This week's best things
Serendipity, collaborative digital art, donation UX, the best museum cafes in the UK, crimes of UX, how people are using gen AI in 2025, a digital Ned Kelly experience, and digital fishmongers.
A short one this week because I have been whisked away (imagine I said that like Ralph Fiennes in Hail Caesar) on a surprise trip to celebrate my birthday.
Failure and community
Thanks to everyone that voted in my little poll last week which asked if there was any interest in some sort of commuity for digital folks - over 40 of you said there was, so that's a start (thanks also to the 1 person who answered 'no', I appreciate your honesty!). I have some ideas that I'll try and arrive at test-able versions of over the next few months. I have also started having initial conversations about a Swedish edition of the Digital Works Conference next Spring (2026).
Also thank you to everyone who shared their experiences of digital failure, I've started writing a report about the results that I hope to have ready to share by mid-May. I will also arrange a couple of webinars to unpack the findings in more detail, more on those soon.
In Defense of Serendipity
Serendipity around discovery on the internet is one of my favourite things, it's one of the reasons I write this newsletter every week. Because it gives me a reason to be in an open-minded discovery mode and come across interesting things in surprising places.
So I really enjoyed this piece from Erica Chen in which she makes the case for serendipity.
"the algorithm shows us predictable discovery only. Yet, by definition, discovery often involves unexpected findings.
In other words, the algorithm is optimizing serendipity out of culture."
Erica Chen
Everyday
A nice, calm digital art project from Spencer Chang (and sponsored by Hyundai).
It's a collection of hourly 'prompts' (as I write this I am being invited to 'lead your device in a stretch and find the limits of your body') which also enable the creation of user-generated artworks as people do whatever the prompt is asking.
I like this sort of straight-forward, collaborative, digitally-enabled thing.
"Participants’ gestures layer atop one another to form a collective painting. Each hourly canvas compiles the gestures of all participants responding to the prompt within that hour, creating a shared record of presence that transcends time zones. As the days progress, this archive expands, reflecting the evolving rhythms of participation. On mobile, both your personal contributions and the collective painting are visible, while on desktop, only the collective painting is shown, emphasizing the daily intimacy we have with our devices."
The Guardian's UX tweak when asking for donations
I saw this via Peter Ramsey's excellent UX Bites.
The Guardian have tweaked the UX on their donation ask giving users an option that is between a 'yes' and a 'no' with a new 'Remind me in [next month]' option.
As Peter says "This is a subtle way of changing 'no', using The Foot in the Door technique."
Simple changes like this are worth experimenting with to see how your audiences respond.
The 50 best museum cafes in the UK
When I lived in the UK I spent a good deal of my working time on the move and trying to find somewhere reasonably nice to work for pockets of time throughout the day. I realised that museum cafes are often a perfect mix of good food, good coffee, nice surroundings, and not incredibly busy.
This article in the Guardian highlights the '50 best' museum cafes in the UK.
FWIW, theatre cafes are often also worth a visit too.
Guardian Staff
Crimes of UX
Craig Sullivan is one of my favourite thinkers and speakers on the many ideas and considerations that comprise good user experiences.
He gave a brilliant talk at last year's Digital Works Conference and this week he reshared a whole load of posts that he wrote four years ago which looked at "common problems I see all the time during audits of sites, apps and products."
These really clear and practical guides cover everything from the ways in which mobile users actually interact with screens, through to contrast issues, breaking the back button, hiding search functionality, and rubbish address lookups.
As Craig says "Make sure you don't have these 'anti patterns' lurking in your product!"
Craig Sullivan
How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025
A very long, very interesting read about how people are using gen AI.
"Therapy (more on this one later) is the new top use case. There are two other entrants in the top 5: “Organizing my life” and “Finding purpose.” These three uses reflect efforts toward self-actualization, marking a shift from technical to more emotive applications over the past year. [...]
The AI-as-therapy phenomenon has also been noticed in China. And although the debate about the full potential of computerized therapy is ongoing, recent research offers a reassuring perspective—that AI-delivered therapeutic interventions have reached a level of sophistication such that they’re indistinguishable from human-written therapeutic responses."
Marc Zao-Sanders
Mouthful of Dust
A digital Ned Kelly experience from the State Library of Victoria.
Their Chief Digital Officer, Paula Bray, said "This is a cinematic look into the Library’s most searched for and visited collection items relating to Ned Kelly.This is the first time that you can get up close to these items in high resolution. These scans are paired with commissions from 5 amazing Australian writers who have created wonderful new forms of writing, whilst viewing the 3D scans."
The rise of the digital fishmonger: how Covid helped customers buy fresh from the boat
An interesting read on the enduring (digitally-enabled) impact that the pandemic had on how some people buy their fish in the UK.
"Tonks is far from alone. Five years ago, with fish markets and restaurants closed, it looked like the end of the line for many fishers and fishmongers – then something changed. A combination of word-of-mouth and social media gave some of those who fish off the UK’s shores the chance to reach new customers, resulting in new business models that have brought about a long-term shift in how some British fish is sold today."
Anna Turns
Den stora älgvandringen
It's time for the annual, incredibly Swedish, tradition of watching a giant moose migration in realtime on Swedish TV.
Even the BBC have written something about it this year.
"Cait Borjesson, 60, who has been hooked to the annual livestream since she stumbled upon it during the Covid-19 pandemic, said her TV had been on for 16 straight hours since it began on Tuesday.
"It's unbelievably relaxing," she said. "There's the natural sounds of the birds, the wind, the trees. It gives you a sense that you're in nature even if you're not"."
Sveriges Television AB, Stockholm, Sweden
Vacancies
This week's consumption
I finally finished Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan. I'd been putting it off as one of the reviews on the cover said it was "heartbreaking" and I had just reached the point in the story where the cause of the heartbreak had revealed itself. I hadn't really been in the mood for that, but I'm glad I re-engaged and finished it. The second half of the book in particular was great, and yes, heartbreaking, but in a life-affirming way.
I also read Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams which is a fairly devastating account of her time working at Facebook.
I came across Cameron Winter via a mention in Nick Cave's Red Hand Files, his song Drinking Age is really great, sort of a Thom Yorke+Scott Walker vibe.
See you next week
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Please enjoy this website which is ostensibly for some stupid NFT thing but it has a bunch of fancy frontend interactions that you can play around with.
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.