Links
Links to useful or cool things, most from my weeknotes.
August 2026
GDS, AI and the missing theory of the digital state - Ben Welby
Design as science fiction - Mike Gallagher
Why AI doesn’t need Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - Rhian Griggs
Naming a service: how we chose a name for Share Homes for Ukraine data - Denise Atkins
Moving beyond clear and simple to reach overwhelmed users - Sarah Waterfield
Strategic choices: When both options are good - Jason Cohen
There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text - Sophie Alpert
Experience Design is about finding the gaps in intent - Pavel Samsonov
What is your approach to performance - Alastair Lamb
Show and Tell: AI categorisation and distribution of shared mailbox email - Cumberland Council
How the NHS App presents different prevention service results - Alistair Ruff - yes, I am becoming addicted to NHS design histories.
We don’t need a better candle, we need electricity - Andy Parker
Why the UK Government correspondence system fails citizens, and how to fix it - Robin Watts
Rare things become common at scale - Jason Cohen
Accessibility checklist and guidance - NHS Digital
Adopting a user-centred design approach to our internal content landscape - Sian Goodwin
Can a library be a game? Weaving an ARG through a national collection - Russell Dornan
The Right But Early Club - John Cutler
How to make a bestseller: insiders reveal the tricks of the book trade - John Self
July 2026
Stuck? Diagrams help by Abby Covert
How to grow tomorrows - James Plunkett
The portal trap - Cathy Dutton
How to build a design system strategy you’ll actually deliver - Amy Hupe
Plans vs roadmaps - Jamie Arnold
Keep your designs low fidelity until thinking done - Ray Newman
How [public service product] people Work - Matt Jukes
June 2026
No, artificial intelligence is not conscious - Ted Chiang
Re‑imagining a Digital Academy for today’s challenges - Stephen Mounsey
Launching GOV.UK’s new content and publishing guidance - Adam Wainwright
Forms don’t love you back - Rachel Coldicutt
The golden thread still holds - Rumman Amin
Taking the power back, one Sheffield street at a time - Sam Waltby
Operating Patterns for a more dynamic NHS - James Plunkett and Richard Pope
This is content systems design - Joe Phillips
Launching a new Co-design Toolkit for Early Years Services - Policy Lab blog
Ask your Doctor About - 99% Invisible
Fermi ROI: Fixing the ROI rubric - Jason Cohen
Systems thinking for Civil Servants
What Ikea stores could teach us about framing value - Ash Mann
Designing services for people on low incomes - Ray Newman
An abundance of what? - Dan Hill
AI and search: what content designers need to know - Rich Prowse
Are designers to blame for our tech dystopia - Robert Fabricant
How to create design documentation - Colin Baird
Evolving the Service Standard for the future of public services - Emily Ball
Aesthetic categories - Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute
May 2026
When orgs decide without thinking, UX bears the cost - Pavel Samsonov
Designing with mustard - Anne E Cook
Foundational concepts in systems thinking
Strong Feelings. Few Words - Chris Csont
Move fast, then fix things – what we learned building Register early career teachers - Ben Belward
The logic of conjecture, part 2: Wicked problems at systems scale - Mike Gallagher
How digital prevention services fit with neighbourhood health - NHS design histories
Re-shaping (public sector) user centred design for an AI assisted world - Leisa Reichelt
Why all content is fundamentally words - Andrew Tipp
Navigating the unpredictability of everything - Jason Cohen
How to do a website content audit - Lauren Pope
The “Opposite Test” - Jason Cohen
The IKEA effect: When Labour leads to love (PDF) - Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, Dan Ariely
Progressive data enhancement - James Darling
There is no such thing as the government - Stefan Czerniawski
Output isn’t design - Karri Saarinen
The logic of conjecture: part 1 - Mike Gallagher
Service design is not user experience design at greater scale - Simon Morgan-Wilson
The appointments problem: why it’s harder than it looks - NHS design histories
Lobster pots, complexity and starting small in the right way - Richard Pope
100 days is enough to prove a different way of governing - Transform Wales
AI, open code and vulnerability risk in the public sector - GDS guidance
What this page knows since you arrived
April 2026
AI Prototyping: Harder. Worser. Faster. Wronger. - Anna E Cook
What being self-employed in content really looks like - Lauren Pope
Because coordination is expensive - Lorin Hochstein
One design system is better than 2 - Frankie Roberto
From Garbage Can to Compost Heap - Mike Gallagher
Why we should work in the open - Co-Op Digital Blog
Stop searching for AI use cases, design AI into services - Richard Pope
Should the long tail wag the dog? - Stefan Czerniawski
Before You Fire All Your Glue People Because of AI - John Cutler
Writing a business plan in NHS England - Daniel Bower
When Decisions Drift: The Garbage Can Model and NHS Digital Transformation - Tito Castillo
How we’re preventing AI misinformation at DBT - Digital Trade blog
Using the GOV.UK Prototype Kit with GitHub Codespaces - Joe Lanman
Are we really saving that much time? - Content Folks
The people do not yearn for automation - Nilay Patel
Your ego is hurting your career - Scott Berkun
Dual Track Development is not Duel Track - Jeff Patton
March 2026
Highlighter test: a simple technique for evaluating content - User research in government
“Common components” (quote) - Richard Pope
The web’s grain - Frank Chimero
From problem to solution without handover: the dual-track method - Germany’s Digital Service
How Crash Bandicoot hacked the original Playstation - Ars Technica
Lean governance for digital service delivery- Rumman Amin
Service leadership - Kate Tarling
Why content design exists - Rich Prowse
“Apply the same content design rules to internal documents” (quote) - Giles Turnbull
The long slog of public sector transformation - Kara Kane and Martin Jordan
What went wrong with the BOM redesign? - Leisa Reichelt
Escaping the product operating model - Scott Colfer
How the Netherlands bent bureaucracy into something beautiful - Michaela Haas
Leading AI product innovation on planning.data.gov.uk - Steve Messer
Was prototyping really a bottleneck?- Frank Elavsky
The “solution-first” survival playbook from GovCamp 2026 - Oli Lovell
Navigating the labyrinth: Socio-economic background and career progression within the Civil Service
I built an AI service mapping tool - Sarah Drummond
Content architecture is not content infrastructure - Joe Phillips
Mist: Share and edit Markdown together, quickly - Matt Webb
When AI answers the question, what happens to the journey? - Mark Edwards
A new flatpack collaborative model for the public sector - Will Callaghan
On failure. Or, one song to the tune of another - Sarah Fisher
February 2026
No more big bang launches - Abi Cox
Narrative object modelling for designers - Heidi Adkisson
GOV.UK Prototype Kit: Data driven prototyping - Joe Lanman
Accessible design is digital infrastructure - Anna Cook
Your brain does not process information and is not a computer - Pam Weintraub
AI Skills Hub: a content critique - Sarah Winters
Shifting Roles - From Content Professionals to Ontologists - Scott Abel
Leadership health metrics - Steve Messer
Sheffield Design Lab - Dan Hill
Seeing Everything, Understanding Nothing (The Context Trap) - John Cutler
Practice notes on including citizens in the design process - Jack Strachan
Tackling technical debt without stopping delivery - Rumman Amin
Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They Were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next? - Lauren Leek
AI and the end of friction as a policy lever - Tom Loosemore
A decade later: launching the ONS website in 2016 - Matt Jukes
How to design a style guide (that people can actually use) - Angela Moore
The public deserves services that are useful, usable and safe- Sarah Winters and Matt Billingsley
From outputs to outcomes: redefining public sector success - Transform Wales
A New Communities of Practice Model for Organisational Maturity - Emily Webber
Transforming health and delivering the NHS 10-year plan - Richard Pope
Documenting a service as a content designer - Amy Noss
What Do Companies Actually Want from Content Designers in 2026? - Ademola Adepoju
Evergreen
What makes a good outcome - Jamie Arnold
Archive: agile comms, working in the open - Giles Turnbull
A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice - Michael D. Cohen, James G. March and Johan P. Olsen