Free speech tennis

I'm a liberal. I think people should be able to say what is on their mind, in person and online

I'm a liberal. I think that people deserve realistic opportunity to be able to easily avoid hearing things that will harm them, in a self-defining sense

Zimmerman vs Martin, prejudice and inequality

The Zimmerman verdict is in. Acquitted, or not guilty, however you look at it the man is walking free after he stalked his neighbourhood like a paranoid vigilante, and then against the advice of the police went to confront a 17 year old young man before shooting him dead.

Like all the worst cases, there's little that the case would ever have hinged off of other than the reliability and credibility of Zimmerman's own statements. In Florida you can kill someone as long as you can make a jury believe you felt you were in serious danger, you see?

This case was always going to be hard for the prosecution, especially one that took weeks before it even started action to find justice for a young man murdered on the street. But with a law that legalises murder "in self defense" perhaps those hoping for justice should have faced up to reality months ago. This was never going to be the ending we wanted.

MPs, salaries and the "right" people for the job

MP salaries are in the news, and perhaps a little unfairly the MPs themselves are getting flack over an idea that has been made by an independent body set up in the wake of the expenses scandal to stop MPs from being able to keep inflating their own pay and expenses. However the result of this is the idea that MPs should be paid £75k, up from the current £66k. Being around three times the amount of the average salary in the UK already, at a time when the public sector (tax payer funded, like MPs) is facing a freeze year after year, at a time when those on benefits are having their benefits cut even at the most essential level by allowing the cost of food to increase over the basic benefits given, it's understandable why there are those that would be angry at MPs that accepted such a rise at this time.

Badger Cull: Which Lib Dems voted for sanity?

As far as I can tell, at this stage, the Lib Dem MPs that voted for vaccination rather than cull...

Gordon Birtwistle,
Paul Burstow,
John Hemming,
Martin Horwood,
Stephen Lloyd,
John Pugh,
Bob Russell,
Adrian Sanders,
Stephen Williams

UX decision making the right way

I'm currently in a bit of a bad mood, unfortunately we've had feedback from client on some work and they want to make some changes. The changes aren't too major in scope, in fact they probably will only take about 10 minutes to implement due to the highly CSS-centric approach I've taken to build the Web App.

The problem isn't the complexity of the changes...it's why the changes are being made.

The web app (sorry, got to keep it vaguely abstract, no pics!) utilises a soft pastel colour scheme, to be complimentary to the brand's colour scheme, while also using some striking colours to help emphasise certain user actions. A stronger green colour is used when a section is complete, and a somewhat jarring orange is used when there is something that still needs attention.

These choices on their own are not good usability per se, but combined with clear and concise labelling that gives the user an indication of the intent of such a coloured object, and the use of icons to further emphasise such intent, the colours can form part of an ongoing subconscious indicator that will hopefully gravitate the user in to quicker choices for their navigation and an ease of finding their next task on the page.

To reinforce this colour scheme we also use the same colour scheme in the form validation that is done at login, and with strong visual cues on the homescreen of the web app.

The choice of how to use colour was very considered, and the relationships between colours too. The overall goal was to make the app pleasant to use throughout the day, but also to really highlight where there was an interaction or message that needed immediate attention.

The client has changed their mind from the initial advice of "This isn't customer facing, brand colours don't matter" (and I can't say whether this is just poor communication on behalf of the people I work with, or the client truly changing their stance) to "I want everything blue"

Now, I don't mind the idea that things should be blue. It's awkward if everything is a shade of blue, and we definitely lose some of that easy subconscious filtering of information that a striking colour affords. I wouldn't choose to do it, but if there was a good reason to do it I wouldn't stand in the way of it. Alas, it seems I dug too deep in requesting that someone requests information on why this change is desired, and now the elements that were orange, a clear contrast, have gone from being a lighter shade of blue than the other blues on the page, to actually grey.

GREY. The universal colour of inactive and disabled elements on the web. To add insult to injury we already use grey in specific use cases on the app...yeah...when the button or interactive element needs to be present but clearly defined as non-interactive!

I feel strongly that we have gone through the right process in deciding our colour scheme, unfortunately something has happened in our communication with the client that means a veto has come from upon high. Even more unfortunately there is no context or reason to that decision...and since they pay the money no-one is willing to challenge it.

I'm no expert, I try to make the best decisions I can with my colleagues...UX isn't a science. What it is, however, is testable. It's a shame that our relationship with the client appears to be such that we're going to miss out on the one opportunity to actually nail this particular disagreement to one side or the other...user testing!

We could easily give a sample of those that are intended to use the application, potentially even those that aren't, a set of tasks to do on one colour scheme, and a different sample the same tasks with a different colour scheme. We could record if there are any difficulties in the perception of the app, we could also measure the time taken to perform the tasks. Through then asking each sample to do the same again with the opposite colour scheme we can then also measure the change (if any) in productivity through the app compared to their first run. Productivity should improve as their experience with the app has grown, but we can check for differences in how usage speed changes, perhaps most importantly we can ask each group how it felt to move on to the second colour scheme.

If one is better we should have a clear indication through watching our users perform the tasks that the transition from one colour scheme to the second created greater comfort, while the other transition caused more confusion.

This kind of decision making should be standard when we make decisions that are challenged by a higher power for undisclosed reasons. If they are unwilling or unable to provide reasoning for their request then the only sane way to provide the best solution is to test both solutions and determine an optimal solution.

So why are we so afraid to do this? Is the client going to hate us for having proof that we're doing the most efficient thing with their app? It may seem stupid, but if a difference in colour scheme improves productivity by 5 seconds across a day, on a three day week, with 100 employees, that saves 21 hours worth of employee time through the year, or another three days of work. Not a significant saving perhaps in that example, but a saving none the less. Is the client going to be outraged at us providing this saving?

Be it fear of annoying the client, the want of an easy ride at work, misaligned loyalties from within your job description...how many bad decisions are being made in the process of capitulation that can and should be easily and amicably resolved to the best solution available, regardless of who came up with the best idea?

Online Safety Bill (take two)

There are a few bits of zombie legislation that just can't be put down to their eternal slumber, no matter how much we try to put them out of their misery. One is the idea of providing police with more powers to snoop on our activities online in a way we would never condone if done "in the flesh", and another is the idea of "protecting" us by forcing people to opt in to adult (pornographic) content. Last year Christian backed Tory MP Clare Perry put forward her unworkable idea for protecting the children and it seems that all this has led to is a revised version of the Online Safety Bill to be attempted this year.

What you're going to read below will be much easier to understand when you realise that the duty of monitoring all of this is being put on to OFCOM, and is using definitions that are intended for use in the broadcast mediums of TV and radio. Our MPs are seriously going to be looking at some potential law that treats the internet not as an interactive medium, but as a one way flow of information. Keep that in mind as you wonder how anyone can possibly think this is workable.

Is this version any better than the one that was actually laughably unable to be implemented before? Let's take a look.

Queen Speech, Fixed Term Parliaments and Resignations

An interesting bit of thought experimentation is going on about what might happen if the Queen Speech (the Government's legislative plan for the year) is amended. The New Statesman has raided the parliamentary website to dig out this quote...

The first parliamentary test of a minority or coalition government is the vote on an amendment to the Queen’s Speech. If the Queen’s Speech is amended, the Prime Minister must resign. The Conservative party lost their majority in the December 1923 election. They put their programme to the House in January 1924 as a minority administration and lost a vote on the King’s Speech. Ramsay MacDonald was called to form a Labour administration.

An EU referendum?

One thing that is becoming a stark inevitability is an EU referendum in the near future. It's been teased in front of the electorate like dripping red meat in front of a rottweiler, so we shouldn't be surprised that the media and a section of the voting public are frustrated that it remains very much there, but out of reach.

I strongly believe that the UKIP successes last week were less to do with the EU as they were to do with the failing of the Tories and Lib Dems to turn our economic situation around. But still, common sense rarely dictates the narrative of the nation, and as such we are to be assured that this is all about the EU, and immigration...the greatest scapegoat for our ills this side of Jews in 1920-30s Germany.

As such there are more calls for this referendum, and sooner. Cameron has promised to legislate to have a referendum next parliament if the Tories win in an utterly pathetic display of blackmail, also utterly useless if the other two main parties also promise a referendum. The right wing back benchers of the Tory party don't want to wait...and I would tend to agree with them.

Why should we wait?

The Lib Dems are immensely pro-EU, even if they favour some reform, and it is generally the position of the Labour party to be pro-EU as well. As with Leveson, why aren't these two parties stealing the thunder from the Tories, and from Cameron, right now?

The idea that an EU referendum has to be a negative thing is run entirely under the assumption that it is going to be lost...but why would such a referendum end up with us leaving the EU? The media machine spinning tales? UKIP marching down the country lanes drumming up support? Where is the assumption that the "pro-EU" side wouldn't have a message to give the electorate too?

One of the biggest dangers we face on the question of the EU is that it is handled in the same way that the AV referendum was with the bulk of the "information" coming from the biased voices of the two campaigns fighting it out for the win, rather than from an independent body such as the Electoral Commission. The constant batting away of the idea of a referendum plays not only into the hands of the right wing in terms of determining the time frame, but also in terms of framing the debate.

We have two years until the next election, one until the next EU elections. I would argue that the best time to hold a referendum is in 2014 alongside the MEP elections. There is no better time to combine resources and have all kinds of politicians putting their views across, and it gives this parliament time to organise to set up the referendum AND to ensure that the information campaign for the public is well resourced and given ample time to allow the public to digest what is a complex subject with good time before the referendum campaign starts.

This won't happen if we rely solely on the Tories panicking about UKIP. It's time for Labour and the Lib Dems to step up to the plate and take control...the Tory right will back them, this isn't a move that is likely to fail, and Cameron will be left even more destitute as a political power than he is right now. Why wait? Bring on the EU referendum...

Local Elections 2013

The Tories are dead, long live the Tories

Last night I made a prediction as to where today would go, I feel I would have said the same a week or even a month ago. With these council elections taking place almost exclusively in Conservative council areas (mostly rural), in councils that they won in the lead up to the 2010 election when disenfranchisement with Labour was at a recent high, this set of elections was always going to be the tale of how the Tories have lost their way.

The plot of that tale though, was always going to be the more interesting thing; with the rise of the "evil" UKIP, and no clear "hero" of the story, against a backdrop of a looming darkness yet to come...how would the story be told? My view was that UKIP would do well, but that this wouldn't be a reflection on UKIP as much as it is on Labour and the Tories (and Lib Dems to a degree, but for different reasons).

Orphan Works, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act

There's quite a bit of consternation right now about changes in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act not long passed in to law. With these sort of changes, where the "copyright" of a work is under threat, as with Instagram, people tend to grab the wrong end of the stick and liberally wave it about before calming down.

I just wanted to take a moment to look at this law, why it exists, and what it really means for all of your pictures of coffee and donuts.

IndustryConf

So, I like conferences. Web conferences that is. Yesterday saw IndustryConf come and go with a more civil and respectful audience than you'd normally find, and more accents that you can shake a stick at. Perhaps the two are linked.

My first web conference was @Media in London, organised by the "Web Directions" team, so it was disappointing that John Allsopp was unable to make it for personal reasons, especially since...as Jeremy Keith said in his last talk of the day...John's "A Dao of webdesign" is perhaps more relevant today than it was when it was written 13 years ago.

At the time of that conference I was very much a "newbie" in the web world, and felt like I knew some stuff but needed to know more. The way I go in to conferences these days is a much more self-affirming affair, and IndustryConf was no different. I say self-affirming since I believe that web developers and designers are generally self-critical people, it's like a form of constructive professional depression.

Protecting the public AND current affairs publishers

The Leveson inquiry ended with some fairly common sense suggestions to solve a problem. The problem? Large organisations that are responsible for delivering news to the country abusing their privilege and position, at the detriment not only of the reputation of individuals, but also of their privacy, and even of truth in general.

People opposed it, but they were fighting dirty. Referring constantly to hacking and libel meant they could frame the discussion as if laws already exist to cover all of the ills that the press and media deal in on a daily basis. They don't, and hacking and libel only just scratches the surface.

New "Small Blog" amendment

So we now have a new amendment to help "protect" small blogs from being expected to submit to regulation that larger organisations will be expected to do.

Amendment text can be found here. The amendments are reproduced below.

How positive discrimination works...

...and how it doesn't

I've been reading this account by Rae Hoffman about her feelings on "quotas" in tech conferences. I find myself generally agreeing with her, it's absolutely right that no-one should be put into a position purely because of a particular box they tick. It undermines them and the wider community, it undermines trust.

However I don't agree with the polarisation of the debate that this article helps to contribute to. How we select who speaks at conferences, and how we select who joins our teams at our work, isn't about either complete meritocracy or blind equality, with nothing in between. If you're taking either of those approaches you are Doing It Wrong™

The up to date "Why I can't vote Lib Dem" list

This is a list I intend to keep up to date, to remind myself as much as anyone else, why it is that I won't be able to vote Lib Dem any time soon. It should be understood that while I would never vote Labour or Tory (or extreme parties like the BNP or UKIP), what the Lib Dems (I use this as a reference to the ministers and core team) have done this last few years has...for me...been a worse betrayal.

DCMS and "small blogging"

There is some mini-outrage out there about how the "consultation" on "small scale" blogs is being handled for the Leveson-based regulation proposals going through parliament. The story goes like this: The government is trying to curtail the freedom of speech of bloggers at the same time as regulate the press, and now they won't even talk to us about it, they'll only invite a super secret set of bloggers who don't represent me.

Meh.

The trouble with this whole process is that it entirely misses the point of why the regulation is there in the first place...

Regulation is being given teeth because prominent and affecting reporting of current affairs can sometimes cross the line and it takes too long and too much money for someone to counter it.

Small bloggers, big bloggers, back-yard youtubers or big press barons...how much your speech or writing becomes a problem depends not on where you do it from, how many people you do it with, or how much money you make...it depends on how much you are heard.

Windows 8: Perils of comparing over time

There is news in a number of places of the decline in PC sales, and how supposedly Windows 8 is the disease.

I'm highly dubious of this claim. For a start I don't think your average consumer thinks about operating systems when they buy PCs. If they're a home user they're probably buying something that can "do X", whether that's gaming, word processing, or just internet. Your local nerd will tell you which PC copes with this (usually based on the processor power, graphics capability, etc) and sells it to you with some added extras you probably don't need.

Are the rich paying more under Lib Dems than Labour?

Short answer: Probably not.

Longer answer: No-one knows yet, so it's incredibly deceitful to claim one way or the other with any certainty.

While taxes on high-value properties being sold has gone up, we would need to know if the frequency of sales is higher or lower than it was under Labour. While the tax rate is reduced from 50p to 45p for the super-rich, we have no evidence...and won't do for a couple of years now...that this move will generate more than the £1bn that was generated through Labour's last minute changes to the tax system.

Couple this with tax cuts for those who own businesses, cuts in the amount that those who speculate on the stock market have to pay, cuts in the level of taxes levied on bankers bonuses...and we have a very incomplete picture of just how much the really rich are "worse off" now than they were under the tax system in 2010.

The case of Justine McNally

I'm quite troubled by the idea that a fair judgement has been passed against Justine McNally. I need to make sure there is no absence of doubt here, the victim in this case is someone I have every sympathy for. To fall (possibly) in love with someone, or start that path, and find that they are not the person that they said they were creates a kind of crushing, floor falling from under you, chaos creating emotion that is hard to escape from. You doubt yourself, your ability to judge people, your confidence goes as you feel like you have been used and that it is somehow your fault you let this happen.

However...in this case deception only exists in the sense that the victim has been shaken by the fact that the person that she was having a relationship is female sexed rather than male. There are reports that Justine told the victim and her mother that she would go through a sex change to continue the relationship. This isn't the stance of a twisted manipulator, it's one of a person with an unsure view of their own sexuality wanting to be in a relationship with someone she cares about.

We have confirmed that the accused in that case identifies as male and wasn't presenting that way solely for the purpose of deception.

— Trans Media Watch (@TransMediaWatch) March 22, 2013

If Justine had been born as a man (sex) and gone through this relationship this story wouldn't exist, and yet it's likely that how the two felt about each other would be no different than before the deception was found out. If Justine had, if it were possible, a sex change before meeting with the victim and kept that quiet...again...we probably wouldn't be hearing about this, and the two would still feel the same about each other. Yet this story won't be told in such a way since the media has already latched on to the idea that this was some kind of grooming scheme with a sole aim, to get a girl in to bed.

The #pycon incident: a catalogue of failures

This story makes me a little sad, of a joke gone wrong at the #PyCon event that has resulted in all kinds of mess. The story doesn't end with that blog post, it goes on further to the abuse and harassment of an individual for the choices they made.

From start to finish it's one unfortunate misjudgment over another that has compounded itself in horrible and hateful attitudes bubbling to the surface. I just wanted to list them here, I think we need to learn how we fight our battles.