, complained that a solid background on the menu bar was an issue. Not a single person.

The OdS menu on my MacBook showing the underlying desktop image, black writing on a whiteboard (I am a service designer, I have hundreds of photos like this) with OS menu items overlaid on top making things hard to read).

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2026

Metro, or tube maps, can be a useful way to depict a high level user journey through a service. They seem to be especially popular with senior managers, who appreciate their simplicity and familiarity. We've made a Miro template, if you use that tool […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Screenshot of the Miro Metro map template

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

Trying to update an oldish iPhone to iOS 18.7.4. Keep getting this error. #Apple #iOS #update

Screenshot of an iPhone software update screen with an error message saying: Unable to verify update. iOS 18.7.4 is temporarily unavailable. Try again later.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 14/01/2026

If you go to System Settings > Spotlight you can get some some fine-grain control over which (if any) apps you want results from. @bodhipaksa

Mac OS system settings allowing apps data to be returned in Spotlight

Spotlight settings for results from System

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 21/11/2025

Interesting that Microsoft, Google et al are shoehorning "AI" into their email clients urging people to use it to "draft an email to Tracy in sales congratulating her on the last quarter results, and ask for a forecast for this quarter". Dude, you just wrote […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

A column chart from statistic.com showing the global number of emails sent between 2018-2028. Values from 2025 onwards are projected. The chart shows a steady growth from 281.1 billion emails in 2018, to 424.2 billion emails in 2028.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 06/11/2025

So a minor upgrade to MacOS is now an almost 15GB download. Modern software is so bloated. #MacOS #software

Screenshot of software update download progress on MacOS. The progress bar indicates 4.69 of 14.92 GigaBytes downloaded so far.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 27/10/2025

This was how deep the snow was that day. 225mm or 10 inches for those unfathomably wedded to imperial units.

A metal rule projecting out of snow showing that 10 inches of snow have accumulated.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 27/10/2025

Pre-Covid, I would routinely walk the 3.5 miles there and back. Wasn't a big deal. Sometimes, like when the "Beast from the East" hit, I was literally the only person in the office. All the trains and buses were canceled. I just put my snow boots on and tramped through Kelvingrove Park.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 27/10/2025

In the office(!) tomorrow, so planning to cycle there. Weather's not looking great, but it seldom does at the end of October.

Met Office weather forecast showing rain and sunny intervals for 28 October 2025

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2025

Managed to #walk about 2.5km up a coastal path today. With my flavour of #ataxia that felt like a bit of a triumph. Sadly, wasn't able to make it to the next village and had to turn back. Absolutely exhausted and utterly empty by the time I did so. But I did.

A rocky shore and stormy sea with clear blue skies.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2025

#userResearch is hard. Especially when you have users all over the world. A colleague in #UX research needed some help on a project I'm not involved in. My calendar now looks like this.

Screenshot of an Outlook calendar showing all day back-to back sessions.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2025

I cycled over 20 miles today. File under things I thought I would never say again.

A map of the route I took along the Forth-Clyde Canal. There was some noodling on the way back looking for a junkyard place.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 01/06/2025

Seems ahrefsbot has been crawling all over our blog ... thousands of http requests per week for a blog that has about 120 posts and a handful of pages. And which gets updated maybe once every couple of weeks. That's just unreasonable, an unacceptable an […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Pie chart of crawler requests to design.scotentblog.co.uk for 1-14 May 2025 showing AhrefsBot sending >50% of requests, far more than Google or Bing's bots.

Pie chart of the last week of May 2025 showing that AhrefsBot has not made any requests. The biggest culprit now is something called Barkrowler, which I'll happily admit I know zero about.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2025

This is my favourite #UselessUI dialog. There is what appears to be a heading asking "Stay signed in?" It's not a heading, although it does have a role=heading and aria-leval=1 attributes. Both of which would be entirely unnecessary if you just made this an […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Screenshot of a user interface dialog. Its appearance is described in the text of this post.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 01/05/2025

Tube maps are a great way to illustrate a high level picture of how a user might navigate a service / journey / experience. People just seem to "grok" them. We made a #Miro template you can use to get you started. #ServiceDesign miro.com/miroverse/tube-map

A colourful diagram in the style of the London Underground map, with many lines depicting the paths users can take through a service, and circular 'stations' denoting important events along the way.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 24/04/2025

New #Teams background. An image by Turner Prize winning artist and #Glasgow College of Art alumnus, David Shrigley.

A simple cartoon-like black and white image of an elephant standing on a car, accompanied by the text: elephant chooses to stand on your car

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 24/04/2025

But in a meeting yesterday a colleague gave a demo of a new service we've introduced, on sour site and said it was based on work I'd done. I expressed surprise. (Actually, I said, "What have I done now?") It was based on this service landscape map I worked […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

A diagram showing a series of interconnected bubbles from left to right.

Each of the eight bubbles represents a stage in a typical company's exporting journey.

Within each bubble are multiple, colour-coded smaller circles representing smaller tasks or activities a business might undertake at that stage.

Above the bubbles we detail who the actors are – the business owner, their advisers and so on. Below, we document who in our organisation provides support at that stage.

Across the bottom of the diagram we record all the other organisations, public and private, who might be involved at that stage.

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 21/01/2025

Had to remind some folks today that making postal codes mandatory is not optimal. They come in flavours of 3-10 numeric characters (which you can't treat as numbers) or 6-8 alphanumeric strings. And some countries/territories just don't use them at all. Like […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

A map of the world showing various flavours of postal codes in use in different countries. and territories

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David O'Brien @se-davidobrien.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 20/12/2024

I used @zachleat's <snow-fall> web component to make it snow in the header image of our blog. That's me wrapping up for 2024. See y'all next year, design.scotentblog.co.uk

The facade of St Andrews University Ocean Studies Institute. Iron bands, rusting, open to the salty atmosphere, ripple like waves over a glass frontage.

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