Moving on

I’m leaving Twitter on 2 April.

I think once you start wearing indentations into your keyboard it’s worth pausing for thought. It’s been a tough decision, but after nearly three exhilarating, demanding years I’m running on empty, and I need some time to reflect and recalibrate.

I’ll miss some of the brightest, most welcoming colleagues I’ve ever had. I’ll miss high-fiving the Hamleys bear on the way to work. I’ll miss enterprise software rather less.

No significant plans: some time off, then hopefully some writing, teaching, and travel. I’ll be looking for freelance projects or perhaps a full-time role after that. If you’re looking for a senior product designer or design manager, please get in touch. If not, please spread the word.

Void and matter

A thought by Allan Cochinov has been bouncing around my mind lately:

I’ve often theorized that there are two kinds of designers: those who like to design things smaller than themselves (appliances, sneakers, phones, book covers), and designers who like to design things bigger than themselves (architecture, interiors, city plans, cars).

How do digital things map to this model? Is our work large or small? 

Well, both. Take Facebook: a damn 1,300,000,000-person megacontinent, sure, but full of microinteractions—the Like, a notification sound—that are smaller.

So we lean back with that knowing grin and explain that dimensions are passé. We contain multitudes. Nanometres and light years, man. 

I tweeted that I don't really have a handle on what information architecture is these days. I’ve wilfully generalised over the past few years, and while I still get the tools of IA, the flavour of the thing, I can't grasp its boundaries, its definition. (As Karen suggests, it’s been a while since I’ve trolled myself.) I think I know the theory, but if I tell my colleagues we should work on IA and they say okay, what's that and how do we start, I don't know how to respond.

But maybe this model has something. Maybe IA is the larger-than-human stuff: the constructions that people inhabit. Topology, routes, flow. Doorways, light, maximum capacities. Designing the void. 

And then maybe interaction design is the smaller-than-human stuff: the tools people manipulate. Materials with properties and responses. The time axis that makes 3d 4d: how you move and twist things, how they beep and complain. Designing the matter.

Designing the void. Designing the matter. Maybe.

Digital product design mentoring

[Update: I received a remarkable response to this offer – thanks to everyone who contacted me. I've now filled these slots but will post again if I have capacity in the future.]

Looking to take a step forward in the industry? I’m now available to mentor two new junior/mid-level designers.

You should be UK-based, preferably in London (but elsewhere in the country might work), and looking to improve as a full-stack digital product designer, rather than a UX or visual specialist.

I take an informal approach to mentoring, so there’s no set agenda, programme, or anything like that. You're the boss. But areas where I might be able to help include:

• careers advice, portfolio reviews, mock interviews
• helping you evaluate your strengths & weaknesses and construct a development plan
• advice on design tooling and software
• advice on design process (large and small companies, in-house and consultancy)
• help with specific design problems – although rest assured: you’ll still be the one doing the design!
• introductions to other community members or events as appropriate

After a while, my mentoring arrangements typically end up being very flexible and often simply become friendships with a designy slant.

My ideal setup would be to meet face-to-face every 6–8 weeks, with perhaps a couple of emails in between. And to be clear, this is a free offer – I don't charge for mentoring (sometimes people ask).

Please email me at cennydd@cennydd.com if you think this would be interesting. If I’m oversubscribed I’ll give priority to applicants from under-represented groups.

Opportunities

I made some money off the Twitter IPO. Not as much as startup mythology may have you believe, but a good amount.

While I’ve worked hard for my professional successes, I recognise that I've been playing on the lowest difficulty setting. My background, my education, and many other privileges have steered me toward the right place at the right time.

I see it as both a moral obligation and a simple pleasure to share some of my good fortune with others. Therefore I’m donating a sum of £9,000 to a range of causes I believe in:

• Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research

• British Humanist Association

• Code Club

• Mind

• Médecins Sans Frontières

• Friends of the Earth

Hopefully some of these experts can help make the game easier for others too.

I wavered about whether to speak about this publicly. The reason I’m doing so isn’t because I want praise, but because I hope it might prompt my friends and peers in this thriving industry to reflect on their own advantages.

I'll continue to donate to good causes as my future finances allow. I’d love it if you’d consider doing so too.

The Things of the Future

My 2011 (?) piece The Things of the Future, written for The Manual Issue 2, is now available online. It's definitely of its Occupy-flavoured era, but I still quite like it. It’s accompanied by The Lesson, a sad tale of foot-and-mouth and 20-something hubris.

Hunches about Material Design

 A few reckons about Android L and Material Design spurred by yesterday’s Londroid event. 

Motion

Motion is the heart of Material Design, right? The visual aspects are striking but pretty straightforward, easily gridded / copied / 87% alpha-d. But even professional designers struggle with motion skills and tooling at the moment, and I don’t think we’ll see widespread quality motion for a year or two.

Initially I suspect most people will ignore it or just chain together stock Google animations – touch ripple, card lift etc – with blunt and sluggish results. Some people will proudly learn every cranny of a prototyping tool but not back it up with animation theory, resulting in a neo-Kai’s Power Tools era of ostentatious overanimation.

However, a very small group of talented people will nail Material motion, and name their goddamn price.

Professionalisation continued

Holo was mostly nouns, and constraining ones at that: grids, patterns, components. Material Design adds verbs, and they’re divergent ones: respond, flow, express.

The resultant syntax is more complete but more esoteric – possibly more than non-designers are comfortable with. I suspect Android is slipping beyond the grasp of the bedroom coder. It happens with every platform, and I dare say Google are fine with that. Teams will need more specialisation to create the sophisticated, professional apps that will help Android compete on UX. You’ll need to be a better designer to do great Material Design, but the possibilities are more exciting.

And it’ll be these strong designers (and their engineering & product colleagues) who’ll forge the real future of Material Design. Don’t expect Google to provide the answers. They’ve served up examples and inspiration, but the canvas is now too broad (particularly on devices we don’t yet think of as Androidy) for one company to own UX innovation. There's scope for anyone to set a precedent that others rush to copy.

Floating action buttons

Since this is the visual element that best signifies Material Design (and, by extension, cutting-edgeness), I think we’ll see thousands of the suckers. Most will straddle unnecessary borders, and most will overprioritise a single task. The floating button suits a primary action that’s very primary. Designers will still want to use them when that’s not the case, so I suspect we’ll see extra buttons added as qualifiers. 

“Add!”
“Okay, add what? Page, post, image, address, etc”

“Play!”
“Okay, play what? Song, album, artist, radio, etc”

Radial menus and all that: their time has theoretically been due for at least five years, so maybe this is it. Could work if done well, or it could be awful.

Google

Google definitely Get It these days. Anyone who’s been watching their design output for a while now won’t be surprised. It’s clear their culture is changing, and their mobile consumer products have improved at a terrific rate. I think Material Design shows some of the best platform design thinking in mobile, and it’ll be fascinating to see how their competitors (not least Apple) respond.

Technology NPS benchmarks

When reporting our most recent set of Net Promoter Score results to my team, I decided to dig around for some benchmarks across the industry. This data's mostly locked away in expensive reports, but here's what I found from various public articles and PR pieces pimping said reports. These are mostly 2013ish figures, measured by third parties. Treat with hefty pinches of salt.

• Apple (laptops): 76
• FreeAgent: 72
• Apple (iPhone): 70
• Amazon: 69
• Apple (all): 69
• Apple (iPad): 65
• TurboTax: 54
• Google: 53*
• Netflix: 50
• TripAdvisor: 36
• Consumer hardware average: 32
• Blackberry phones: 27
• Microsoft tablets: 26
• Tech industry average: 25
• Consumer software average: 21
• Yahoo Travel: 14
• McAfee: 2

Unclear if this is just search or all Google products. Chris Collingridge has calculated an unofficial Google Search NPS of 79, albeit with likely sample bias.

A 'world class' NPS is 50+, with most companies across all sectors coming in between 5–15. A few outside the tech sector:

• Costco: 78
• Southwest Airlines: 66
• Marriott hotels: 62
• First Direct (UK bank): 62
• Tesco Mobile: 47
• American Express: 41
• Direct Line: 20
• HSBC: -13

Ideas and/or data

Andy Clarke’s post What man, laid on his back counting stars… is a call to recognise the role of ideas and intuition in design. Bravo: we need more of this stuff.

Our industry has reached sufficient maturity to sustain different styles and schools of thought. This can only be a good thing.

My design approach relies on strong fundamentals: signifiers, metaphor, language. I thrive on improving a product over time through prioritisation, and helping a whole team see user experience as a shared concern. My favourite raw materials are user insight, strategy, design theory, and strong team relationships. This approach makes me reliable, if occasionally conservative.

I get the impression that Andy is more of a flair designer, thriving off sparks of creativity and inspiration. His raw materials will be different: perhaps they’ll be time, exploration, synthesis. That’s great. I’m a little envious of that style myself, but it’s just not me. If you want a Creative Director for your agency, Andy’s your man. I’d end up installing a different team and culture.

Andy’s article sets out a spectrum of design styles:

I see things a bit differently:

(I know I’m a manager these days because I find myself drawing quadrants.)

I add an extra axis because I don’t think product design means data-led design any more than web design means idea-led design. To me, the axes are orthogonal.

I should recognise some controversy here. Some folks dispute my separation of product design and website design, arguing they’re the same thing. I’m convinced they’re not, although I do agree there’s a continuum, not two distinct buckets. I’ll write more about this in due course.

Rewards

The approaches that succeed at company are largely a function of the company’s culture and lifecycle.

Data-based approaches tend to be highly valued in engineering cultures, sales cultures, mature product cultures, larger teams, and companies that have high volume and low margins.

Idea-based approaches tend to be more highly valued in entrepreneurial cultures, design cultures, companies with nascent products, and teams with lower volume and higher margins.

These aren’t fixed patterns, but I see them pretty often.

These valued approaches therefore change as a company evolves. Successful methods of a 50-person startup won’t work at a public company of 3000. As products and companies grow, they typically drift toward data-driven approaches. For that, we can thank capitalism and the nature of large systems: it’s easier to focus on reliable incremental improvement than risky reinvention. As we know, this can also blind a company, leaving it vulnerable to disruption from an idea-led competitor that attacks the problem in a new way.

What gets noticed?

Of the quadrants in my model, some get more attention, for sure.

It’s certainly true that the tech press is more interested in writing about apps than websites. Product companies are the ones talking about venture capital rounds, MAUs, hypergrowth: juicy American dream stuff. Website companies, less so.

But if anything, I think the industry is enthralled by apps built on ideas. The hot startups, the disruptors, the TechCrunch fodder are the companies building on an idea they hope will render their competitors irrelevant. Data-led product design is seen as something for the optimisers, the big boys, the unsexy. Adobe, Amazon, Facebook perhaps. These companies face a big challenge to retain their appetite for bolder bets. Some would argue the endeavour is likely doomed.

But it doesn’t matter what’s hot in the press. The four approaches in my model are all fundamentally sound. As with any discussion about beliefs, the danger lies in the extremes. It’s possible to become so invested in a data-only or idea-only approach that you become blind to the value of fitting your approach to the context.

Product design that’s driven entirely by data is horrible. It leads us down a familiar path: the 41 shades of blue, the death by 1000 cuts, the button whose only purpose is to make a metric arc upward. It’s soul-destroying for a designer. But its moderate counterpart, data-informed product design, is fine. It reduces risk, and encourages confidence and accountability.

Product design driven entirely by ideas is equally painful. The romantic notion of design genius and the Big Idea soon gets swamped by a culture of risk, favouritism, and blame.Idea-informed product design is fine. It provides agility, creativity, the power to see blindspots and seize opportunities.

I fully agree with Andy that we should never lose sight of the aspects of design that give soul to our work. These are just as prevalent in product design as they are in website design. Granted, they may manifest in different ways (mostly motion design for products, often art direction for websites), but design is a fantastic synthesis of ideas and outcomes, and will always be so.

Design’s not dud yet

[Some of our designers and PMs started an email thread about Mills Baker’s Designer Duds: Losing Our Seat At The Table. Here was my contribution, lightly edited.]

I agree with the majority of the post. There’s some wonderfully glossy and rather pointless design out there at present. But I don’t quite agree with Baker’s claim that success is to be judged only through utility and adoption:

“A “great” design which produces bad outcomes—low engagement, little utility, few downloads, indifference on the part of the target market—should be regarded as a failure.”

Great design can be an act of shaping culture.

Anyone who’s read Don Norman will know that Juicy Salif is not a good product by these yardsticks. It does not squeeze lemons well. It’s outsold by countless more functional, cheaper versions.

But it’s an important product in that it demonstrates that everyday objects can be playful, beautiful, surprising. I don’t think it’s a stretch to draw a conceptual line between Juicy Salif and, say, the Dyson Airblade: both are novel products that makes you reconsider the genre. Only one is particularly commercially useful.

Sure, utility is still the key outcome of design, but let’s not ignore its broader potential. Design can have aesthetic and cultural impact too, even if that is only to inspire designers working on more essential products.

Letter to a junior designer

Consistency and coherence

In cross-platform design, some things should be consistent. But others are better being coherent.

In London, we work on two quite different Twitter apps. One (Twitter for Tablets) is designed for mainstream users: sofas, snacking, second screens. The other (TweetDeck) is designed primarily for journalists: desktops, busy newsrooms, breaking stories.

They’re both Twitter, but they’re different Twitter. So we have to work out what should be the same, and what should flex.

We identify the atomic, inviolable units—the “tweet anatomy”, language, button styles, core destinations like DMs—and ensure these are consistent. Enforcing similar presentation and behaviour means users can rely on core functionality, and helps a Twitter user make sense of these apps when they first use them.

For other elements—navigation, interaction styles, certain transitions, advanced features—consistency would be too constraining. No need to repress valuable differentiation. (We’ve made that mistake before.) Instead, we ensure these elements are coherent. Where there’s a good reason for them to diverge—to better serve that userbase and their contexts—we let them. What matters is not that the parts are the same, but that they come together to form a unified whole.

Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

If you’ve talked to me in the past few months, you’ll have heard me explain that I think Android is the dominant platform of the next decade. There are two main reasons.

Adoption

View fullsize

(Graph via Asymco.)

Android is gobbling market share at an unprecedented rate. Now, this doesn’t make it a one-horse race. This market share is coming at the expense of feature phones, Symbian, and Blackberry – it doesn’t appear to be taking much from iOS. Nor will we necessarily end up with a mirror of the PC/Mac split: the total addressable market for handsets is far larger than that for computers. So far, the market appears easily big enough for two major players.

However, the growth patterns of Android are what give it such power. Android utterly dominates in emerging markets. I’m no analyst or global market specialist, but it’s clear that major tech companies recognise this, and many have launched low-end Android clients to address these markets. While developed nations are nearing smartphone saturation, there’s enormous growth potential in the rest of the world. The curve will continue, and it’s likely that Android will reach a larger proportion of humanity than any comparable technology, if it hasn’t already.

Device proliferation

And that’s just the smartphones. As the cost of processors and networks falls, a slew of tiny, cheap, connected devices will emerge from the R&D labs into the shops. Call it the Internet of Things if you like – I prefer ‘cooperating devices’.

These tiny, cheap, connected devices are going to need an operating system. Preferably one that’s free (monetarily free, at least), reliable, well-maintained, and has good interoperability.

It won’t be iOS, since Apple appears to have no interest in licensing it to third-party hardware. Instead, I expect they’ll launch an Apple-only ecosystem of cooperating devices. (I could argue they’re already part-way there.) Since they own the full stack they’d be able among the first to offer excellent IoT-like experiences, demonstrate value to consumers, and hence generate a mainstream market. They’d need a ton of cash to do this – fortunately, they have it.

I also don’t think it’ll be another OS. The others (Windows, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, Linux, etc) lag far behind, or have retrograde trajectories. That may change, but since global reach is slow I’d have thought it’ll be several years before we see another major OS player.

I also don’t think it’s the web browser. In theory the browser meets the criteria – cheap, ubiquitous, interoperable – and the web community would love it to win. But, bluntly, it is losing in terms of capabilities, performance, and user experience, where native apps are far ahead. Browsers are improving, and at last catching up in terms of hardware access, but if the browser is to become the One True Platform it will need to overcome significant systemic deficiencies. A browser permanently playing catch-up will always be an additional, potentially redundant, layer in the technology stack. If a single OS ends up running >90% of the world’s connected devices, why bother writing software for the browser?

Anyway. I wrote this tweet…

Android is the dominant platform of the next decade. Why aren't designers paying it more attention? (via @asymco) pic.twitter.com/ExSCCB19T6

— Cennydd Bowles (@Cennydd) March 23, 2014

…and received a ton of responses. I’m not going to embed them or name names – I respect a lot of the people who chipped in, and I’m going to be pretty ruthless in my dismissal of their arguments.

The replies fell into two broad categories, of which I’ll give both charitable and uncharitable interpretations.

1. Android is difficult

These arguments were familiar: fragmentation’s a hassle, the landscape is too fluid, Android lacks a design aesthetic, the Android UX is poor. I think unfamiliarity with Android played a small part in these responses. Kitkat is light years ahead of the Gingerbread era, and if you haven’t tried Android recently it’s definitely worth another look. I don’t quite agree with Stammy’s claim that Android is better, but it’s certainly much improved.

Fragmentation is of course the bête noire of Android design, and is certainly a challenge for designers and engineers alike. But the word itself reflects a subtle framing issue. It’s not hard to think of positive synonyms: fragmentation as choice; fragmentation as diversity.

As web designers have learned over the last few years, device diversity is natural, welcome, and manageable. Many responsive web design techniques – eg fluid layout, breakpoints, resolution independence – are essential principles of Android design. In fact, they’re handled in a more technically profound way on Android than the web.

Android design is indeed more difficult than iOS design in that it offers fewer constraints. But any skilled designer can handle that with a bit of effort. My uncharitable interpretation for this class of responses is simple laziness, and if Android forces designers to drop a pixel-perfect mentality and adopt approaches that suit a diverse world, then that’s no bad thing.

2. User behaviours are different

The other replies were mostly variations on the theme that Android users don’t pay for apps, they don’t have data plans, you can’t monetise them easily, and designers are all iPhone users and don’t really understand Android users.

This class of replies troubles me more than the first.

Economically, it seems shortsighted at best. Revenue models for digital products are fluid, and it can’t be good business sense to just write off a majority userbase. Appropriate methods are out there: the 450m monthly users of WhatsApp (the majority of whom use Android) are certainly willing to pay for something that adds real value to their lives.

It’s also important to remember that we aren’t designing products just for today. A sound product strategy will also be looking to address the market that exists in the coming years. Even in emerging markets, the data plans are coming, and the revenue won’t be far behind.

Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial. Unlike Android is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. Put uncharitably, the root issue is “Android users are poor”.

I do hope, given tech’s rhetoric about changing the world and disrupting outdated hierarchies, that we don’t really think only those with revenue potential are worth our attention. A designer has a duty to be empathetic; to understand and embrace people not like him/herself. A group owning different devices to the design elite is not a valid reason to neglect their needs.

—

I recognise that I have a fairly rare stance, given the ideology that surrounds platform issues: I don’t care which platform ‘wins’. I’m a very happy user of iOS, Android, and the web. I expect this post will upset a few people who believe their approach is best, but my only criterion of successful technology is that it enriches the lives of the world. Right now, Android looks to me like the best vehicle for doing that at the largest scale, and I think designers are mistaken if they disregard its potential.

[If you’d like to know more, I’m helping to organise a London Android design meetup soon. Follow me on Twitter for more information.]

An unusual name

[Inspired by The Names They Gave Me.]

[Photo: ashengrove.]

Once the announcer pauses, I know it’s me they’re after. “Paging passenger… [click] …Senid Bowles?”. The intonation is hesitant and mildly pejorative. And once a year or so I’ll meet a man (always a man) who’ll argue with me about how my name is pronounced. Someone who’s learned a bit of Welsh, usually. I suppose I’m glad they’re interested in the language, but it’s strange to defend my own name.

Cennydd was a minor Welsh saint of hazy legend: a deformed child of incest cast out to sea and subsequently rescued by seagulls. The place of his rescue is now known, via the glorious mutations of the Welsh language, as Llangennith.

If I like you and we have time, I’ll explain the pronunciation. It’s Kenn-ith, with a hard th. Say “Ken with”, then remove the w. If I don’t like you, or I’m tired, or it doesn’t really matter right now, I’ll just say it’s basically Kenneth. We are satisficing animals. Sometimes I see the relief as someone attaches me to an existing mental model. It’s fine. Life’s too short for everyone to give a shit.

A truism: my name is part of me. But it’s also one of the few links I have to my culture. Yes, it’s Welsh. No, I don’t sound Welsh. I moved to England when I was very young, you see. But the accent lies somewhere deep in me, frozen, only creeping out when I call my family, or in a Cardiff City away end. No, I don’t know any Welsh, except for a couple of swear words and the anthem.

(We Welshies really lucked out with our anthem. Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau is a hell of a tune, far superior to the torpid servility of GSTQ. I’m not a rugby man, but gwlad gwlad at Millennium Stadium is one of those lump-in-the-throat-die-pointlessly-for-my-country experiences.)

A girl I spoke to on the phone for the first time got it exactly right. Head over heels.

Most often, it’s Senid, which has a certain phonetic honesty. Kenid. Sen-yid. Kyn-ed, like a colloquial skinhead without the s. One particularly inventive time, Sinead. A letter from my doctor to Miss Cennidel Bowles. (Sadly not for a smear test.) Gender is frequently an issue in correspondence: Dear Mr/Mrs Bowles. But the phone is usually worse. “Surname is Bowles-b-o-w-l-e-s. First name? I’ll-have-to-spell-that-too-c-e…” I sing hallelujahs for databases that only demand an initial.

I shortened it to Cen for a while: puberty is embarrassing enough. It was convenient but always inauthentic. Ken’s a name for Tories and soap opera codgers; it’s not me. On leaving university I reverted, but friends from that era still use it. Too ingrained to change now.

Different countries present a fresh challenge. I usually shorten there to save mutual embarrassment. Even then, my barista scrawls read “Cam”. It’s only coffee.

My experiences mean I try hard to be accurate with other people’s names. I’m successful when it comes to print: if you need to find an accented character on a keyboard, I’m your man. Ramón. Sélène. Mr. Tantek Çelik. In person, I’m afraid I’m as bad as they get. Forgive me.

An unusual name becomes something you learn to live with, like asthma. You find what works and what doesn’t. You are it, it is you. And I love my name. Love it. My parents gave me an escape plan via middle name—Lloyd—a safe word if the discomfort got too strong. A thoughtful choice, but I’ve never been tempted.

I don’t know if my name has been helpful or harmful, since of course I have no other reference. But I suspect people remember or forget me just the same. Perhaps some indistinct recollection of consonants lingers.

The only area that I know it’s affected is my online findability. You can guess my username on most services; I have the domains, I dominate the search results. Given my career, that’s a clear benefit. For others, it may not be. When your name is so hidden in the shadows, light shone in the right place is so much brighter.

Slow swordfighting

Chess enthusiasts aren’t flamboyant dressers, save the occasional eccentric (best avoided) who wears chess ties etc. Today’s crowd – middle-aged men and gauche teenagers – sticks closely to greys and greens.

I’m at the World Chess Championship Candidates Tournament, at London’s IET. The winner will play India’s Viswanathan Anand for the 2013 title. Anand has been World Champion for six years, but most punters now regard his title as vulnerable. The stakes are high.

The waiting room bookshop carries such esoteria as the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (doesn’t everyone use a database now?), a treatise on pawn structure, and a thorough analysis of the French Winawer variation. My fellow patrons tap their fingers and bury their faces conspicuously into novels. I scrawl notes into a cheap notebook.

Daniel Weil of Pentagram has designed a custom set for the tournament, which now takes pride of place in the makeshift shop. Any decent chess player will tell you that novelty sets are useless. Chess is all about pattern recognition: recognising mating themes, recalling previous failed exploits. A standardised design makes this easier. Weil’s set iterates skillfully on the established Staunton pattern, but serious players usually have a quality set already, and at £199 few are sold.

A quiet nod – too quiet, as I fail to lift my head from my notebook – and we file in through metal detectors. The concern isn’t physical security but intellectual security. No bleeps, no ringtones, and particularly no computer analysis that could be leaked to the players. (These photos are the official shots.) Although the sponsors have tied tablets to the auditorium seats, they all come with a warning to keep them well out of the players’ eyelines. It’s the first time I’ve been separated from my phone in years. The discomfort slightly edges out the respite.

The room is elegant under the dim gaze of portraited engineers. Four substantial tables lie at right angles, an arrangement designed to minimise likely distractions. During the Cold War, when chess was a political battleground (I’m talking real spy shit here: thrown matches, defections, allegations of hypnosis…) match organisers fixed boards under the tables to prevent players kicking each other. These appear to be more relaxed times: the dividers are absent.

Sensors in the boards and pieces will relay the moves to a large projected screen. As we wait, the screen shows a countdown and an enormous hashtag, an impressive nod to the present rendered useless by our technological surrender.

Near each board, a spare queen of either colour, to be used in the event of a pawn promotion. Only the most extravagant sets feature four queens: club players improvise with an upside-down rook or snag a captured queen from a neighbouring game.

The 70 or so spectators have clotted at the left edge of the auditorium, claiming seats that will give the best view of the Kramnik–Carlsen game. A dozen photographers stroll around the stage. Yes, there’s chess press. Laminates, lenses, the works.

The players trickle onto the stage as the countdown reaches 00:04. Teimour Radjabov is first into the arena, looking remarkably upbeat given the diabolical tournament he’s having. He looks too much like my friend Paul for me to take him seriously.

Next up is Magnus Carlsen, causing a polite fizz of electricity. The Telegraph has labelled him the Justin Bieber of chess, to the chagrin of a fellow spectator: “Why didn’t they get someone who likes chess to write about it?”.

(The mainstream press has a cyclical relationship with chess; every few years it rediscovers it, proclaims that it’s no longer just for nerds, then continues to ignore it because it’s just for nerds. The game is grateful for the patchy attention, but wishes it were on different terms.)

At 22, Carlsen is already statistically the strongest player of all time, with a FIDE rating of 2872. Unlike most young players he eschews opening theory, instead preferring to grind out results with a ruthless, precise style. In that regard his chess is rather like the computers that have now largely surpassed humans. In the flesh he’s rather more human. For a start, he really does look like Bieber, albeit less pretty. He bears the gracelessness of youth, slouching in his seat and showing disdain for the photographers. He’s the only player with sponsor logos on his reluctant suit. His shoes are unpolished.

Boris Gelfand is wiry, the token mad scientist. At 43, Gelfand’s chance may have passed when he lost last year’s World Championship in a tie-break. He empties a blue plastic bag onto the table – water, a pen, no poison or secret transmitters.

Alexander Grischuk is the looker. Tall, well-dressed, with something of Adrien Brody about him. He’s mid-table in the tournament, now playing just for the pleasure and his share of the handsome €510,000 prize fund.

Carlsen’s opponent emerges next. Vladimir Kramnik (above) is a former World Champion, and Carlsen’s most likely threat in the tournament. Kramnik looks exactly like a chess player. Perhaps it’s the glasses. If he weren’t here today he’d be taking minutes at a local council meeting.

Armenia’s Lev Aronian drops his thermos as he enters. It’s the loudest noise of the day.

Vassily Ivanchuk ambles in like a tipsy penguin. He appears completely unphased by the demons that are haunting him this tournament. He’s a veteran of the chess world and several Candidates Tournaments, but he’s already blown it this year, losing four games simply by running out of time. This level of inattention – “self-immolation”, Nigel Short calls it – is unfathomable. But Ivanchuk is notorious for his unpredictability. On his day, he’s a strong a player as anyone.

Finally, Peter Svidler, the only Russian who loves cricket. He looks particularly happy today because someone has secured him a ticket for this summer’s Ashes.

I’m overwhelmed to be in the same room as these men. I played through their games (well, except the younger ones) as a teenager, developing a love or dislike of their styles, and scratching my head at their depth. The skill gap in chess is remarkable: these Grandmasters would demolish someone who would easily beat someone who would wipe me off the board. Amid my admiration, I feel a vertiginous impulse: I could leap out of my seat, scatter the pieces, and make history as the world’s first chess streaker. The temptation soon fades.

Each player aligns the pieces, although the boards are already laid out in pristine formation. It’s a curious habit I recognise from my own experience. It helps to get your hands on the tools of your trade, to feel they’re yours.

I expected more left-handers.

What will happen when the countdown clock hits zero? I brace myself for either klaxons or silence. In the event, we receive a brief welcome from some old white guy, and the players get to work. Their first few moves are almost instant. Chess openings are codified and repeated by rote; even mediocre players have favourite variations. (Me: Scotch Gambit, Sveshnikov Sicilian, Benko Gambit.)

All four games start with identical moves: 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4. 1 d4 is often a conservative opening choice, leading to nuanced positional games that I don’t fully understand. Fortunately the games soon diverge. Aronian transposes to a solid Queen’s Gambit Declined, while Grischuk plays the counterattacking King’s Indian Defence. Svidler responds with the Sämisch Variation 5 f3, a move that looks daft yet turns out to be frustratingly savage.

As the games head out of theoretical territory, the players sink into thought. Their postures bear the usual mannerisms of concentration: heads in hands, fidgeting, biting of lips. I’m almost disappointed by the normality of their strain. I expected something superhuman: trance-like states, or cessation of the blink reflex. My other surprise is how mobile the players are. On their opponents’ time (and often during their own), they stroll around the stage, checking up on the other matches or popping out for a comfort break, presumably accompanied to the door by arbiters. As with most likeminded groups, they’ve fallen into a groove of behavioural similarity. They all have the same walk: a slow, meaningful stride, with arms tucked behind the back. Ivanchuk’s strut is the most pronounced: head high, eyes unfocused, staring into the auditorium. He stares right at me, but doesn’t see me. Instead, he mutters to himself, head lolling from side to side. You’d avoid him on the Underground. Of course he’s calculating variations in his head as he strolls. These men could play quite adequately without the boards; so-called ‘blindfold’ displays often see the Grandmaster unbeaten in a dozen simultaneous games.

We roll into the middlegame. This is the phase of chess that’s most familiar to the novice: exchanges, attacks on the king, complexity, calculation. The commentary room is revelling in the myriad permutations of each game, discussing zany variations that will never come to pass. It’s partly intellectual curiosity, and partly a demonstration of the moves the players will analyse and reject. Grandmaster Nigel Short and International Master Lawrence Stean are holding court. It’s clear they love chess. The commentary is light-hearted, and the analysis lightning quick. Short has a penchant for weak puns (“The man with three first names: Vassily Ivan Chuck”), and is enjoying his adopted role as the has-been who doesn’t understand modern chess. Short’s big moment was in 1995, when he lost a one-sided World Championship against Garry Kasparov, and for a short while the TV networks declared chess was no longer just for nerds.

Grandmaster Jon Speelman is also in the commentry room. Speelman has a reputation as a particularly imaginative player, and throws out ludicrous suggestions that demonstrate unhinged genius but have no chance of appearing on the board. Play that speculative is too risky, too easily refuted by these elite players. Beginners quickly learn to assume your opponent will always find the right move. There is no such thing as luck in chess.

The analysis in the commentary box is largely based off instinct. Chess isn’t just about calculating long branches. The language reflects a surprising amount of intuition. “I prefer …Qc7, it feels more harmonious.”

Grischuk flings his h-pawn down the board, and follows with a bold sacrifice: knight for pawn. He’s relying on methodical preparation, based on a knowledge of Svidler’s preferred opening choices. Computers and a team of seconds will have analysed this line thoroughly; the pressure is on Svidler to minesweep under the pressure of a live game. He slows immediately, and the commentary agrees that the position has become very complex. His responses are steady and accurate, sidestepping the many disasters lying in wait. By contrast, Grischuk is barely concerned by the board: his battle lies inside his own head. He anchors his eyes to the ceiling in a struggle to remember his analysis.

The other games are more entrenched. Aronian has adopted the perfectly-named Stonewall formation. That’ll be a long one. He pours another drink from his thermos and settles in.

At last, Grischuk recalls his analysis and further ignites the position by sacrificing his queen. Most of the other players now seem more interested by this game than their own. Arched eyebrows all round. The commentators are in an orgy of confusion:

“Surely Black’s just winning!”

“Isn’t White just winning?”

“Let’s calm down and count the pieces.”

Meanwhile, small advantages start to crack open on the other boards. Kramnik looks strong after his eighteenth move, with queen and rooks tripled on the d-file. The audience switches its focus, wondering if Kramnik is about to assert his authority over the young upstart. Carlsen has to huddle his pieces to one side to avoid the piercing attack. Kramnik tightens the tension for the next few moves until, in a moment of breakthrough, Carlsen finds an equalising line, 25 …Nd5. His posture relaxes immediately back to the student slouch, knowing he has drawn the venom from the position.

Aronian’s game isn’t going so well. He’s chasing a win to stay in contention with the leaders and takes risks. He fails. After Gelfand’s pawn thrust 28 e6, the position’s screwed. The commentators delight in explaining how he’s thrown it all away after a tense, solid game.

Grischuk–Svidler, earlier so freeform, eventually grinds down into a standoff, thanks to Svidler’s precise defence. Queen and rook orbit a minor piece nucleus, impossible to break down. Svidler has done well to neutralise this game, and he’s free to once more daydream about the Ashes.

It’s only now that I notice Ivanchuk is wearing a Real Madrid training top beneath his suit. Damn. I wish he was World Champion.

The time control provides one last moment of tension. The players have two hours to make forty moves, and Teimour Radjabov is intent on making full use of them. Amid a flurry of (still very strong) moves, he makes it with two seconds to spare. Plenty, but his position against Ivanchuk is looking desperate.

As the smoke clears, two of the four games are heading toward draws, while Ivanchuk and Gelfand press home their advantages. (How did Gelfand turn that one into a win?) Draws are an unfortunate feature of top-level chess. There’s a wide drawing margin in the game – even two knights can’t checkmate an enemy king alone. The result is that a third of all games end in draws. Chess isn’t yet interested in the idea of awarding three points for a win: grinding out a win from a drawish position doesn’t make for box office entertainment.

Carlsen seems happiest with his draw. Playing Black against his strong rival is likely to prove his most difficult game. At the press conference, the players reveal some of their at-board analysis, flinging out variations and moves even faster than the commentators had. They literally think in chess. “After Nb4 Qb6 I was thinking e5, but it feels too risky because d5 knight takes, with pressure on c4.”

Kramnik is asked whether he saw Nd5, Carlsen’s equalising move, in advance.

“Of course. It was the only move.”

Sloganeering

It’s no accident that slogans end up on book covers and campaign t-shirts. Slogans are the natural by-product of a shortform, connected world: the MVP of an idea, packaged to span the globe.

Of course, their concision also makes them dangerous: no nuance, no debate. Idea soon becomes ideology.

Ideological victims suffer a terrible cognitive bias: if the ideology fails, that’s because it wasn’t properly applied! I’ve heard this argument about Agile, austerity, personas, the Budapest Gambit, socialism, personas, 4-4-2, personas, and plenty more.

Sometimes it’s a valid counter. But sometimes we must argue that the idea in question is flawed. Since this admission would be highly embarrassing, most ideologues respond to criticism by retreating further into their beliefs.

Thus slogans reduce dimensions. They negate iteration, synthesis, and context: the things that matter.

Fuck all slogans, including this one.

On changing the world

Hellish other people

Not click. Not tap. Select.

Those inputs just won’t stay separate. Users used to tap phones and click mice. But the latest high-end devices combine the two, and it’s now highly likely your interface needs to be designed with both touch and mouse/trackpad in mind.

We all know that the language we use is critical for framing discussion. So as not to prioritise one input method over the other, I’ve been trying to modify my language to suit this multi-input world.

So, unless I’m sure only one applies, I’ve stopped saying “click” and “tap”. Instead, I say “select”.

The gradient chart

Here’s a little tool I’ve found useful when deciding whether to build a responsive site or a separate site for different devices (eg a mdot smartphone site to accompany a ‘full’ site).

1. Review the tasks that users want to perform on Device A. (If you don’t know these, get researching.) List them in priority order.
2. Repeat for Device B.
3. Put the two lists next to each other, and draw lines connecting identical tasks.

Then look at the diagram you just made.

If the connecting lines have shallow gradients – ie the tasks have similar priority on both devices – you have a good candidate for a responsive solution.

If the lines have steep gradients, the user needs on each device differ strongly. This is probably a better candidate for a separate site.

I call this a gradient chart. It’s pretty obvious, but it’s a nice technique for visualising something that can otherwise feel abstract. You can obviously extend the tool by doing a unique gradient chart for each persona, and so on.

Sphenisciform follows function

Now the occupants have migrated to their new facility 200m away, Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool of 1934 lies empty. Soggy leaves cwtch the corners, and watermarks drip down the paintwork. We’ll have to wait and see what London Zoo has planned for the pool, but given its Grade I status, it’ll doubtless be restored and repurposed.

It’s sad of course to see beautiful architecture neglected, but buildings can’t be the heroes of a zoo. London Zoo’s penguins are largely Humboldts and African, happier on tropical coasts than Antarctic tundra or modernist London concrete. The new facility, near the entrance, allows the colony to both thrive and act as a centrepiece for the zoo, at least until the new tiger enclosure is complete. (There is no universally accepted collective noun for penguins. Researchers at the 4th International Penguin Conference in Chile proposed “waddle” when the birds are on land, and “raft” when at sea. Since London Zoo’s new Penguin Beach features both land and water, I’ve chosen something more prosaic.) It even includes – to my childish envy – an enclosure whereby supplement-paying groups can meet the ‘guins, prodding fish toward them under the watchful eye of the staff.

It feels almost arrogant to approach building for animals with regard for entirely human axes such as aesthetics and style. Far better that the occupants can flourish somewhere architecturally unremarkable.