I’ve got this automation to get my favorite bookmarks from Pocket to my website. When I’ve got like five good ones, I know it’s time to send another newsletter.

This didn’t happen for a long time. Because the automation was broken.

It’s supposed to work like this:

1. I bookmark something with Pocket.

2. I read it and decide it’s so good, I want to share it with you, so I give it a little yellow star.

3. Every 15 minutes (kind of wasteful, if you ask me, but there’s no better setting for it), Zapier checks if there are any new yellow stars.

4. If there’s a new one, Zapier adds it to an Airtable.

Only a few years ago, I was still working at the nerve center of the neoliberal post-capitalist economy, a.k.a. professional services. I worked on so many, varied, interesting projects there. Many I found and still find meaningful. But with others, I discovered that I didn't support them at all. Usually a few days or weeks after the kickoff. Too late to get out and let the team down. I mean, you can do that once, and from then on it's like wearing a big red sign saying you're not reliable and team leads should avoid staffing you.

That's why I liked the wave of discourse on ethics that came as a reaction (I assume) to all the crap UX people were put up with by growth-at-all-costs companies. If I can just think about projects better, I can convince the rest of the team of my bright thoughts and make sure we don't have a negative impact on the environment or on other people!

I was pretty wrong there, because I can only remember very few situations where me and my team could really change something without breaching contracts. But I was also wrong on a systemic level, showed a book I recently read. But before I start rewriting my latest blog post, I'd like to invite you to just read that.

Okay, enjoy the last bit of summer! Or winter, for those on the other side.

I know, on my site it says you get premium treatment by following my blog via this newsletter, but I've failed to send you regular updates. (The premium part partly refers to me paying for a nice newsletter tool.) But hey, look at those handpicked bookmarks at the bottom, top notch stuff!

I failed to publish anything at all for a while, because I was changing the software I use to create my website. Before I used Jekyll, now it's Astro. That kept me busy much longer than I expected and it was harder too. Did learn a lot though! I wrote a post about the whole experience, because although I'm happy with the results, Astro didn't really do what I hoped it would (the builds are slower!) and in the end I’m a bit sad letting go of Jekyll, as it's actually really good.

The post Learnings from years of technological progress wasted isn’t about that my website migration though (that only took a few months!). No, it’s about something much more important: that we, the people designing and making software are like playing cards investors play poker with and discard when they don't like their hand. And half of the time, they're cheating with their blockchain, AI and other scam startups.

My latest post is about the problem I have with the word ‘product’. It's not that I think it's the source of all evil, but a lot of things wrong with making apps and websites today can be traced back to notions we've inherited from developing tangible things.

Alright, we have some catching up to do! Already in October, I finally got to publishing some of my ideas on design ethics. The thing is, I'd been thinking about that for years. In fact, it's not unlikely that you signed up to this newsletter because you read one of my 2019 posts, like about what I believe design should be about, or the six questions every designer should be able to answer.

I lost count how many drafts for my unifying theory of design ethics I discarded. Truth is, I don't have one. Usually, ideas come while I'm writing, but I just ended up with a few very basic notions. Like, you avoid a lot of ethical challenges if you just chose the right employer. I ended up writing six posts rather critical of the design profession and business in general.

Turns out I'm not the only one who's somewhat disappointed with how things are going in design. The UX Collective's yearly State of UX is even darker. (And mentions my Are design ethics useless? post!)

Anyway, writing these ethics posts wasn't always easy, as it confronted me with my own carelessness and stupidity in work decisions. I'm not done with the topic just yet, but I'm looking forward to writing about more frivolous things like how to share a digital business card via your own website.

BIG TIMER NEWS

About eight years ago I started making a countdown timer web app. It was mainly because I facilitated workshops and found it difficult to make the participants stick to our schedule. I called the app Big Timer, because it was a timer with big numbers. And because it was funny.

Turned out that designing, building, maintaining a web app was a lot of work. Lots of little things that I never considered. Lots of surprises: it turned out teachers and students were much more interested in the app than design workshop facilitators. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands (my stats are a bit hazy) started using the app during the lockdowns.

So when somebody made a reasonable offer to take over the project it was a tough choice to hand over something I spent so much time with. But it as also a relief knowing somebody else was going to take it to the next level with an ambitious business idea.

Hello everyone!

My latest blog post was about app makers making it difficult for me to keep using my sort of old phone. I never wrote something getting this much attention in such a short time: 11 000 people read in just a few days. I found the post was shared on Lobsters and on Hacker News and got many comments. It was nice to see even the Hacker News crowd constructive in their comments. My take-away from the discussions and the messages I received is:

• The better computers get, the sloppier programmers program, causing memory issues.
• The iPhone SE doesn’t have a lot of memory, but shouldn’t need a lot of memory for the things I do with it it either.
• It shouldn’t be hard to save the state of an app. Apps that completely reset after only seconds or minutes of being in the background are not well-made.
• People using newer phones too have these issues!
• Despite this post being about me not wanting to buy a new phone, people really like to recommend the model they’ve chosen for themselves.
• There are remarkably few ideas on what to do about the systemic part of the problem. I like one commenter’s idea though: laws not allowing telcos’ subscriptions to include a new device every two years.

Have a great Sunday!

Hey there!

If this mail looks unfamiliar, it's because I had to change to another newsletter service. But you did actually sign up to this via my website at kooslooijesteijn.net! The Twitter company shut down Revue, which I used to write thes newsletters. But I found Buttondown is a worthy replacement. Revue had a super nice feature: it let me add multiple feeds, like my blog RSS, Twitter and others and from there I was able to just drag-and-drop links to a newsletter.

But Buttondown has some nice things too!

• A Markdown editor
• Loads of customization options
• The option to add paid newsletters
• Custom styling