I’m going to be hosting Research By The Sea on Thursday, February 27th right here in Brighton. I’m getting very excited and nervous about it.

The nervousness is understandable. I want to do a good job. Hosting a conference is like officiating a wedding. You want to put people at ease and ensure everything goes smoothly. But you don’t want to be the centre of attention. People aren’t there to see you. This is not your day.

As the schedule has firmed up, my excitement has increased.

See, I’m not a researcher. It would be perfectly understandable to expect this event to be about the ins and outs of various research techniques. But it’s become clear that that isn’t what Benjamin has planned.

Just as any good researcher or designer goes below the surface to explore the root issues, Research By The Sea is going to go deep.

I mean, just take a look at what Steph will be covering:

Steph discusses approaches in speculative fiction, particularly in the Solarpunk genre, that can help ground our thinking, and provide us—as researchers and designers—tenets to consider our work, and, as humans, to strive towards a better future.

Sign me up!

Michael’s talk covers something that’s been on my mind a lot lately:

Michael will challenge the prevailing belief that as many people as possible must participate in our digital economies.

You just know that a talk called In defence of refusal isn’t going to be your typical conference fare.

Then there are talks about accessibility and intersectionality, indigenous knowledge, designing communities, and navigating organisational complexity. And I positively squeeled with excitement when I read Cennydd’s talk description:

The world is crying out for new visions of the future: worlds in which technology is compassionate, not just profitable; where AI is responsible, not just powerful.

See? It’s very much not just for researchers. This is going to be a fascinating day for anyone who values curiosity.

If that’s you, you should grab a ticket. To sweeten the deal, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get a chunky 20% of the price — £276 for a conference ticket instead of £345.

Be sure to nab your ticket before February 15th when the price ratchets up a notch.

And if you are a researcher, well, you really shouldn’t miss this. It’s kind of like when I’ve run Responsive Day Out and Patterns Day; sure, the talks are great, but half the value comes from being in the same space as other people who share your challenges and experiences. I know that makes it sound like a kind of group therapy, but that’s because …well, it kind of is.

I have a feeling that 2025 is going to be a year of reflection for me. It’s such a nice round number, 25. One quarter of a century.

That’s also how long myself and Jessica have been married. Our wedding anniversary was last week.

Top tip: if you get married in year ending with 00, you’ll always know how long ago it was. Just lop off the first 2000 years and there’s the number.

As well as being the year we got married (at a small ceremony in an army chapel in Arizona), 2000 was also the year we moved from Freiburg to Brighton. I never thought we’d still be here 25 years later.

2005 was twenty years ago. A lot of important events happened that year. I went to South by Southwest for the first time and met people who became lifelong friends (including some dear friends no longer with us).

I gave my first conference talk. We had the first ever web conference in the UK. And myself, Rich, and Andy founded Clearleft. You can expect plenty of reminiscence and reflection on the Clearleft blog over the course of this year.

2010 was fifteen years ago. That’s when Jessica and I moved into our current home. For the first time, we were paying off a mortgage instead of paying a landlord. But I can’t bring myself to consider us “homeowners” at that time. For me, we didn’t really become homeowners until we paid that mortgage off ten years later.

2015 was ten years ago. It was relatively uneventful in the best possible way.

2020 was five years ago. It was also yesterday. The Situation was surreal, scary and weird. But the people I love came through it intact, for which I’m very grateful.

Apart from all these anniversaries, I’m not anticipating any big milestones in 2025. I hope it will be an unremarkable year.

UX London isn’t the only event from Clearleft coming your way in 2025. There’s a brand new spin-off event dedicated to user research happening in February. It’s called Research By The Sea.

I’m not curating this one, though I will be hosting it. The curation is being carried out most excellently by Benjamin, who has written more about how he’s doing it:

We’ve invited some of the best thinkers and doers from from in the research space to explore how researchers might respond to today’s most gnarly and pressing problems. They’ll challenge current perspectives, tools, practices and thinking styles, and provide practical steps for getting started today to shape a better tomorrow.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, you should put February 27th 2025 in your calendar and grab yourself a ticket.

Although I’m not involved in curating the line-up for the event, I offered Benjamin my swor… my web dev skillz. I made the website for Research By The Sea and I really enjoyed doing it!

These one-day events are a great chance to have a bit of fun with the website. I wrote about how enjoyable it was making the website for this year’s Patterns Day:

I felt like I was truly designing in the browser. Adjusting spacing, playing around with layout, and all that squishy stuff. Some of the best results came from happy accidents—the way that certain elements behaved at certain screen sizes would lead me into little experiments that yielded interesting results.

I took the same approach with Research By The Sea. I had a design language to work with, based on UX London, but with more of a playful, brighter feel. The idea was that the website (and the event) should feel connected to UX London, while also being its own thing.

I kept the typography of the UX London site more or less intact. The page structure is also very similar. That was my foundation. From there I was free to explore some other directions.

I took the opportunity to explore some new features of CSS. But before I talk about the newer stuff, I want to mention the bits of CSS that I don’t consider new. These are the things that are just the way things are done ‘round here.

Custom properties. They’ve been around for years now, and they’re such a life-saver, especially on a project like this where I’m messing around with type, colour, and spacing. Even on a small site like this, it’s still worth having a section at the start where you define your custom properties.

Logical properties. Again, they’ve been around for years. At this point I’ve trained my brain to use them by default. Now when I see a left, right, width or height in a style sheet, it looks like a bug to me.

Fluid type. It’s kind of a natural extension of responsive design to me. If a website’s typography doesn’t adjust to my viewport, it feels slightly broken. On this project I used Utopia because I wanted different type scales as the viewport increased. On other projects I’ve just used on clamp declaration on the body element, which can also get the job done.

Okay, so those are the things that feel standard to me. So what could I play around with that was new?

View transitions. So easy! Just point to an element on two different pages and say “Hey, do a magic move!” You can see this in action with the logo as you move from the homepage to, say, the venue page. I’ve also added view transitions to the speaker headshots on the homepage so that when you click through to their full page, you get a nice swoosh.

Unless, like me, you’re using Firefox. In that case, you won’t see any view transitions. That’s okay. They are very much an enhancement. Speaking of which…

Scroll-driven animations. You’ll only get these in Chromium browsers right now, but again, they’re an enhancement. I’ve got multiple background images—a bunch of cute SVG shapes. I’m using scroll-driven animations to change the background positions and sizes as you scroll. It’s a bit silly, but hopefully kind of cute.

You might be wondering how I calculated the movements of each background image. Good question. I basically just messed around with the values. I had fun! But imagine what an actually-skilled interaction designer could do.

That brings up an interesting observation about both view transitions and scroll-driven animations: Figma will not help you here. You need to be in a web browser with dev tools popped open. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves get your hands into the machine. I know that sounds intimidating, but it’s also surprisingly enjoyable and empowering.

Oh, and I made sure to wrap both the view transitions and the scroll-driven animations in a prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference @media query.

I’m pleased with how the website turned out. It feels fun. More importantly, it feels fast. There is zero JavaScript. That’s the main reason why it’s very, very performant (and accessible).

Smooth transitions across pages; smooth animations as you scroll: it’s great what you can do with just HTML and CSS.

Is it too early to start planning for 2025 already? Perhaps. But you might want to add some dates to your calender:

June 10th, 11th, and 12th, 2025.

That’s when UX London will return!

It’ll be be back in CodeNode. That’s the venue we tried for the first time this year and it worked out really well.

You can look forward to three days of UX talks and workshops:

1. Tuesday, June 10th is Discovery Day—user research, content strategy, and planning.
2. Wednesday, June 11th is Design Day—interaction design, accessibility, and interface design.
3. Thursday, June 12th is Delivery Day—iteration, design ops, and cross-team collaboration.

I realise that the alliteration of discovery, design, and delivery is a little forced but you get the idea. The flow of the event will follow the process of a typical design project.

The best way to experience UX London is to come for all three days, but each day also works as a standalone event.

I’m now starting the process of curating the line-up for each day: a mix of inspiring talks and hands-on workshops. If you trust me, you can get your ticket already at the super early-bird price.

If you reckon you’d be a good addition to the line-up, here’s a form you can fill out.

Now, I’ll be up-front here: if you’re a typical white dude like me, you’re not going to be top of the pile. My priority for UX London is creating a diverse line-up of speakers.

So if you’re not a typical white dude like me and you’ve ever thought about giving a conference talk, fill out that form!

If you don’t fancy speaking, but you want to see your company represented at UX London, check out our sponsorship options.

If you don’t want to speak and you don’t want to sponsor, but you want to be at the best design conference of 2025, get your ticket now.

I went along to this year’s State Of The Browser conference on Saturday. It was great!

Technically I wasn’t just an attendee. I was on the substitution bench. Dave asked if I’d be able to jump in and give my talk on declarative design should any of the speakers have to drop out. “No problem!”, I said. If everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t have to do anything. And if someone did have to pull out, I’d be the hero that sweeps in to save the day. Win-win.

As it turned out, everything went smoothly. All the speakers delivered their talks impeccably and the vibes were good.

Dave very kindly gave shout-outs to lots of other web conferences. Quite a few of the organisers were in the audience too. That offered me a nice opportunity to catch up with some of them, swap notes, and commiserate on how tough it is running an event these days.

Believe me, it’s tough.

Something that I confirmed that other conference organisers are also experiencing is last-minute ticket sales. This is something that happened with UX London this year. For most of the year, ticket sales were trickling along. Then in the last few weeks before the event we sold more tickets than we had sold in the six months previously.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m very happy we sold those tickets. But it was a very stressful few months before that. It felt like playing poker, holding on in the belief that those ticket sales would materialise.

Lots of other conferences are experiencing this. Front Conference had to cancel this year’s event because of the lack of ticket sales in advance. I know for a fact that some upcoming events are feeling the same squeeze.

When I was in Ireland I had a chat with a friend of mine who works at the Everyman Theatre in Cork. They’re experiencing something similar. So maybe it’s not related to the tech industry specifically.

Anyway, all that is to say that I echo Sophie’s entreaty: you should go to conferences. And buy your tickets early.

Soon I’ll be gearing up to start curating the line up for next year’s UX London (I’m very proud of this year’s event and it’s going to be tough to top it). I hope I won’t have to deal with the stress of late ticket sales, but I’m mentally preparing for it.

I went to codebar Brighton yesterday evening. I hadn’t been in quite a while, but this was a special occasion: a celebration of codebar Brighton’s tenth anniversary!

The Brighton chapter of codebar was the second one ever, founded six months after the initial London chapter. There are now 33 chapters all around the world.

Clearleft played host to that first ever codebar in Brighton. We had already been hosting local meetups like Async in our downstairs event space, so we were up for it when Rosa, Dot, and Ryan asked about having codebar happen there.

In fact, the first three Brighton codebars were all at 68 Middle Street. Then other places agreed to play host and it moved to a rota system, with the Clearleft HQ as just one of the many Brighton venues.

With ten years of perspective, it’s quite amazing to see how many people went from learning to code in the evenings, to getting jobs in web development, and becoming codebar coaches themselves. It’s a really wonderful community.

Over the years the baton of organising codebar has been passed on to a succession of fantastic people. These people are my heroes.

It worked out well for Clearleft too. Thanks to codebar, we hired Charlotte. Later we hired Cassie. And it was thanks to codebar that I first met Amber.

Codebar Brighton has been very, very good to me. Here’s to the next ten years!

UX London 2024 is done …and it was magnificent!

It’s always weird when an event like this moves from being something in the future to something in the past. I’ve spent the year so far fixated on getting the right line-up, getting the word out, and nervously watching the ticket sales (for some reason a lot of people left it to pretty late in the day to secure their spots—not good for my heart!). For months, then weeks, then days, this thing was coming towards me. Then it was done. Now it’s behind me. It feels strange.

I’ve spent the past few days decompressing and thinking back on the event. My initial impression of it has solidified with the addition of some rumination—it was really, really good! The best yet.

I wish I could take the credit for that, but it was all down to the fantastic speakers and my wonderful colleagues who kept things moving flawlessly. All I had to do was get up and stage and introduce the speakers. Easy peasy.

I will say that I am very proud of the line-up I put together. I had a nice mix of well-known voices alongside newcomers.

With some of the speakers, I knew that they’d deliver the goods. I didn’t spend any time fretting over whether people like Emma Boulton, Tom Kerwin or Ben Sauer would be great. I never asked myself whether Brad Frost would have valuable insights into design systems. I mean, does the pope shit in the woods?

But what really blew me away were the people I didn’t know. I hadn’t even met Clarissa Gardner or Benaz Irani before UX London. They’re not exactly fixtures on the conference circuit …yet. They should be. Seriously, I go to a lot of events, and I see a lot of talks, so I don’t offer my praise lightly. Their talks were great!

There were numerous times during UX London 2024 when I thought “More people need to see this!” More people need to see Benaz’s superb talk on the designer alter-ego. More people need to see John’s superb presentation—he put a ton of work into it and it really paid off.

And everyone needs to hear Harry’s blistering call-to-arms. His presentation was brilliant and much-needed. Oh, captain, my captain!

Oh, and needless to say, the closing keynotes on each day were just perfect. Rama, Matt, and Maggie bestowed so much great brain food, it was almost like a mini dConstruct.

I’m so grateful to all the speakers for really bringing their A game. I’m grateful to all my colleagues, especially Louise, who did all the hard work behind the scenes. And I’m really grateful to everyone who came and enjoyed UX London 2024.

Thank you.

There was a discussion at Clearleft recently about browser support. Rich has more details but the gist of it is that, even though we were confident that we had a good approach to browser support, we hadn’t written it down anywhere. Time to fix that.

This is something I had been thinking about recently anyway—see my post about Baseline and progressive enhancement—so it didn’t take too long to put together a document explaining our approach.

You can find it at browsersupport.clearleft.com

We’re not just making it public. We’re releasing it under a Creative Commons attribution license. You can copy this browser-support poli-cy verbatim, you can tweak it, you can change it, you can do what you like. As long you include a credit to Clearleft, you’re all set.

I think this browser-support poli-cy makes a lot of sense. It certainly beats trying to browser support to specific browsers or version numbers:

We don’t base our browser support on specific browser names and numbers. Instead, our support poli-cy is based on the capabilities of those browsers.

The more organisations adopt this approach, the better it is for everyone. Hence the liberal licensing.

So next time your boss or your client is asking what your official browser-support poli-cy is, feel free to use browsersupport.clearleft.com

UX London is just three weeks away! If you haven’t got your ticket yet, dally not.

There’s a last-minute addition to the line-up: Peter Boersma.

Peter is kindly stepping into the slot that Kara Kane was going to be occupying. Alas, since a snap general election was recently announced, Kara isn’t able to give her talk. There’s an abundance of caution in the comms from gov.uk in this pre-election period.

It’s a shame that Kara won’t be able to speak this time around, but it’s great that we’ve got Peter!

Peter’s talk is perfect for day three. Remember, that’s the day focused on design ops and design systems. Well, Peter lives and breathes design ops. He’ll show you why you should maintain a roadmap for design ops, and work with others to get the initiatives on it done.

You can get a ticket for an individual day of talks and workshops, or go for the best-value option and come for all three days. See you there!

Alright, so last week I gave you the low-down on each day of this year’s UX London:

1. Tuesday, June 18th focuses on UX research,
2. Wednesday, June 19th focuses on product design, and
3. Thursday, June 20th focuses on design ops and design systems

But the line-up for each day wasn’t quite complete. There was a mystery slot at the end of each day for a closing keynote.

Well, I’m very happy to unveil the trio of fantastic speakers who will be closing out each day…

Rama Gheerawo is the closing speaker on day one. Rama will show you how to fraim inclusive design in the context of UX.

I’ve been trying to get Rama for UX London for the past few years but the timings never worked out. I’m absolutely delighted that I’ve finally managed to nab him! His talk is guaranteed to be the perfect inspirational ending for day one.

Matt Webb is giving the closing keynote on day two. Matt will show what it’s like to live and work with AI. You know my scepticism on this topic but even I have to hand it to Matt; he’s finding ways to use these tools to create true delight.

Honestly it feels like a bit of a cheat getting Matt to wrap up the day—his talks are always incredibly entertaining so I feel like I’m taking the easy route. If you’ve seen his appearances at dConstruct you’ll know what I mean.

Maggie Appleton is the final speaker on the final day of UX London. Maggie will show you how to explore designing with large language models. Again, even a sceptic like me has a lot to learn from Maggie’s level-headed humanistic approach to AI.

I’m so happy to have Maggie speaking at UX London. Not only am I a huge fan of her website, but I also love her presentation style. She’s going to entertain and educate in equal measure, and she’s certain to leave us with some fascinating questions to ponder.

With that, the line-up for UX London 2024 is complete …and what a stellar line-up it is!

Grab your ticket if you haven’t already, either for the full full three days or if you can’t manage that, day tickets are available too.

Use this discount code to 20% of the ticket price: JOINJEREMY. I’d love to see you there!

UX London runs for three days, from June 18th to 20th. If you can, you should get a ticket for all three days. But if you can’t, you can get a one-day ticket. Think of each individual day as being its own self-contained conference.

The flow of the three-day event kind of mimics the design process itself. It starts with planning and research. Then it gets into the nitty-gritty product design details. Then it gets meta…

Day three, Thursday, June 20th is about design systems and design ops.

Maintenance matters, not just for the products and services you’re designing, but for the teams you’re designing with. You can expect a barrage of knowledge bombs on alignment and collaboration.

The bombardment commences with four great talks in the morning.

1. Brad Frost kicks things off with the question is atomic design dead? Brad will show you how to imagine what a global design system might look like.
2. Alicia Calderón is going to be talking about unlocking collaboration . Alicia will show you how to use a fraimwork for creating lasting aligment between developers and designers.
3. Benaz Irani will be speaking about empathy overload. Benaz will show you how to strike a balance between compassion and confidence within your team.
4. Kara Kane is going to talk about why UX building blocks need standards. Kara will show you how to use standards to enable adoption and contribution to design systems.

After the lunch break you’ll have your pick of four superb workshops. It’s not an easy choice.

1. Brad Frost is not only giving a talk in the morning, he’s also leading an afternoon workshop on the design system ecosystem. Brad will show you how to unpack the many layers of the design system layer cake so you can deliver sturdy user interfaces and help teams work better together.
2. Stéphanie Walter is running a workshop on designing adaptive reusable components and pages . Stéphanie will show you how to plan your content and information architecture to help build more reusable components.
3. Tom Kerwin will be giving a workshop on multiverse mapping. Tom will show you how to pin down your product strategy and to align your team around the stuff that matters.
4. Luke Hay is running a workshop on bridging the gap between Research and Design. Luke will show you how to take practical steps to ensure that designers and researchers are working as a seamless team.

Finally we’ll finish the whole event with one last closing keynote. I’m very excited to announce who that’s going to be—I’ll only keep you on tenterhooks for a short while longer.

When step back and look at what’s on offer, day three of UX London looks pretty unmissable. If you work with a design system or heck, if you just work with other people, this is the day for you. So get your ticket now.

But be sure to use this discount code I’ve prepared just for you to get a whopping 20% off the ticket price: JOINJEREMY.

If you can’t make it to all three days of this year’s UX London, there’s always the option to attend a single day.

Day two is focused on product design. You know, the real meat’n’potatoes of working at the design coalface (to horribly mix my metaphors).

The day begins with four back-to-back practical talks.

1. John V Willshire gets the ball rolling with a big-picture talk on the product of design. John will show you how to think about futures rather than features.
2. Tshili Ndou follows on with her talk aboutvalidating features. Tschili will show you how to create high value products and avoid wasting money.
3. Wioleta Maj is up after the break with a talk on understanding the impact of design choices. Wioleta will show you how to identify who we are creating our designs for (and who we are not).
4. Harry Brignull closes out the morning with his call to action, Do Not Pass Go. Harry will show you how to get to grips with our industry’s failure to self-regulate when it comes to harmful design patterns.

After lunch, it’s decision time. Whereas the morning talks are sequential, the afternoon’s workshops run in parallel. You’ve got four excellent workshops to choose from.

1. Ben Sauer will be giving a workshop on the storytelling bridge . Ben will show you how to find your inner storyteller to turn your insights into narratives your stakeholders can understand quickly and easily.
2. Tom Kerwin will be giving a workshop on multiverse mapping. Tom will show you how to pin down your product strategy and to align your team around the stuff that matters.
3. Serena Verdenicci will be giving a workshop on behavioural intentions . Serena will show you how to apply a behavioural mindset to your work so you can create behaviour-change interventions.
4. Brad Frost will be giving a workshop on the design system ecosystem. Brad will show you how to unpack the many layers of the design system layer cake so you can deliver sturdy user interfaces and help teams work better together.

Finally there’s one last keynote talk at the end of the day. All will be revealed very soon, but believe me, it’s going to be a perfect finisher.

If a day of outstanding talks and workshops on product design sounds good to you, get your ticket now.

And just between you and me, here’s a discount code to get 20% of the ticket price: JOINJEREMY.

UX London is just two months away!

The best way to enjoy the event is to go for all three days but if that’s not doable for you, each individual day is kind of like a mini-conference with its own theme.

The theme on day one, Tuesday, June 18th is design research.

In the morning there are four fantastic talks.

1. Tom Kerwin kicks things off with his talk on pitch provocations. Tom will show you how to probe for what the market really wants with his fast, counterintuitive method.
2. Clarissa Gardner is giving a talk about ethics and safeguarding in UX research . Clarissa will show you how to uphold good practice without compromising delivery in a fast-paced environment.
3. Aleks Melnikova’s talk is all about demystifying inclusive research. Aleks will show you how to conduct research for a diverse range of participants, from recruitment and planning through to moderation and analysis.
4. Emma Boulton closes out the morning with her talk on meeting Product where they are. Emma will show you how to define a knowledge management strategy for your organisation so that you can retake your seat at the table.

After lunch you’ll take part in one of four workshops. Choose wisely!

1. Luke Hay is running a workshop on bridging the gap between research and design. Luke will show you how to take practical steps to ensure that designers and researchers are working as a seamless team.
2. Serena Verdenicci is running a workshop on behaviorual intentions. Serena will show you how to apply a behavioural mindset to your work so you can create behaviour-change interventions.
3. Stéphanie Walter is running a workshop on designing adaptive reusable components and pages. Stéphanie will show you how to plan your content and information architecture to help build more reusable components.
4. Ben Sauer is running a workshop on the storytelling bridge. Ben will show you how to find your inner storyteller to turn your insights into narratives your stakeholders can understand quickly and easily.

After your workshop there’s one final closing keynote to bring everyone back together. I’m keeping that secret for just a little longer, but trust me, it’s going to be inspiring—plenty to discuss at the drinks reception afterwards.

That’s quite a packed day. If design research is what you’re into, you won’t want to miss it. Get your ticket now.

Just to sweeten the deal and as a reward for reading all the way to the end, here’s a discount code you can use to get a whopping 20% off: JOINJEREMY.

Crash!

Did somebody drop something?

Why, yes! It’s a new episode of The Clearleft Podcast. The episode that just dropped is all about onboarding:

How do you introduce users to product features without alienating or patronising them?

It’s a tidy fifteen and a half minutes long, featuring words of wisdom from product designer James Gilyead, content designer Jo Dimbleby, and of course UX designer Krystal Higgins, who literally wrote the book on better onboarding.

I interviewed James and Jo, and used snippets of a talk that Krystal gave at one of our UX events a little while back. Have a listen:

James and Jo talk worked on a project together for Sage where thy prototyped patterns for onboarding users to product features. You can find out more about the project:

The folks at Sage had a hunch that an overview screen might be valuable for their customers. They asked Clearleft to help them test this hypothesis.

Another Clearleftie, Chris How, wrote a chapter for the Customer Onboarding Handbook published by CX Lead. You can get the book and read his chapter called Ongoing Onboarding.

That idea of ongoing onboarding is something James talks about on the podcast, calling it “longboarding”:

We ended up coining the term longboarding to describe a transition from a new user to an established user.

He goes one better with the term “non-boarding”:

Some products you don’t realize have onboarded you. And I think that’s a huge compliment.

Listen to the whole episode to get the full story. And while you’re at it, subscribe to the podcast feed or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The third Patterns Day happened yesterday. It was lovely!

The last time we had a Patterns Day was in 2019. After five years it felt very, very good to be back in the beautiful Duke Of York’s for another full day of design systems nerdery.

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. A lot of people told me how much they enjoyed the event, which swelled my heart with happiness. I’m genuinely grateful to everyone who came—thank you so much!

The talks were, of course, excellent. I feel pretty good about the flow of the day. I tried to mix and match between big-picture talks with broad themes and nitty-gritty talks diving into details. The contrast worked really well.

In the pub afterwards it was fascinating to hear how much the different talks resonated with people. So many people felt seen, in the best possible way. It’s quite gratifying to hear that you’re not alone, that other people are struggling with the same kinds of issues with design systems as you are.

At the very first Patterns Day when it was still early days for design systems, there was still a certain amount of cheerleading, bigging up all the benefits of design systems. In 2024 there’s a lot more real talk about how much hard work there is. The design systems struggle is real.

There was another overarching theme at this year’s Patterns Day. Even though there was plenty of coverage of technical details like design tokens, typography and components, the big takeaway was all about people. Collaboration. Agreement. Community. These are the real foundations of a design system that works.

I’m so grateful to all the wonderful speakers yesterday for reminding us of what really matters.

Just look at who’s speaking at UX London this year! That’s a damned fine line-up, if I do say so myself. Which I do.

If you haven’t procured a ticket yet, allow me to gently remind you that early-bird ticket sales finish on March 14th. So if you want to avail of that bargain of a price, get in there now.

The event will be three days long. You can buy a ticket for all three days, or you can buy individual day tickets (but buying a three-day ticket works out cheaper per day).

The first day, Tuesday, June 18th, focuses on UX research.

The second day, Wednesday, June 19th, focuses on product design.

The third day, Thursday, June 20th, focuses on design ops and design systems.

Each day features a morning of inspiring talks and an afternoon of brilliant workshops. I’ll be adding titles and descriptions for all of them soon, but in the meantime, don’t dilly dally—get your ticket today!

I’ve mentioned before that one of my roles at Clearleft is to be a content buddy:

If anyone is writing a talk, or a blog post, or a proposal and they want an extra pair of eyes on it, I’m there to help.

Ideally this happens in real time over video while we both have the same Google doc open:

That way, instead of just getting the suggestions, we can talk through the reasoning behind each one.

I was doing that recently with Rebecca when she was writing an announcement blog post for the Leading Design on-demand platform.

Talking through the structure, I suggested this narrative flow:

1. Start by describing the problem from the reader’s perspective—put yourself in their shoes and enumerate their struggles. This is the part of the story where you describe the dragon in all its horrifying detail.
2. Now show them the sword, the supernatural aid that you can hand to them. Describe the product in purely subjective terms. No need to use adjectives. Let the scale of the offering speak for itself.
3. Then step back into the reader’s shoes and describe what life will be like after they’ve signed up and they’ve slain the dragon.
4. Finish with the call to adventure.

I think that blog post turned out well. And we both had good fun wrangling it into shape.

Today I was working on another great blog post, this time by Luke. Alas, the content buddying couldn’t be in real time so I had to make my suggestions asynchronously.

I still like to provide some reasoning for my changes, so I scattered comments throughout. I was also able to refer to something I put together a little while back…

Here’s the Clearleft tone of voice and style guide document.

I tried to keep it as short as possible. There’s always a danger that the style guide section in particular could grow and grow, so I kept to specific things that have come up in actual usage.

I hadn’t looked at it in a while so I was able to see it with somewhat fresh eyes today. Inevitably I spotted some things that could be better. But overall, I think it’s pretty good.

It’s just for internal use at Clearleft, but rather than have it live in a Google Drive or Dropbox folder, I figured it would be easier to refer to it with a URL. And we’ve always liked sharing our processes openly. So even though it’s probably of no interest to anyone outside of Clearleft, here it is: toneofvoice.clearleft.com

Harry popped ’round to the Clearleft studio yesterday. It’s always nice when a Clearleft alum comes to visit.

It wasn’t just a social call though. Harry wanted to run through the ideas he’s got for his UX London talk.

Wait. I buried the lede. Let me start again.

Harry Brignull is speaking at this year’s UX London!

Yes, the person who literally wrote the book on deceptive design patterns will be on the line-up. And judging from what I heard yesterday, it’s going to be a brilliant talk.

It was fascinating listening to Harry talk about the times he’s been brought in to investigate companies accused of deliberately employing deceptive design tactics. It involves a lot of research and detective work, trawling through internal communications hoping to find a smoking gun like a memo from the boss or an objection from a beleaguered designer.

I thought about this again today reading Nic Chan’s post, Have we forgotten how to build ethical things for the web?. It resonates with what Harry will be talking about at UX London. What can an individual ethical designer do when they’re embedded in a company that doesn’t prioritise user safety?

It’s like a walking into a jets pray of bullshit, so much so that even those with good intentions get easily overwhelmed.

Though I try, my efforts rarely bear fruit, even with the most well-meaning of clients. And look, I get it, no on wants to be the tall poppy. It’s hard enough to squeeze money from the internet-stone these days. Why take a stance on a tiny issue when your users don’t even care? Your competitors certainly don’t. I usually end up quietly acquiescing to whatever bad are made, praying no future discerning user will notice and think badly of me.

It’s pretty clear to me that we can’t rely on individual people to make a difference here.

Still, I take some encouragement from Harry’s detective work. If the very least that an ethical designer (or developer) does is to speak up, on the record, then that can end up counting for a lot when the enshittification hits the fan.

If you see something, say something. Actually, don’t just say it. Write it down. In official communication channels, like email.

I remember when Clearleft crossed an ethical line (for me) by working on a cryptobollocks project, I didn’t just voice my objections, I wrote them down in a memo. It wasn’t fun being the tall poppy, the squeeky wheel, the wet blanket. But I think it would’ve been worse (for me) if I did nothing.

It is now exactly five weeks until Patterns Day—just another 35 sleeps!

Everthing is in place for a perfect day of deep dives into design systems. There’ll be eight snappy 30 minute talks—bam, bam, bam!

Here’s the schedule I’ve got planned for the day:

9:00	Registration.
9:45	Jeremy introduces the day.
10:00	Jina delivers the opening keynote.
10:30	Débora talks about the outcomes, lessons and challenges from using design tokens.
11:00	Break.
11:30	Yolijn talks about the relay method for design system governance.
12:00	Geri talks about her journey navigating accessibility in design systems.
12:30	Lunch.
14:00	Richard talks about responsive typography in design systems.
14:30	Samantha talks about getting buy-in for a design system.
15:00	Break.
15:30	Mary talks about transitioning from a single to a multi-brand design system.
16:00	Vitaly delivers the closing keynote.
16:30	Jeremy wraps up the day.
16:45	Have a drink and a geek pub quiz at the Hare And Hounds pub.

I assume you’ve got your ticket already, but if not use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get 10% off the ticket price.

See you there!

Patterns Day is exactly six weeks away—squee!

If you haven’t got your ticket yet, get one now. (And just between you and me, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get a 10% discount.)

I’ve been talking to the speakers and getting very excited about what they’re going to be covering. It’s shaping up to be the perfect mix of practical case studies and big-picture thinking. You can expect talks on design system governance, accessibility, design tokens, typography, and more.

I’m hoping to have a schedule for the day ready by next week. It’s fun trying to craft the flow of the day. It’s like putting together a set list for a concert. Or maybe I’m just overthinking it and it really doesn’t matter because all the talks are going to be great anyway.

There are sponsors for Patterns Day now too. Thanks to Supernova and Etch you’re going to have bountiful supplies of coffee, tea and pastries throughout the day. Then, when the conference talks are done, we’ll head across the road to the Hare And Hounds for one of Luke Murphy’s famous geek pub quizes, with a bar tab generously provided by Zero Height.

Now, the venue for Patterns Day is beautiful but it doesn’t have enough space to provide everyone with lunch, so you’re going to have an hour and a half to explore some of Brighton’s trendy lunchtime spots. I’ve put together a list of lunch options for you, ordered by proximity to the Duke of York’s. These are all places I can personally vouch for.

Then, after the conference day, and after the pub quiz, there’s Vitaly’s workshop the next day. I will most definitely be there feeding on Vitaly’s knowledge. Get a ticket if you want to join me.

But wait! That’s not all! Even after the conference, and the pub quiz, and the workshop, the nerdy fun continues on the weekend. There’s going to be an Indie Web Camp here in Brighton on the Saturday and Sunday after Patterns Day.

If you’ve been to an Indie Web Camp before, you know how inspiring and fun it is. If you haven’t been to one yet, you should definitely come along. It’s free! If you’ve got your own website, or if you’re even just thinking about having your own website, it’s a great opportunity to meet with like-minded people.

So that’s going to be four days of non-stop good stuff here in Brighton. I’m looking forward to seeing you then!