Some of my favourite things from the Government Digital Service
Mar 2020
About the same time I was starting out as a tech writer, I heard of the Government Digital Service for the first time.
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A recipe for candied oranges
Dec 2019
This has nothing to do with writing.
There are these sweets I like to make around Christmas.
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Writing effective documentation - the Lead Developer Berlin 2019
Dec 2019
If you’re interested in learning more about writing good documentation, there are tons of useful things you can read next!
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Editing
Nov 2019
I wanted to write about some of the things I look for when I’m editing.
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Information design for a Slack bot
Apr 2018
One of our developers was trying to make it easier for our colleagues to keep updated on a pull request (PR)’s status, after they’ve reviewed it.
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A nice piece of help for Instagram Stories
Apr 2018
I came across this the other day when looking at Stories on Instagram (photos that play like a slideshow, and disappear after 24 hours).
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Writing can’t fix bad design
Aug 2016
This door from a train toilet is a great example of adding lots of information in an attempt to fix bad UI design.
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A nice, simple login page
Jun 2016
A page for logging in isn’t a complex idea, but often they’re overdone, overcomplicated, or confusing.
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How human do you want your chatbot to be?
Jun 2016
I’ve seen a few examples recently of people frustrated with chatbots that just don’t understand what they’re trying to say.
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Don’t forget about empty states
May 2016
Today’s post prompted by this helpful piece of copy from Fitbit:
Why are empty states important?
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Npower's poor customer communications
Feb 2016
It shouldn’t be a surprise that npower’s customer service is terrible. After all, it consistently gets the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any UK energy company.
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Are you sure? How to write a confirmation dialog
Jan 2016
I came across a few terrible confirmation dialogs/“Are you sure” messages recently, like this one:
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A flight for Mr Seat Cello
Sep 2015
This week I came across the hilarious page that is EasyJet’s policy for carrying musical instruments on board:
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Log in? Sign in? Sign up? … Log up?
Sep 2015
There’s been some discussion at Redgate Towers this week about what we should call the action of getting access to your account.
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Bad writing and anti-patterns on the Royal Mail site
Sep 2015
It’s a familiar part of signing up for a website or service: opting out of any marketing emails.
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