How do online businesses exploit consumers through carefully designed tricks and traps? Regulations are changing rapidly, and we're seeing a big rise in legal enforcement. But is it enough to protect consumers?
Our former Boye Aarhus conference keynote speaker Harry Brignull published his first book back in August titled: “Deceptive patterns - exposing the tricks tech companies use to control you”
Based on over a decade of work on deceptive design (also known as dark patterns), the book takes you into the shadowy world of deceptive design.
Harry holds a PhD in cognitive science and works as Head of Innovation at UK-based pensions firm Smart. We recently did a member’s call with Harry as an informal book launch to our community.
Read more2023 was quite a year with many big milestones. Also a confusing year with massive changes. Massive tech layoffs were a huge topic at the beginning of the year and in a memorable ask me anything with design leader Peter Merholz, he explained why he referred to it as a social contagion.
Also, at the beginning of the year, AI was more of a research thing and then just a few months into 2023, tools like Chat GPT was a big theme at pretty much every group meeting. We heard how it acts as a kind of assistant, how it was used officially and often also unofficially and terms like hallucination changed meaning. At the end of the year, Dutch Internet pioneer Steven Pemberton provided us a helpful reminder that there's no I in AI (yet).
In this long overdue community update, I’ll share a bit more behind the scenes and provide an update on our plans for 2024.
Read moreIt’s that time of year, where we look back at another year of learning and networking. We really like to have a good conversation and meet in person, but sharing openly as much as possible is also an important part of what we do.
The big stories this year covered AI (surprise!), intranets (an oldie, but goodie) and also a book launch on delivering services.
Keeping with tradition, here are the five posts, which seemed to resonate the most based on readership and engagement numbers.
Read moreThere's a new book on email coming and it’s written by two of our friends who really believe in good emails:
Ashley Budd, Director of Advancement Marketing at Cornell University and also a speaker at last year's HE Connect 22
Dayana Kibilds, Strategist at Ologie
They have seen what a good email program can do. But, unfortunately, they are also reminded daily what a terrible experience combing through your email inbox can be.
Powerful email programs can get people to do stuff–for better or worse. And lucky for them, they get to see email do good every day.
In a member's call back in the summer, we heard more about the emerging book, while the authors shared some of their key insights. We also looked at bad emails and most importantly, supported them on their new writing journey.
Read moreThe job title “Designer” carries vague promises of creativity and self-expression. It’s not necessarily a job you pick because you want to get rich fast. It’s a job you are drawn to because you find meaning in it. ‘Find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life,’ the promise goes.
What does this actually mean for designers? Working as a designer can be immensely fulfilling - you get to create things of beauty and effectiveness, you help people, you reinvent the world. Yet, this idea of design as a life-long passion project rather than a job may also open the door to unrealistic expectations of work as well as unhealthy work-life balances.
The pandemic has led most of us to re-evaluate the workplace and our role in it. In a member’s talk talk, Hertje Brodersen takes this prompt to re-evaluate what it means to love design and to work as a designer, and how to navigate the boundaries.
Read moreWe all have bias.
But how did biases find a way into the digital world, what are the effects of (machine) biases and what can we do against them?
In a recent member's call, Hamburg-based design leader Antonia Fedder decoded bias and helped us navigate the digital landscape towards inclusivity.
We heard about the cause and roots of bias in tech and society and Antonia also shared practical strategies and actions to prevent discriminative patterns and behaviors. As she said:
“True innovation lies in designing technology that doesn't discriminate, but rather embraces diversity and fosters inclusivity. “
Read moreOn a cold December morning in the Norwegian capital Oslo, I found myself together with about 50 members of the Enonic community at their final developer meetup of the year.
Enonic is a Norwegian CMS vendor that’s been around for 20 years and has dipped its toes in foreign waters with international expansion in both the US and the UK. Unlike many others in this space these days, Enonic is both founder-led and bootstrapped without venture capital. Judging from the talks at the meetup, Enonic boasts a solid footing in their home market.
With version 7.13.5 of their product, Enonic XP just released, we saw some slides, more live demos, and as expected for a developer meetup, the source code to a number of interesting implementations.
Read moreMastering the digital transformation journey requires an updated tech stack, but as they like to say at Conscia.ai:
"Headless doesn't have to mean 'Brainless'"
In a recent member's call, we heard an update from Bart Omlo at Conscia.ai, a Toronto-based start-up focused on orchestrating personalised experiences in a composable stack.
Bart joined Conscia.ai 6 months ago as the first European team member and has since then been deep in conversations about DXO (digital experience orchestration), DXC (digital experience composition) and orchestrating.
Read moreEmpowering editors to design their best content is difficult. Content design may be at the bottom of their to-do list. The CMS is just another system they have to learn how to use. Published outputs are the end goal. When they can’t publish content the way they want, they settle for less or they go outside the platform.
But what if editors were involved in continually shaping the CMS? What if their natural workflows informed the set-up? What if instead of hacking features to fix content issues, there was a way to develop something more intuitive to their needs?
In a recent member's call we were joined by Emma Horrell, User Experience Manager at the University of Edinburgh who shared how UX work with editors helped the evolution of content design.
Read moreMagic @ Work is here! Inner secrets from Christian Vandsø Andersen, a magician who is also VP at the LEGO Group.
The new book ‘Magic @ Work’ is a journey into the extraordinary and in a recent member's call, Christian told us more about the book, shared his perspective on combining magic and management, and even used a card trick to illustrate his point.
The book dives into the mesmerizing world of magic and teaches the reader how its principles can elevate your leadership, whether you're leading teams, projects, or even yourself. You can also discover the enigmatic techniques that magicians use to captivate audiences and apply them to leadership, innovation, and influence.
There’s more in the book, incl. the first publicly available documentation of the leadership model at the LEGO Group. The book is also written on a sad personal backstory, and we’ll get to that, but in the call, we started with Christian telling us about the idea behind the book, so let’s begin there.
Read moreWhat happens when you bring together leaders from different industries who are working on different fields?
Yesterday our digital transformation friends at diconium in Hamburg hosted our sold out annual Christmas member's meeting, where we had an afternoon of learning and networking across the different fields we cover incl design leadership, employee experience, digital strategy and product management.
As the legendary advisor and influential consultant Ram Charan famously said:
"Listening isn't just hearing; it requires the willingness to entertain other viewpoints - especially opposing ones"
Like a miniature version of our 3-day Aarhus conference, we made it through 10 lightning talks in a packed afternoon with quite some thought provoking perspectives. In between we had a bit time for reflections and the conversation continued over some good food.
Read moreCongratulations to Joel Varty and Jon Voigt from Agility for winning the #boye23 conference Small Feature Award. Their remarkable CMS feature, which allows real-time viewing of other users' edits and presence, impressed both the judges and conference participants, earning them the majority vote.
This feature exemplifies how a subtle enhancement can significantly improve user experience. It's especially relevant in a post-pandemic world, facilitating remote teamwork seamlessly.
Read more“Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.“
Quoting novelist Martin Amis who died earlier this year, Sree Sreenivasan in a recent member's call, explored the usefulness of generative AI and we looked both at why it’s scary and how it applies to our work.
Little doubt remains that generative AI will have substantial significance in our ever-changing world, but it’s also clear that vast impact remains to be seen.
It’s a fast moving field with many big announcements happening weekly, so tuning into a curious and experienced mind like Sree proved quite interesting.
Sree is the former Chief Digital Officer of New York City….
Read moreWhen you say business automation, it’s a topic that’s been heavily influenced by vendor marketing and where the vendors have been setting the agenda. That’s not unusual for emerging tech, but given the substantial investments in automation, it’s about time to think more about value, and perhaps a bit less about the ever changing tech.
For our local chapters focused on Business Automation, this quarter was really focused on thinking less automation-first and more value-first.
While the specifics of our conversations in the group meetings is confidential, this post is written in the spirit of sharing and summarises some of the bigger topics happening.
Read more“Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is just as predictable.
How do you motivate teams to willingly get on board?”
This is the premise from the recently published book called Change Fatigue by Jenny Magic and Melissa Breker. Released in May, the book focuses on what the authors call ‘flipping teams from burnout to buy-in’ and it addresses the foundational psychological safety domains that drive willingness to change, alongside practical change facilitation techniques you can use today, regardless of where your team is starting from.
In a recent member’s call we were joined by the two authors who in an informal conversation took us through what’s in the change facilitation book, and they also shared a few insights on how your team can lead, plan, deliver, and sustain change.
Read more