19 June 2020

A straight-forward website

Sometimes I feel the time has really come for straight-forward, clean and simple websites that are easy to use and navigate. Built with ethical design principles in mind.

Simple ~ Accessible ~ Ethical

Be gone constant popups and ad bombardments every scroll, and lets not employ dark patterns (eg being tricked to click on an ad). It's also good practice to be wary of the over collection of every bit of data about our users and show responsible custodianship and careful good purposeful use of what data we do have access to.

Another aspect of a website I believe is really important is accessibility, that is everybody should have access to your content on line, even those differently abled. We need to think about those who use screen readers (ie those with visual impairment) and those who may have other hearing or sensory difficulties (think autism or hearing loss) where captioning of video content is vital.

It doesn't take a momumental change to make our websites straight-forward, ethical and accessible, just keeping these principles at the core of what we do can make all the difference and that's my aim in this realm.

Liz

18 May 2020

A distributed workforce

The future of the way we work, learn and live may well change significantly as we more readily utilise technology and the online world to suit our needs.

For the first time this year, we had a great number of people working from different locations. Plentiful communicating and co-ordinating occurred via many different and often new methods, think Zoom or Webex meetings, online consultations, Slack or other messaging channels and the utilisiation of team workflow products. This was an amazing experiment in remote teams, collaboration and new ways to work and deliver a service on line.

What a great demonstration of the resiliency and innovation out there. We have I believe, discovered that even when distributed, so much can be done (and done well I might add!). There are many instances where online is way more efficient or accessible for certain portions of the population. We even see other useful societal benefits, notably the flexibility to give time to the other parts of our lives outside of the traditional work paradigm. Local communities also stand to benefit from this broadening of work spaces whilst also satisfying the need for in person connections and collaborations. Local, suburban co-working spaces could really come into play here.

Always looking toward a better present and future - for all.

Liz