A fascinating in-depth look at the maintenance of undersea cables:
The industry responsible for this crucial work traces its origins back far beyond the internet, past even the telephone, to the early days of telegraphy. It’s invisible, underappreciated, analog.
It’s a truism that people don’t think about infrastructure until it breaks, but they tend not to think about the fixing of it, either.
This weekend it felt like Spring dropped like an unexpected new album from Taylor Swift or Beyoncé.
The weather turned nice and sunny. The clocks sprang forward an hour. I had my first asparagus of the year. Flowers are flowering. It’s all just very nice.
It’s like the year would like to make up for the disappointing performance in its first quarter and promises much better things for the quarter to come.
I understand now why a major religion would co-opt this time of year for a resurrection-themed shindig.
Goodbye Winter. Hello Spring. Nice to see you again.
I think it’s always worth revisiting accomplishments like this—it’s absolutely astounding that we don’t even think about polio (or smallpox!) in our day-to-day lives, when just two generations ago it was something that directly affected everybody.
The annual number of people paralyzed by polio was reduced by over 99% in the last four decades.
Season three of the Clearleft podcast is done and dusted. I’m pretty happy with how the six episodes turned out.
Coaching. There was one question at the heart of this episode: what’s the difference between training, coaching, and mentoring? I got some great answers to that question, with some good stories along the way.
Design Engineering. It will come as no surprise that I really enjoyed this episode. This is a topic I think is growing in importance. The relevation for me was the way Trys framed it less as the intersection between design and development, and more about the gap between design and development. And remember we’re looking for a design engineer to join Clearleft.
Design Research. A really fun deep dive, thanks to Steph. I feel like this episode set things up for the next two episodes. Oh, and we’re also looking for a design researcher to join Clearleft.
Innovation. I had lots of great material to draw on here: a panel discussion, conference talks, and interviews. I really like the ensemble nature of the end result.
Measuring Design. My favourite episode of the season, and probably my favourite episode of the Clearleft podcast so far. This episode builds on a hot topic from UX Fest. And just this week, Andy published a blog post that continues the debate. If you only listen to one episode of the season, make it this one.
Design Principles. Needless to say, I enjoyed the heck out of this one. As a well-known nerd for design principles this felt kind of self-indulgent, but in the end there’s not much of me in it (thankfully). In fact it’s more like a case study of the work Clearleft did with Citizens Advice.
I also wrote a bit about each episode when they came out:
Six episodes might not sound like much, but it takes a lot of work to put a season together. It’s rewarding though. And I’m already looking forward to crafting the arc for season four. But that won’t be until the start of next year.
Still, it’s never to early to subscribe so you’ll be the first to hear the newest episodes. Subscribe to the RSS feed or on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you’re not already subscribed to the Clearleft podcast, you should probably remedy that. The third season is about to drop any day now.
Once again, the season will comprise six episodes released on a weekly schedule.
That’s a cadence I more or less picked at random, but I think it’s working out well. Six episodes are enough for the podcast to sustain your interest without overstaying its welcome. And by taking nice long breaks between seasons, you’re never going to end up with that podcast problem of having a backlog of episodes that you never seem to get around to listening to.
That said, if you did fancy going through the backlog, there’s a mere twelve episodes for you to catch up on. Six from season one and six from season two. None of the episodes are overly long. Again, I don’t want this podcast to overstay its welcome. I respect your time. A typical episode is somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes of multiple viewpoints and voices.
You can subscribe to the RSS feed or use whichever service you prefer to get your podcasts from: Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, Deezer, TuneIn, Castro, Pocket Casts, Player FM, or my own personal choice, Overcast.
Or you could just huffduff whichever episodes sound most appealing to you. But honestly, and I may be biased here, they’re all pretty darn great so I recommend subscribing.
If you subscribe now, then the episodes from season three will magically appear in your podcast software of choice. Again, I know I’m biased, but this is going to be an excellent season featuring some very smart folks sharing their stories.
Just to be clear, in case you haven’t listened to the Clearleft podcast before, this isn’t your usual podcast format. Yes, I interview people but I don’t release one interview per episode. Instead, each episode zeroes in one topic, and features different opinions from different people. It’s tight and snappy with no filler. That involves a lot of production and editing work, but I think it’s worth it for the end result.
Can you tell that I’m excited?
Season two of the Clearleft podcast is in the can. Taking a step back and looking at the six episodes, I think it turned out very well indeed.
Design Leadership. Lots of smart people in this one. And I like that the source material is a real mix: conference talks, a roundtable discussion, and an interview.
Employee Experience Design. More of a deep dive than a broad overview. It’s pretty much a two-hander from Chris and Katie.
Accessibility. This one got a lot of attention, and rightly so in my opinion. It’s got three excellent contributors: Laura, Léonie, and Cassie. My job was to get out of the way and string their knowledge bombs together.
Prototyping. I had three good stories to work with from Benjamin, Lorenzo, and Trys. Then at the last minute I was able to add an interview with Adekunle which ties the whole thing up nicely.
Diversity and Inclusion. I think this might be the highlight of the season. Again, it’s got a mix of source material from conference talks and interviews. The quality of the contributions is exceptionally good. Once again, I found my job was to mostly get out of the way and line things up so they flowed well.
Remote Work. I wish I could see that it was my perfect planning that led to this episode being released exactly one year on from the start of lockdown. But really it was just a very fortunate coincidence. It did give this episode some extra resonance though. And I like that the final episode of the season has the widest range of contributors. It’s like the whole cast came back for the season finale.
I also wrote a bit about what I did behind the scenes for each episode of this season:
My sincerest thanks to everyone who contributed to this season of the Clearleft podcast, especially everyone outside Clearleft who kindly agreed to be interviewed: Temi, Laura, Léonie, Adekunle, Rifa, and Elaine.
The Clearleft podcast will take a little break now and so will I. But I’m already thinking about topics for the next season. I feel like I’m starting to get a feel for what’s working so you can another six-episode season down the line.
To make sure you don’t miss the next season, I recommend subscribing to the RSS feed, or you can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, and anywhere else that dispenses podcasts.
The Clearleft Podcast has finished its inaugural season.
I have to say, I’m pretty darned pleased with the results. It was equal parts fun and hard work.
Design Systems. This was a deliberately brief episode that just skims the surface of all that design systems have to offer. It is almost certainly a theme that I’ll revisit in a later episode, or even a whole season.
The main goal of this episode was to get some answers to the questions:
I’m not sure if I got answers or just more questions, but that’s no bad thing.
Service Design. This is the classic topic for this season—an investigation into a phrase that you’ve almost certainly heard of, but might not understand completely. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case, I think that coming at this topic from a viewpoint of relative ignorance is quite a benefit: I have no fear of looking stupid for asking basic questions.
Wildlife Photographer Of The Year. A case study. This one was a lot of fun to put together.
It also really drove home to just how talented and hard-working my colleagues at Clearleft are. I just kept thinking, “Damn! This is some great work!”
Design Ops. Again, a classic example of me asking the dumb questions. What is this “design ops” thing I’ve heard of? Where’d it come from?
My favourite bit of feedback was “Thanks to the podcast, I now know what DesignOps is. I now also hate DesignOps”
I couldn’t resist upping the ante into a bit of a meta-discussion about whether we benefit or not from the introduction of new phrases like this into our work.
Design Maturity. This could’ve been quite a dry topic but I think that Aarron made it really engaging. Maybe the samples from Bladerunner and Thunderbirds helped too.
This episode finished with a call to action …with the wrong URL. Doh! It should’ve been surveymonkey.co.uk/r/designmaturity
Design Sprints. I like how the structure of this one turned out. I felt like we tackled quite a few angles in less than 25 minutes.
That’s a good one to wrap up this season, I reckon.
If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes work that went into each episode, I’ve been blogging about each one:
I’m already excited about doing a second season …though I’m going to enjoy a little break from podcasting for a little bit.
As I say at the end of most episodes, if you’ve got any feedback to offer on the podcast, send me an email at [email protected]
And if you’ve enjoyed the Clearleft podcast—or a particular episode—please share it far and wide.
After showing us the size of space, here’s a fascinating intereactive visualisation of the ocean depths.
An interesting comparison between Facebook and tenements. Cram everybody together into one social network and the online equivalents of cholera and typhoid soon emerge.
The airless, lightless confines of these networks has a worrying tendency to amplify the most extreme content that takes root, namely that of racists, xenophobes, and conspiracists (which, ironically, includes anti-vaxxers.)
A profile of Brighton, featuring Clearleft’s own Chris How.
Nudibranchia or other opisthobranchia compared to the various looks of David Bowie.
This is such a simple little adjustment, but I think it’s kinda brilliant: tweaking the display of your site’s maps to match the season.
Beautiful animated GIFs showing the lungs of our planet.
This is handy—a month by month list of which vegetables you should be planting right now.
The way that Chloe has catalogued her music over time is fascinating. It’s like the Long Now opposite of This Is My Jam.
I'm going to Japan in November to talk about Ajax. I am very excited about this.
Tom Watson's new site design changes stylesheets with the season. More of this kind of thing please, Web.