Unlike some people, I'm partial to a spot of anthropomorphism, which is why I was delighted to receive this email after ordering some cards from Moo... Hello Matt I'm Little MOO - the bit of software that will be managing your order with us. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine … Continue reading Remember, I’m just a bit of software
Author: mattedgar
Product strategy and design leadership in web and mobile media. Before that I was a newspaper journalist and history student
Sous les pavés, la plage
The payphone has bluescreened... ... the departure board has 404ed... ... the giant TV screen is somebody's Windows desktop... Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Since posting my three broken technology pictures, I've been suffering the blogger's equivalent of what the French call "l'esprit de l'escalier," and for which German has the … Continue reading Sous les pavés, la plage
So this is ubiquitous computing
The payphone has bluescreened... ... the departure board has 404ed... ... the giant TV screen is somebody's Windows desktop... Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
On User-Centred Design and the Wrong Kind of Penguin
A delightful letter to today's Guardian contradicts the fashionable received wisdom of modernist architects as purists riding roughshod over the interests of users. Defending Berthold Lubetkin's 1934 Penguin Pool at London Zoo, his daughter Sacha writes: I was astonished to read that "nobody thought to ask the penguins" about the design. My father steeped himself … Continue reading On User-Centred Design and the Wrong Kind of Penguin
By Their Words You Shall Know Them
Recently I've been spending time around online advertising people and I'm starting to wonder: if they're so smart at communicating, do they ever listen to themselves? For some reason this industry has adopted the most aggressive and unattractive jargon - targeting, eyeballs, cut-through, impressions, and so on. It doesn't have to be this way. The … Continue reading By Their Words You Shall Know Them
Everything I Know I Learned From Old Ladybird books
We recently inherited a stack of Ladybird books and have wasted many happy hours inside the uncomplicated mind of the 1960s educationalist. Here's what we've learned: Computers do not have brains and they cannot really think for themselves A stockbroker in the City is probably more interested in financial news, and has time to read … Continue reading Everything I Know I Learned From Old Ladybird books
Polperro
On holiday in Cornwall this summer we visited Polperro, a Cornish fishing village so archetypal that it featured in Ptolemy Dean's BBC programme The Perfect Village. As the programme synopsis says: On the surface, Polperro looks as if it hasn’t changed for centuries, but in fact it exemplifies a delicate balance between the tourist village … Continue reading Polperro
RIP my Tablet PC
It's been a while since my trusty work-issue Compaq Tablet PC gave up the ghost, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it. We'd been together more than three years, the TC1000 and I, and the day the man from IT pronounced it dead (a motherboard issue, apparently) it felt like a bereavement. A … Continue reading RIP my Tablet PC
Help me, Usability Man!
Is this door with the sign that says other door the other door or is the other door that doesn't say other door the other door? Originally uploaded by mattedgar.
Pattern: Bundle of identity
The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume proposed that identity is nothing but the bundle of our past experiences. Don't test me on this, because I just read it on Wikipedia, but it seems like a good place to start this piece of introspection on the need for a unified identity. It goes like this. Context: I … Continue reading Pattern: Bundle of identity
Gee Any Arghh
News that GNER, my financially-challenged intercity train operator, has just achieved a Charter Mark for excellence in customer service, has prompted me to reflect on a peculiar scene that's played out nearly every time I travel with them. There are many things I love about travelling GNER compared to other UK rail operators [if anyone … Continue reading Gee Any Arghh
Payment friction: why is there a queue at the checkout, but not at the shelves?
discuss.
Capturing the rainbow
Out shopping on an Autumn Saturday afternoon, a spectacular rainbow appeared over Islington. And on every street corner there was someone taking a picture with their cameraphone. A perfect example of how convergent technologies create brand new behaviours, as well as enhancing existing ones. Most of those people taking pictures probably didn't explicitly choose a … Continue reading Capturing the rainbow
I have seen the future and it folds
Ten years ago I worked in a declining industry. Regional newspaper readerships were aging, as papers struggled to connect with their communities. Staff cuts and inflexible new technology at the paper I worked on meant we had a 9:30am press deadline for some localised editions - which rather made a mockery of the word "Evening" … Continue reading I have seen the future and it folds
honest, tasty and real
Picture 033 Originally uploaded by mattedgar. We believe that life is too short to find our own voice, and that it's easier to copy someone else. We take some dippy hippy Ben and Jerry's blurb and add a dash of Dave Cameron Innocent Smoothy mateyness, then we mix it up a bit (but not much). … Continue reading honest, tasty and real
Matt Edgar writes here 