This week's best things
Tone of voice, Google and the future of search, Digg returns, a fish doorbell, designing better error messages, Duolingo's product principles, Albania shuts down TikTok for a year, can ChatGPT replace a curator, a load of vacancies, salt sculptures, and Sweden's Eurovision entry.
Tone of voice
Last week I shared a thing that explained how the NHS Digital team makes choices about language.
Intentional, specific choices about language are a good and useful thing. This post from Adam Koszary about tone of voice at cultural organisations shares a whole bunch of good examples he's found which might be a helpful starting point if you're thinking about this, or looking for inspiration.
"Tone of Voice in the TikTok age is interesting as it’s as much about the tone of your visual and spoken content as it is about the written word. It’s also easy to veer off the path of a voice attribute – which can be dialed up or down depending on the channel and context – versus a principle, which should remain constant in everything you do."
New content workshops from One Further
The folks at One Further are looking for participants to help them pilot some new content workshops that they've developed.
Designed by the brilliant Louise Cohen (listen to our podcast chat from a few years ago) they would "suit you if you work for an arts organisation (theatre, museum, gallery, arts centre, orchestra, etc) and have a number of people working on content for your website, social media, and other platforms. They will explore fresh approaches to developing strategic and creative digital content"
Digg.com reboot
Digg.com, the former 'homepage of the internet', is making a return.
The people behind this include Kevin Rose (Digg's founder) and Serena Williams's husband, Alexis Ohanian (also the co-founder of Reddit).
Apparently they're going to lean heavily on 'AI curation'(which doesn't bode brilliantly), and 'community' (which is more interesting).
Watch this space I guess.
Google's new AI Mode is a preview of the future of search
Casey Newton on the thing that everyone was worried might happen with AI results being brought into Google's search products and that now seems to be happening (i.e. organic search traffic dries up as users have fewer reasons to leave the Google ecosystem).
"In the near future, the company said, you would "let Google do the Googling for you": trusting the search engine to search the web on your behalf, summarizing its findings, and sparing you the need to visit many websites yourself.
It was an appealing proposition to Google, which would soon begin peppering the product it calls AI overviews with advertisements [...]
To the millions of businesses that rely on Google to send them traffic, though, the bargain appeared much worse. AI overviews offered answers good enough that many users never bothered to click a link; some businesses have suffered accordingly. On Tuesday I wrote about the story of Chegg, the online education company, which has collapsed over the past two years as first ChatGPT and then Google took services the company offers students for $14.95 a month and began to offer them for free."
Sigh.
Casey Newton
The fish doorbell
I was reminded this week about the fish doorbell, because it's fish doorbell season!
"Every spring, thousands of fish swim through the Oudegracht in Utrecht, searching for a place upstream to lay their eggs. But the Weerdsluis is often closed. You can help the fish continue their journey! If you see a fish, press the doorbell. This alerts the lock operator to open the lock."
How To Design Better Error Messages UX
A whole bunch of useful resources and insights from the always-useful Vitaly Friedman.
This time he focuses on the UX of error messages.
Not all errors have the same impact, neither do error messages.
- Catalog errors as system failures, user errors, partial, total.
- Grade errors by their impact: annoying, enraging, horrific.
- Annoying errors → explain what happened, add warmth.
- Enraging errors → explain and provide clear instructions.
- Horrific errors → own the problem, apologize and resolve.
Interfaces must support 2 types of errors: slips and mistakes.
- Slips → users try to perform one action but do another.
- Mistakes → users don’t understand how the system works.
- Slips need constraints, autocomplete, smart presets, good defaults.
- Mistakes need examples, confirmations, forgiving formatting, way out.
Vitaly Friedman
Navigating Digital Change for Cultural Leaders
Navigating digital change isn’t easy, especially when time is tight, priorities are competing, and resources are stretched.
So I’m pleased to be helping deliver a new leadership development programme with The Space, designed specifically for cultural sector leaders grappling (or thinking about grappling) with digital transformation.
It’s a small-cohort pilot, shaped around the realities of cultural leadership today, and the practical skills, confidence, and perspective needed to lead digital change well.
The programme will cover topics like:
- digital maturity and strategy alignment
- inclusive digital practice and organisational culture
- leadership skills for change
- data, evaluation and business models
But perhaps most importantly, it’s a space to think, ask questions, and work alongside peers with a flexible, co-designed approach so that what we cover reflects your real priorities and context.
If you’re looking for a focused, supportive environment to explore this work, without generic frameworks or one-size-fits-all thinking, I’d really encourage you to take a look.
Applications are open (until 3rd April). If you know someone else who might benefit, please do spread the word.
How Duolingo works: 14 years of big learnings in one little handbook
Duolingo have published The Duolingo Company Handbook, these things are always a bit self-aggrandising, but there are some interesting bits and pieces in here.
"In product and design, there are four elements that guide us:
Useful: Learners need to get utility out of whatever we’ve built. Otherwise, we’ve made something that adds more complexity to the app and distracts learners from what they’re here to do.
Intuitive: Learners should be learning, not figuring out how to use the app. Every feature must be easy to use for everyone—it doesn’t matter whether they’re a 75-year-old in India using an Android or a 16-year-old in New York City on an iPhone. If a feature or screen requires explanation or additional context, it’s not right.
Delightful: Every new feature needs to have some amount of fun and delight. We might not need the most elaborate animations in the first iteration of a feature, but there should always be a hint of the magic that learners love.
Polished: This is what makes a feature feel complete. Tight visual design, perfect copy, and seamless interactions are the baseline. Nothing should feel clunky or inconsistent. For instance, we shouldn’t have both a Back button and an X button that do the same thing."
Duolingo Team
In The Black Stuff
An eye-opening read from the band, Los Campesinos about the reality of the costs of touring as an independent band.
Gareth David
Monopolies, scalpers, and the future of online ticket sales
The ticketing landscape in America is bananas, and there are a whole load of lawsuits and legislative initiatives flying around at the moment that might either exacerbate or (partially) solve that.
"But consumers are still mad about the high price of tickets, whether scalpers or monopolies are to blame. For legislators, passing new rules over the online ticketing industry can be a popular way to win over constituents — but which rules they pass will shape the balance of power between industry players for years to come."
Lauren Feiner
Albania shuts down TikTok for a year amid concerns over violence among children
Last week we had Denmark banning phones in schools, now we have Albania banning Tiktok.
"Authorities had conducted 1,300 meetings with some 65,000 parents who “recommended and were in favor of the shut down or limiting the TikTok platform," the minister said.
The Cabinet initiated the move last year after a teen stabbed another teenager to death in November after a quarrel that started on TikTok."
ABC News
Can ChatGPT Replace a Curator: The Nasher Museum’s AI Experiment
An article in MuseumNext about the Nasher Museum's experiment with AI curation.
"The story of the AI-curated exhibition began almost by accident. Faced with an unexpected gap in their exhibition schedule, the Nasher’s curatorial team jokingly suggested that Artificial Intelligence could curate their next show.
What started as a lighthearted remark quickly evolved into a full-fledged experiment, pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible in museum curation."
The tl;dr is that, as with everything around AI-created content at the moment, human tweaking, finessing and, yes, curation, is still required to make the AI outputs useful.
"While ChatGPT played a significant role in curating the exhibition, the Nasher team quickly realized the indispensable value of the human touch. The AI not only selected the works but also generated introductory texts and object labels. However, its writing style often lacked the critical nuance of traditional curatorial commentary, favoring a promotional tone more suited to a travel brochure. To provide context and correct inaccuracies, the museum added human commentary alongside AI-generated text, creating a layered interpretative experience for visitors."
Jim Richardson
Designing is imagining
On the value of imagining and storytelling in design.
"I often see teams act as if all that they should be doing is thinking only about the things they can build straight away. Making sketches of future things is deemed as a waste of time, rather than being recognised as an integral part of making these futures a reality. I think that this is mental. Telling compelling stories of what you’re exploring and thinking about - to your users, to your stakeholders, to whoever listens - is one of the most important tools you have to build your agency, even if a million things need to happen for you to make these stories come true."
Survey: Beyond the promise - when digital falls short
A reminder that I am running a short, anonymous survey to gather experiences of digital projects that failed, or fell short.
I am trying to identify common issues and I'll be sharing the results later this Spring.
If you have experience of a digital project that didn't go to plan then please submit a response.
The results that have come in so far are really useful.
Did you know your iPhone Calculator doubles up as a currency converter?
A useful tip from Tracy Milligan (spotted via Haydn Corrodus).
This is very useful if you (like me) regularly have to Google currency conversions.
- Click on your calculator
- Input your amount
- Click on the bottom left little calculator sign
- Click it across to convert
- Choose your currency
- And voila
Tracy Milligan
Vacancies
Software Engineer Tech Lead - TodayTix - New York, USA - $180,000 to $210,000
This week's consumption
I finished Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (very good, slightly too long), and started A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende which, thus far, is excellent (and much shorter than Pachinko).
I also bought and started flicking through The Noma Guide to Fermentation, because I am becoming the sort of person that finds the idea of lacto-fermented gooseberries interesting. If you like this sort of thing, it's very good.
We started watching season 3 of Hacks which is just as good as the (excellent) first two seasons.
We also started watching an extremely Swedish show called Stugdrömmar. A team of four, very wholesome, presenters help Swedes rennovate their holiday homes in a variety of beautiful, and often remote, locations (it's very relaxing to watch).
I saw Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho's weird new film with Robert Pattinson. It's a bit of a mess.
I came across this lovely cover of Frightened Rabbit's Heads Roll Off by Lowswimmer:
Please enjoy Sweden's 2025 Eurovision entry...it is about saunas and it is excellent (there is also a dance, which you can learn in this video).
See you next week
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Here is a baffling website for Issey Miyake where you can create your own salt sculpture, it is quite stupid and difficult to use.
To finish, a quick reminder that I'm a consultant who helps cultural organisations do better digital work - if it sounds like I could be useful, then let's chat.