David O'Brien

We, like most government agencies in the UK, use Microsoft 365, so links in all the emails we receive are passed through a link-checking service called Safelinks to check that the endpoint is not malicious. Which is great, but …

In the process, URLs are mangled.

If you're publishing content to the web, this is not good.

Here's a nifty wee tool to retroconvert them to the original link.

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/toolbox/safelinks-original-url-decoder/

RE: @TimHarford@econtwitter.net

And this is what #LLMs s destroy.

The human joy of just figuring shit out.

Doesn't matter if it's useful now. Someday it could be invaluable. Or it may not.

Like how people studied bees and ants to understand how they decided on the best routes between their homes and their food.

That understanding ended up embodied in how packet routing happens on the internet.

You would not be reading this if people had not studied the social behaviour of ants.

Over the years, we have made a variety of different tools to help us and our colleagues in Scottish Enterprise’s digital teams.

These range from Miro templates to how-tos and digital widgets. But, until now, they’ve been scattered across a range of different places – Github Pages, Codepens and on posts in this blog.

So this is an attempt to gather them together in one place. We hope you’ll find them useful.

#serviceDesign

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/toolbox/

I did something amazing.

I cycled to work.

#BikeTooter #ataxia

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/i-cycled-to-work/

Imagine you work for an organisation where, on average, people have six things on the go at any given time.

Let's assume that, on average, each of those things takes a week to get done.

Given that – and it doesn't feel too outrageous – we should be able to deliver a thing a week, shouldn't we?

But that doesn't seem to happen in real life. Why not?

Well, essentially, we have two choices: we can do things, or we can get things done.

#agile #serviceDesign

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/you-can-do-things-or-you-can-get-things-done/

"With the redesigned GlobalScot service about to go into public beta, I thought it would be a good time to use the Good Services Scale to assess how well the service is performing and where it needs to be improved.

"The GlobalScot network aims to connect organisations in Scotland with worldwide business and community leaders who can offer one-to-one support, global marketing knowledge and new contacts."

#serviceDesign #goodServices

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/how-we-used-the-good-services-scale-to-evaluate-the-globalscot-service/

The point of the doing is the doing

The nuance you get from those “Oh, I wrote that one …” conversations
The “Is this related to these, or more like this cluster over here?” discussions that drive you deep into the subtleties of what those 5 or 6 words mean
An appreciation of the human frustrations, pains and needs behind every sticky note
The experience of actually _having done_ this exercise

#serviceDesign #UX

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/the-point-of-the-doing-is-the-doing-not-what-gets-done/

Sometimes the most difficult part of the research process can be getting full buy-in from the project team. This can be especially true when the team have strong opinions on what needs to be done and the research is contradicting this. This can lead to conflict and the validity of the research being questioned.

However, there are ways to bring the project team with you and get their buy-in and support at every stage of a project.

#userResearch #serviceDesign

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/involving-people/

RE: @h4ckernews@mastodon.social

#Greed begets greed

*sighs*

This is an exercise I like to run at the start of any project. It’s based on a tweet a long time ago by Jamie Knight (and Lion, of course).

The exercise is simple. At the start of any digital project, get the whole team – devs, testers, writers, designers, stakeholders, literally anyone you can round up – together, in-person or virtually, and ask the question:

Who are we willing to exclude?

#serviceDesign #Inclusion #accessibility

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/who-are-we-willing-to-exclude/