Sorry to hear you’ve had such a rough time of it Matt, hope you have a smooth recovery from here, take care of yourself

An absolutely essential thread from Mark, who very much knows what he is talking about

View from Gowbarrow Fell, UK Lake District

Happy Saturday ☀️ #uklakedistrict #breathe

What went wrong with the BoM Redesign? A Post-Mortem on Judgement, Usability, and Redesign at Scale

Brilliant analysis of what went wrong with the expensive redesign of Australia's version of the met office app.

leisareichelt.substack.com/p/what-went-...

Grasmere lake, UK Lakes District

The Saturday I needed. Nice out there again today #breathe #UKLakeDistrict

Some thoughts on AI “Anyone who tries to tell us they know the future is simply trying to own it.” — Margaret Heffernan in her introduction to Uncharted Take a deep breath. Nobody knows what is going to happen with AI…

More pondering on AI as I wrangle with what it means for public servants... Here's where I've got to so far: There is a useful path to take between hype and doom. It's time to keep experimenting and learning as nobody knows what the future will bring. jasonkitcat.com/2026/03/02/s...

Hello March 🌼

The view from Troutbeck Tongue, UK Lake District

My first proper walk of 2026. Spring is on its way #breathe #UKLakeDistrict

One of those big work weeks - it's been really good and some fantastic work to be involved in, but it's been really hard on many levels while balancing all the things. My mantra these days is simply to do the next day well #keepgoing

Back to family priorities tonight… I’ve learned that any overseas school trip involving teenagers means a departure time/drop off of somewhere between 1am - 3am / it’s the rules - and it’s always on a school (work) night. I’ll be powered by strong coffee tomorrow ☕️

I’ve been leading Design Sprint work in Manchester with DBT and GDS over the past few days. It’s been great seeing this type of x-gov collaboration happening again. In person ideation moving into prototyping and user research over the next few weeks …hope to share more of this work soon #govdesign

I’d love to see the research/context of when train conductors first became Revenue Enforcement Protectors (or similar titles). Such an good analogy of when a service isn’t primarily about customer experience anymore #trains

Sounds like a fabulous day on the fells! I’m jealous, despite a good day at work in Manchester 😀

Due to hearing loss, I’ve started wearing headphones less while on trains. Just letting my ears rest for a while, especially at the start of the day. What I’ve noticed is just how LOUD everyone else’s headphones are!

Good luck and enjoy! … sounds like there’s still a little snow on the highest parts www.lakedistrictweatherline.co.uk

The AI singularity is agents endlessly filing speculative claims against each other with little human interaction. Bureaucracy will be removed as a barrier to entry. The future is burning vast amounts of power to create loads of spam no one will ever read.

‘Very dangerous’: a Mind mental health expert on Google’s AI Overviews Information content manager Rosie Weatherley says harmful inaccuracies are presented as uncontroversial facts

‘Very dangerous’: a Mind mental health expert on Google’s AI Overviews

We've had the ability to automate things for years.

The ability to understand how jobs actually work, not automate things that shouldn't be, and not automate things badly still seems beyond us, and AI isn't fixing that I'm afraid.

a white cat with its paws up in the air is sitting on the ground Alt: a white cat with its paws up in the air is sitting on the ground, stretching up towards the bright sunshine

Everyone in the UK right now

You can’t start with an iteration, you can only start with an idea The new King's Cross station in London. A story about the importance of starting with an idea.

You need ideas over iteration if you want to make more substantial progress. I wrote about this a long time ago - with the perfect example of taking a different approach just down the road at Kings Cross benholliday.com/2017/12/29/y...

Picture of Euston station display signs being taking down

Euston Station is a brilliant example that you can’t improve something substantially by constantly tinkering at the edges …today the ‘new’ displays were being taken down. They weren’t any improvement, along with the constant small changes to remove/move retail spaces that keep happening

It was short-lived, but nice while it lasted! 🌧️

There’s an unusual blue colour in the sky this morning. Walked the dog without needing a hat, gloves, or waterproofs for the first time this year. Roll on Spring ⛅️ #UKLakeDistrict

I'm going to share a very good story about the internet. I won't tell it well because I apparently have the flu, but I think we all need a good story about the internet.

It starts in 2021, when I took a sabbatical and got a little workspace to write a design book.

It’s like the way email was supposed to make white collar jobs more efficient, but now every white collar job is just writing emails and no-one now remembers what the original job was that the emails were supposed to make more efficient

Bad It’s unusual to come across a truly bad new digital service these days. People now praise the online passport service for speed and ease of use, the same for Jobseeker’s, voter registra…

I’ve finally had enough and blogged about the new Civil Service Pensions website @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social @janethughes.bsky.social @zsk.bsky.social @hetanshah.bsky.social

bearoneill.com/2026/01/29/bad…

Interesting. And very good.

Given the evolving digital landscape, it's more important than ever to move beyond the concept of "pages" and start structurally modelling *things* in your operating domain.

Good reminder that AI companies have been playing whack-a-mole against AI generated misinformation and prejudicial bias for a decade

Isn’t it about 12 months exactly since all the gov press releases telling us that AI was the answer to fixing all the potholes?

At this point, I'd be happy with someone just spraying a white circle around them so I can avoid hitting them