Human-centred decisions
The way we work as human-centred practitioners needs to change. From its beginnings as an engineering technique, through its transition to being a product design tool, user experience now needs to be adopted as a strategic approach.
Some human-centred practitioners have been consigned to increasingly superficial considerations. Artificial intelligence presents an opportunity for us to bring the focus back to the fundamentals that make our work important and successful.
We have developed a set of ethical personalisation principles to guide our early work to deliver personalised public services. I will present about this work as part of Services Week 2026.
We say “don’t make me think”, and “less is more”. But a naive application of these principles risks limiting our users when we should be helping them grow.
I don’t normally write about music any more, but I feel compelled to write about the new Boards of Canada album, Inferno. It has far exceeded my expectations. I can’t remember the last time I was so immediately hooked on an album — 15 or 20 years ago, or longer.
There was a heavy focus on artificial intelligence. But what really struck me was that the semantic approaches that are preparing us for our AI future are well-established web standards that have been around for decades.
People crave fast answers. But the purpose of information systems is to help people gain knowledge. So we should seek better questions.
Different ways of working with custom content types in WordPress, and the pros and cons of each.
For the past month, we have been running events showcasing the opportunities of connected content and information architecture. The response to these sessions has far exceeded my expectations.
I am pleased to be involved in organising a series of learning sessions about connected content and information architecture. This series is available to colleagues working in the public sector. The first sessions are this week.
I will be speaking at World IA Day London 2026, an online event about information architecture. This is for anyone who works with information or cares about about how it is organised and understood.
Modern artificial intelligence tools are largely rooted in text-based interactions. But the history of user experience, information and even humanity shows us that AI will have to go beyond text if it’s going to become relevant.
Seeing what’s in between as well as what is — in information architecture and in the way organisations work.
For me, 2024 was an extraordinary year of milestone moments and major achievements. It was all overshadowed by one negative event in the summer that I had not received closure on. A year and a half on, I have only just reached something resembling a resolution.
Organisational structures and information architectures are both often visualised in artefacts described as “maps”. These constrained visualisations may embed siloed ways of working, and create problems for our users.
Recently I had to intensively research a couple of topics involving potential purchase decisions. My experience was utterly miserable.
The ideas behind agile tend to be squashed down to two words: “move fast”. But the Agile Manifesto says nothing about moving fast.
I have had to make some behind-the-scenes changes to this website. In the process, I am planning to make it more interoperable with the fediverse and indieweb standards — and I am sticking with WordPress.
The folder metaphor is so intuitive to generations of computer users that they can struggle to think of any other way of using a computer. Yet for younger generations, the idea is completely alien.
One of the most powerful methods in information architecture and user experience is also one of the least well-known. The top tasks method uses a single survey question that tells you exactly what matters most to your users. I find it so effective that I’m amazed more people haven’t used it.
Information architecture normally focuses on the objects that need to be represented in a system. Some human-centred practitioners focus instead on the tasks users need to do. These approaches are sometimes framed in opposition. But combining these techniques can make services and systems easier to use as well as more efficient to manage.
Amid technology-focused hype cycles, the job of human-centred practitioners is to remind everyone: the main reason people use technology is to enhance our connections with other humans in the real world.
I have long felt uneasy about modern occupations associating themselves with high-status traditional professions. This has been brought into sharp focus for me since I started a role last year focusing heavily on information architecture, to the annoyance of my wife Alex, who is an actual architect.
There are several benefits of building a content model in an object-oriented way. This post walks through those benefits, and demonstrates a real-life example of how this approach works on a well-known website.
Decades-old approaches are being brought up to date with new techniques to create a robust way of structuring content to enable reuse and make content management more efficient.
In my job at the Scottish Government, we are understanding the opportunities that can be provided by following an object-oriented approach to structuring our information.
Information has become the forgotten half in “information technology”. Tech companies are struggling because they aren’t focusing on the human problems they need to solve.
I was sad to learn earlier that Vicky Teinaki has died. Vicky had been a designer for a few different government departments and public sector organisations. I didn t know her well. But I have read her blog posts for years, and I was delighted to encounter her in meetings about structured information since I joined [ ]
A perspective on the similarities and differences between information, data, content and knowledge.
I found some very vintage but surprisingly pristine litter in Morningside a few weeks ago.
You can now follow me on Bluesky: @duncanstephen.net. As with my other social media accounts, its main purpose will be to let my followers know when I have posted something on my blog. But if you re on Bluesky, feel free to follow me there. While you re at it, check out the other ways you can [ ]
I have long been an advocate of agile ways of working. One of the things that originally drew me to user experience was the opportunity to have evidence-based ways of understanding the changes you need to make. So I was surprised whenever I encountered people who believed that user experience methods ran counter to the principles of agile.
Happy Halloween. May your CMS be headless.
I have decided to refresh my approach to blogging (yet again). There are a couple of main drivers for this.
Every discipline feels hard done by in the current climate. But looking beyond your own discipline could help you get your next role.
The latest chapter in my career has closed, as I have found an incredibly exciting new opportunity. But the past couple of years have given me a lot to reflect on.
Perception–Cognition–Action (PCA) analysis is a method of uncovering the root causes of usability errors and accessibility challenges in systems. Read my article to learn more, or come to this week's UX Edinburgh meetup to hear me speak about it.
Perception–Cognition–Action analysis is a robust method for uncovering the root causes of usability errors and accessibility challenges in systems. By understanding these underlying issues, systems can be greatly enhanced to cater to a wide array of user needs.
I will be speaking at the UX Healthcare conference in London on Friday 12 April. Book now to learn about using Perception-Cognition-Action analysis to improve accessibility and outcomes in healthcare products.
In late January our second daughter Imogen was born.
I went to just two concerts in 2023, and they were both of Pulp's performances in Scotland.
A busier life, and recent events on the internet, mean a new direction for my blog.
I have recently completed my 50th parkrun.
Alex and I are expecting a second baby!
Britpop has been having a moment again this summer, prompting investigations into why the scene fizzled out. The conventional explanations are unconvincing. Electronic music tells us why.
Join me for a virtual breakfast session where you will learn about the links between behavioural science and user experience. We will also introduce some behavioural science frameworks and models you can adopt to improve your user research and design work. It takes place online on Tuesday 7 March at 8:30am. Update: Slides for this [ ]
1215 AM. Not quarter past midnight, but a radio frequency familiar to generations (although perhaps not any of the younger ones). Today it has stopped broadcasting. As AM radio slowly disappears, a bit of British folklore goes with it.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of my first blog post. Blogging is important to me, but it has seen many changes. The online publishing ecosystem is having a moment right now. So what's next?