21. Possession

I'm in the Isle of Man for the weekend, because why not. From trains around the island to a few museums, I've learned a bit about geopolitics, from: the historical (the Island has the oldest continuous parliament in the world, dating back to the Vikings) to the stunning (the island being sold to the Crown by the Duke of Atholl in 1765… written in an Act that the Manx-speaking locals could not understand) to the practical (I'm struggling to get my mobile data plan working since the island is neither in the UK nor the EU).  

This month in digital government and design

• My tweet of the month (which got a lot of responses)

• Speaking of inclusion, Microsoft Design have some nice inclusive design principles (also, RIP August de los Reyes, who I think of every time I see Microsoft championing access needs)
• I also recently discovered the Defra design accessibility resources
• How the US government is thinking about multilingual content  
• Interesting discussion by Dharmesh Chauhan about doing a compressed beta, though some of the roles make me think that this isn't for UK central gov (‘UI designers doing visuals’)
• Love this idea from Nobl of tackling org challenges head on with an ‘Elephants, Dead Fish, and Vomit’ activity
• I'm old enough to remember the Yahoo pattern library (oh hai geriatric millennial UX folk and beyond) and so am glad to see some of that history captured in this podcast episode with Erin Malone
• "I hate manager readmes" I nodded along reading Camille Fournier’s take on people with power doing the work rather than enabling their own bad behaviour
• So many good things in Emily Webber's interview, but for one I'll point to her 4 Cs of running workshops: connections, concepts, concrete practice, conclusions
• Some nice examples from Natalie Shaw of Meta of ‘doing the hard work to make it simple’ with content, from not using colloquialisms to being really clear of the intent of a page
• There's probably so much to come out in months to come about the UK government and the mourning period, but for now at least we have this excellent piece on lessons learned from tracking The Queue
• Sarah Drummond has been investigating using the AI drawing tool DAL-E for service design storyboards
• New Zealand hopes to banish jargon with plain language law

Miscellany

• A Harvard study found that in heterosexual relationships, men bring the stresses of work home with them, but (surprise!) women don't
• And in more Harvard-researched gender news, an HBR article suggests that companies are happy hiring over-qualified women (and also not training them) as they’re perceived as more ‘loyal to colleagues’ and therefore less likely to leave
• Hadrian's Wall as we know it was thought to be someone else’s wall… until an epic footnote corrected it  
• Obstacles make story, and this piece in the NYT brings together recent novels that use the burden of student loan debt as character and plot points
• Which Pallas cat are you?  

• And finally, love this insta/tiktok account satirising Regency-era romances (warning, a bit of swearing)