I read a lot of tech blogs and news websites. On an average day I probably filter through around 20-30 articles to keep myself up to date. It’s something that has become a natural part of my day and is essential in some ways to staying current, especially in the world of AI. I’ve even gone as far as creating an open source article collection app so I don’t miss anything (but I’ll write about that another day).

Today though, something in my brain just flipped. This morning was like any other. I opened a newsletter and clicked a link. It wasn’t even a subject I was specifically interested in - an XDA article about Docker containers - but I was skimming it for anything new that I could learn. But then I found myself engaged in a visual battle just trying to read the article.

Maybe I hadn’t had enough morning caffeine, but all I could see was adverts, an unrelated news video, shopping recommendations and links to other stories. Somewhere among them was the article I wanted to read but I could barely find it. I was really struggling to focus on it, and the more I scrolled the more frustrated I became.

And then every article I clicked after that compounded the annoyance. Shutting down and rejecting cookie notices. Scrolling past enormous header images. Shutting down annoying pop-up videos or trying to find the mute button. Attempts to shrink adverts at the bottom of the screen with annoying little close buttons, only resulted in accidentally clicking on the ad I was trying to avoid. One after the other. Pounding away at my patience like endless whack-a-mole.

Just let

Me

Read

THE ARTICLE!

This is nothing new of course. These frustrations have been around for well over a decade. It’s what products like Adblocker were created for - although they’re rarely effective. I think I’ve just become numb to the entire thing, and accepted it as the norm.

I remember listening to a talk at a web design conference in 2009 about usability and the frustrations of pop-ups. Everyone in the audience listened intently, laughed and grimaced through examples, then universally agreed that they would go away and try to make the internet a little bit better.

We failed.

Of course I get it. Ad revenue pays the bills. But marketing execs have forgotten that the reason why users actually return to websites is for the content, not the advertising noise. Nobody is jumping up and down because they’ve just seen an advert for Temu that’s rocked their world. By building in so many adverts web owners are actually reducing their chances of return visits.

So when the caffeine kicked in and this morning’s headache had subsided, I decided to run a little experiment. The hypothesis - how much of a typical tech website’s reading view is actually available for reading?

I say “I”, but in all honesty I should’ve said “AI”. I’m not bonkers (or wealthy) enough to spend hours trawling through websites and counting pixels. I had GPT-6 Astra do it for me.

I set out to compare article snapshots from eight technology publications - seven of the top 10 tech blogs in the world and XDA, the site that triggered this frustration in the first place. For the top seven, I asked GPT-6 (ultra if anyone’s vaguely interested) to select the first featured editorial article on each homepage. For XDA, I used the Docker article that set me off down this rabbit hole in the first place.

Working on the assumption that most of the blogs tend to have a trendy large header image, I requested that the snapshot began at the article’s first significant opening text. I wanted to look at general article readability. I requested for navigation and empty space to be disregarded, grouped adverts and self-promotion together as one (just to simplify the statistic), and counted supporting images/video relevant to the article separately.

The Register devoted the largest share to readable text: 65%, containing 237 visible words. The average person reads 238 words per minute - so the article had presented pretty much bang on a full minute’s worth of reading material. I know this doesn’t sound a lot, but from a digital engagement perspective that’s pretty impressive. Its promotional space only consisted of related-story recommendations, with no separate display advert visible. Big win for The Register.

At the other end of the spectrum, WIRED and XDA devoted approximately 85% of their pages to adverts and promotion. Their snapshots contained 48 and 64 readable article words respectively. Frankly that’s rubbish. Apparently the average sentence in the English language is 12-15 words. So on average in an article on a top rated tech website you’re only getting to see 3-5 sentences of actual text…and the rest is adverts.

The best website devoted two thirds of its screen real estate to readable article content. And the worst devoted only 15% of its estate to the actual thing you came to read. It makes me feel a little better about taking the time to look into this - it’s not just pre-caffeinated me, it’s actually bloody terrible.

Consider this in the context of watching your favourite hour-long TV show. 15% would be like sitting down for an hour, and then being forced to watch two minutes of adverts every 21 seconds.

9 minutes of Ted Lasso1. 51 minutes of adverts.

Let that sink in for a second. I did the maths on it way too many times. It’s shocking.

Do I even need to show the obligatory pint of beer and bar of chocolate comparison? Really? Oh go on then.

Now obviously this was an illustrative snapshot test, nothing particularly scientific. But it proved the point and reduced my annoyance by around 70%2. So next time you find yourself shutting down adverts and straining for content, ask yourself this, was this website really worth my time and effort? Because perhaps the best way to illustrate your frustration is by sourcing your news elsewhere.

I’m coming up to my one year anniversary on Substack. I moved across from Medium in 2025 simply because I longed for an open community of like-minded people who just enjoyed writing about the things they love. And my love, if you didn’t know already, is all things technology.

But quite early on I realised that the topics I enjoy weren’t always welcome here. My tribe was small and not always met with warmth. I hate to say it but there’s a level of literary snobbery and techno-fear on Substack that I hadn’t encountered before, and I’ve since chosen to ignore for my own sanity.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m content with being ignored. I just like to write, and it always surprises me when I find out that someone has actually read my articles. But when I hear something that I understand being blindly reviled by those seemingly jumping on a bandwagon out of fear, I see red. I have the mental image of a crowd of pitchfork waving peasants chasing after Frankenstein’s creature out of pure fear and ignorance.

The most prominent example of this, especially in creative communities, is the rise of AI.

My stance here is very simple. It’s just a tool. Grow up.

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At this point let me be clear. I’m not talking about intelligent debate of the environmental impact of AI, or the use of AI in warfare, or even the ethics behind the potential of a sentient AGI. I’m open to these subjects and encourage healthy discussion around them. What I’m talking about is the blind dismissal of the technology as if it’s something offensive that you need to scrape off your shoe. The supercilious banishment of those that are brave enough to admit that they used ChatGPT to bounce an idea around that they had.

To dismiss a technology because you believe it to be inferior to you, is frankly ridiculous. It’s a tool that is designed to help you, not replace you. To blame the technology because you have the quiet fear that it might eventually do something as well as you, makes you look like a child bullying a baby who is learning to walk. To exorcise it like a demon because you believe someone with less creativity than yourself might monetise it, well I’m afraid to say that’s just unadulterated insecurity.

AI is not here for your job and it’s not here to replace you as a creator. If you take a second to learn how you could use it intelligently, then perhaps you could even improve on your own creativity. Ask yourself this, how many times have you checked an online thesaurus, or checked a source on the internet to get a better understanding of a subject whilst writing? How many times have you run a spell check over your work? It’s no different. It’s just a tool. Albeit a million times more advanced.

But let me be clear once again – I get it. I understand why you feel this way.

I would hazard a guess that most people that complain about the rise of AI, are not actually offended by the technology itself (or at least wouldn’t be if they understood it more). What they’re outraged by is the way they’re seeing it being used by early adopting entrepreneurs and advertisers. The flood of AI slop that’s filling up Amazon, Instagram and even Spotify. Poorly written novellas, fake images designed to go viral, AI-written articles with no byline and nothing to say. It’s true that our social media feeds are now clogged with generated content optimised for engagement rather than truth. These exist not because the creator had something to express, but because the barrier to production had dropped and there was money to be made.

Social media is the biggest offender. I’m not someone who mistrusts it - I’ve been on Instagram for years and genuinely enjoy it. And look, I’m not entirely immune to AI generated content either - I actively encourage cat ninjas on my insta feed. I mean, who doesn’t love a cat ninja. But it’s becoming harder to ignore the fact that comment sections have turned into a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and fake news accusations.

It was a relatively safe space until quite recently. Not because I started seeing AI generated content on a daily basis, but because I’ve begun to read disturbing comments distrusting genuine content and encouraging human-created conspiracy theories. Science blogs showing photographs of the recent Artemis mission, are now flooded with comments like “This is AI. Don’t believe it. It’s all fake. We never went to the moon.”

And it’s not just the Artemis mission. I recently saw a short clip of Felix Baumgartner jumping from a platform in Earth’s stratosphere in 2012. An event I remember well as I watched it live with a group of friends in complete awe. In the comments...”This is AI”. The level of dumb has reached a new level.

It infuriates me. Insane conspiracy theories bundled together and sold as fact, simply because a technology has become so good that it occasionally fools you into believing something is real when it’s not. The level of distrust its misuse has created enrages me.

And there’s an erosion of trust in facts that really concerns me. There’s now a whole new generation growing up incapable of trusting what they see with their own eyes. That can’t look at footage of a man jumping from space in 2012 and believe it happened, simply because the internet has taught them that nothing is real. If you argue against it, you get shut down and told that it’s healthy scepticism, but for me it’s turning into something far more corrosive.

I recently saw a comment from a misguided individual who chose to argue in a comments section with a flat earther. They wrote simply “Read a book”. And the worrying but inevitable reply – “Hahaha you don’t trust books do you? How naïve are you?”. It appears that we are now no longer able to believe the entire of written human history because somebody made a video of a cat doing kung fu moves.

My frustrations stem from the misuse and misunderstanding, NOT the technology itself. Don’t be a techno-bigot by dismissing a technology that you could be embracing to better yourself, simply because others choose to use it in offensive and negative ways. If you think that you can ignore it and it will go away, you’re sadly mistaken, so reclaim the technology and make it your own.

Instead of condemning AI, consider what it could be good for. You’ve got a half-formed idea for a piece. You know roughly what you want to say but the shape isn’t there yet. You could use AI to talk it through. The emotionless friend that won’t steal your creative thunder. Use it as a critic that’s always there to bounce off.

The work is still yours. It’s still your voice and your idea. You don’t have moral regret when you use spellcheck, so why should you apologise for bouncing an idea or two around with a knowledgeable data source? I use AI every day, but my ideas are still mine and my prose is as crappy as it’s always been. So what if I use AI to help me edit my ramblings into something more coherent?

“Just because AI helped doesn’t mean AI did everything” sounds obvious when you say it out loud. But the current conversation doesn’t really allow for that nuance. It tends to collapse into a binary - either you used AI and therefore the work isn’t real, or you didn’t and it is. Which is a strange way to think about tools. Nobody questions whether the photographer who edits in Lightroom is being authentic. Or whether the writer who runs their draft past an editor is cheating. Everything you’ve seen or read in the last 30 years has in some way been edited using technology, this really is no different on the surface.

There are genuine concerns worth taking seriously. Bias in the models, ownership questions, companies using AI as cover to cut headcount rather than to genuinely improve their work, environmental waste, the list goes on. Those things need scrutiny. But that’s an entirely different conversation from whether AI has a place in a creative workflow.

Don’t criticise the microwave because the chef used it to dry their socks. Criticise the chef because that’s not what microwaves are for.

1

Please choose a password containing at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, one special character, one endangered bird species, two childhood ambitions and the name of the girl you fancied in R.E.

We’ve all been here. Squinting at the rules. Adding an exclamation mark. Realising you’ve now typed a password so secure even you can’t remember it. So you click "reset". Again.

It’s become a kind of game. Except no one’s winning, and the prize is logging into your water bill.

Naturally at some point, someone in Silicon Valley decided we needed something better. So now, we have… passkeys.

What are they? Excellent question. I have absolutely no idea.

They just showed up one day and I went with it. They worked, so I smiled politely and kept walking - like a bouncer vaguely recognised my face and waved me through. Just go with it. It worked. You’re in. Don’t ask too many questions.

Apparently they’re tied to your device. Or your fingerprint. Or maybe your soul. I’m now slowly beginning to worry about what was in the Terms & Conditions that I casually approved that time1. But they feel safer, and you get in quicker, which I guess is an important thing.

Then there’s biometrics - fingerprints, face scans, retinal patterns. All very sleek. Until you remember that you only get one of each, and if someone steals it… well, you can’t exactly grow a new thumb. Maybe I’ve watched too many mid-90s science fiction movies, but I have an irrational fear that maybe one day Wesley Snipes will rock up and attempt to skewer my eyeball on the end of a pencil, in order to steal the £37.502 in my bank account.

Sometimes my face doesn’t match because I’ve put on glasses, got up the wrong way, or simply lost the will to live. Other times, I gently press my finger to the sensor, only to be told it’s not me - like my own phone is gaslighting me.

Take.

My.

Thumb.

TAKE IT.

And just when I think I’ve outsmarted the system by choosing a decent password and remembering it, I type it in… and I’m told I can’t reuse an old password.

So I did remember it. And now you’re just punishing me for it.

We’ve designed these systems like digital obstacle courses. CAPTCHAs ask us to identify motorcycles or traffic lights, except they’re as low-res as humanly possible and screenshotted from a 1980s b-movie. "Select all squares that contain a chimney." Is that a chimney or a blurry thumb? Define "chimney" please, because that sticky-uppy-bit could easily be something else. Why am I doubting my own reality? At least have the decency to stick Dick Van Dyke on top of it so I can stop guessing.

I’ve clicked things that weren’t bicycles just to get on with my day. It hurts my soul. I’ve failed humanity’s Turing test more times than I can count.

Then of course there’s the two-factor authentication code that arrives on your other device while you’re already mid-login panic. Shit, the Teams meeting’s started and it’s logged me out. You grab your phone. Open the message. Read the code. Return to the screen. It’s expired.

Try again.

Now the app has logged you out.

Start over.

All this is for what? Lindsey from accounts doesn’t mind if I don’t turn up. And does viewing my gas bill from 2021 really require military-grade encryption?

Look I get it. I do. Security is important. But the way we do it feels less like trust and more like suspicion. Every login is an interrogation. Every reset is a punishment for not remembering the elaborate riddle you invented six months ago while stressed and slightly drunk.

What’s strange is how we’ve all just accepted it. We click "I forgot my password" like we’re at confession. Then we nod when asked to verify ourselves three times, as if we’re applying for citizenship, not checking a calendar invite. And don’t even get me started on the number of times I’ve ticked "remember me on this device." I’m looking at you, Microsoft. LIARS.

It’s not that I want less security. I just want a little less hostility. I want the systems I use every day to recognise me without suspicion. To greet me like I’m a regular, not a stranger with bad intentions and a suspect browser history. Hey welcome back, pull up a seat, the usual? No problem, I’ve got you.

Maybe that’s why passkeys are quietly brilliant, even if we don’t quite understand them yet. They say: "We know it’s you. Come on in". There’s something comforting in that.

Because the truth is, most people aren’t trying to break into anyone else’s account. We’re just trying to get through the day. To pay the bills and read our emails. Live our digital lives without being asked to prove, yet again, that we can recognise a traffic light.

You’d think just one. But as with most things in digital, the answer is never as simple as it seems.

Let’s break this down. The client has asked for the lightbulb to be changed. Assemble people. Can we get something out today? Is the lightbulb in scope for this sprint? Who owns the socket? Does it need to go through design? Has someone raised a support ticket, or are we just talking about changing it?

The client believes it’s a simple request, but I’m just not sure they’re seeing the whole picture here.

The front-end dev opens the office spec spreadsheet to check if light fittings are part of their remit. The back-end dev mutters something about the cabling being legacy. DevOps says they’ll need to install a new fitting - but only once someone’s completed the correct change request and confirmed the fuseboard can take it.

The accessibility lead gently reminds everyone that we shouldn’t rely on light as the only means of conveying information. They’re absolutely right. But now someone’s suggesting haptics. Or maybe a floor buzzer.

Slow it down guys, act cool, the stakeholders are coming in and we don’t want to get them over-excited.

The Product Owner asks if there’s any user research proving people actually need light. The developers roll their eyes. Security insists we conduct a risk assessment before touching anything electrical and starts quoting regulations that’s got everyone confused. Marketing wants to make sure the light reflects the brand tone - “Can we take another look at that shade of white?”. Legal’s unsure we can even call it a “bulb” until someone checks the trademark register. Compliance suggests we really ought to be switching to LED bulbs to meet the latest eco guidelines.

We haven’t changed the bulb yet, but the Miro board is looking fantastic.

At this point, someone whispers, “We really should workshop this properly”

Everyone takes a breather and steps out for lunch.

The afternoon session starts with a bang. A couple of the leads stayed back during lunch break to get some stuff down in a living document. A new initiative launches to standardise lighting across the building. They call it ‘Lightbulb-as-a-Service’. There’s talk of a shared lighting platform, a centralised switchboard, and someone starts sketching wireframes. A logo is designed. There’s a roadmap.

The bulb change is re-scoped as Phase 2.

Design wants to standardise bulb shapes across all rooms. Compliance reminds them it must be LED. There’s concern about “bulb inconsistency”, and a Slack channel called #light-strategy quietly springs to life.

QA gets involved. The developers roll their eyes again.

They calmly explain that we’ll need a test plan. A matrix is created covering dim, bright, flickering, and strobe. Someone raises a support ticket for strange shadows in certain corners. Another flags that the light appears to “jump” when the door opens too quickly.

The team agrees the bulbs must be accessible. Suggestions include an audible chime when the light turn on, textured labels for the switches, and a small sign explaining what the lights are for.

The plan is presented to the stakeholders. They nod and listen to the presentation and seem to enjoy the brand video. They’re excited, they congratulate the team, but they point out the room is still dark and ask for the plan to be stripped back. Maybe just make the bulb a little bigger.

It’s getting late and we need to keep the energy up, but the team are disheartened by the stakeholder meeting. The boss orders pizza from the new place on the high street. The devs want a Mighty Meaty, the designers want a spicy vegetarian and we’d better get a plant-based cheese for the strategist or whoever else wants it (nobody).

Ok. It’s time to take this back to basics. Let’s just get this one done and if we do a good job then maybe we can get a phase 2 out of it. Order the bulb.

Turns out the existing bulb was installed ten years ago. No one ever replaced it - or questioned whether it still worked.

Procurement is looped in and we’re told we can’t just buy a new bulb - it has to be sourced through the approved supplier. But the supplier doesn’t stock that model anymore. Finance raises a purchase order for the newer model. Legal needs to review the warranty and the energy performance certificate. It could turn into a late one. Someone suggests picking one up from B&Q - they’re open late on a Thursday - but no one’s sure if that’s allowed under the current procurement framework.

It’s 10pm. Someone from Facilities walks in.

“I’ve changed the bulb,” they say.

The room goes quiet.

Someone quietly says, “We probably could’ve just changed it this morning.”

“But hey, at least we’ve got a roadmap for next time.”

Written by Stu Collett – web veteran & recovering perfectionist.
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I spend hours getting the stuff that really matters right. Making sure everything works for keyboard users. Keeping page weight down so everything’s speedy. Locking down privacy settings so personal data doesn’t spill all over the place. Trying to ensure content is actually… well, readable. It all takes time, thought, and more often than not, compromise.

Most developers do this, even though it inflates a project hugely. But then when we’re done, we’re actively encouraged to bury the evidence like a shameful secret.

Accessibility controls should be tucked away in some half-visible corner, because they can’t get in the way of the design. Security? Reduced to a padlock or a logo that no one notices. Green credentials can have a link, or if you’re lucky, a sentence, in the footer.

Strange, isn’t it? The parts of our work that arguably matter most - the ones rooted in care, responsibility, ethics - end up hidden like admin. Something we have to do, but wouldn’t want to draw attention to. We just sort of whisper it. As if being respectful to people - their time, their choices, their needs - is something to keep quiet about.

Somehow over the last 30 years we’ve built up this odd digital culture where the most meaningful things are the least visible. They’re no longer things to proudly shout about, but instead an admin checklist afterthought.

Accessibility controls (when developers are given the time to put them in place) are often buried in settings menus. And yet they’re not for the minority, they could help anybody. Sustainability might get a token mention in a blog post, even though energy efficiency is potentially the biggest global issue the world is facing at the moment. Security doesn’t get a mention at all unless something breaks. If everything’s working, it disappears into the background like some kind of masked superhero.

We’ve been conditioned to treat these things as chores. Necessary, yes - but not worthy of attention. They’re seen as not exciting. Not beautiful. Just ticks in a box.

And yet they protect, include and respect us. They’re the result of deliberate, thoughtful choices - usually made quietly, without much thanks, by people seen as blockers. People often the butt of jokes or the receivers of eye rolls.

It’s not just odd to me, I actually find it quite offensive. We celebrate flashy transitions and clever branding tweaks, but barely mention the work that keeps users safe, included and informed. The stuff that actually matters is getting left out of the case studies. Too dull, obviously.

But it’s not dull. It’s just not going to win you a design award.

And maybe that’s the problem.

There’s a quiet beauty in ethical UX that rarely gets acknowledged. The kind that earns trust through clarity. Interfaces that don’t manipulate, buttons that do what they say, text you can actually read instead of being swamped by adverts. It’s almost impossible to find forms that don’t try to trick you nowadays. I’m sick to death of re-reading the ticked boxes at the bottom of forms to see whether I’m opting in or out to spam newsletters, because they’ve been written as double negatives.

☑ I do not wish to opt out of declining to stop receiving the newsletter.

Just fuck off already. I just want to buy a t-shirt.

Modern development is missing a kind of digital decency. When it’s done well, you feel it. You might not notice straight away, but it shows up in how calm the experience feels. How much easier it is to breathe. To focus. To leave a page without feeling nudged into the wrong decision. To read something without being shouted at by autoplaying videos and in-your-face advertising.

We’ve been told that ethics and creativity sit on opposite ends of a spectrum - as if you can either be responsible or exciting, but not both. But that’s absolute nonsense. Ethical design isn’t the opposite of good design. It is good design. It’s design that actually gives a damn.

And we should be shouting it from the rooftops, not just meeting a standard and moving on, but actually treating it like craft. It’s something to be proud of. If we’re building with care, why are we hiding that care?

Then there’s the flip side of the coin. Agencies that dress themselves up in “we don’t just produce sexy designs, we care about our users” tuxedos. And then when you work with them you realise just how full of shit they actually are. They talk the talk like Great Thunberg with a design degree. But when it comes to actually walk the walk, they strut out with a limp because they’ve got a solid hard on for your marketing team. They don’t respect you as a user, they just want a shiny trophy and big cheque.

Dark patterns are everywhere - dressed up as clever UX, when really they’re just plain manipulative. They’re designed around analytics funnels and mailing lists. Your data is what they’re after, and yet they get celebrated for their achievements in advertising. The web has become all about boosting metrics.

But what if we called that out more often? Not with outrage, or with substack rants like this, that (let’s be honest) nobody will ever read1. With quiet confidence. This isn’t how we should do things. And more importantly: Look how good it can be when we don’t.

Imagine a project that leads with its ethics as part of the aesthetic. Big, clear buttons that your massive thumb can hit without spiralling you into advertising hell. Opt-ins that actually feel optional. Proud sustainability stats upfront. A privacy policy that doesn’t read like a trap, and you can actually understand without having to get ChatGPT to give it a once over. Not as a gimmick. Not for applause. Just because we know it’s better to be honest, kind and trustworthy.

I grew up being told the golden rule - “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Treat others as you’d like to be treated. Nobody of sane mind would disagree with that in the real world, so it’s about time we aspire to bring it into our digital lives. Aspire to wear your ethics openly, without apology. Create experiences that say: we thought about you when we made this. We tried to do the right thing, even if you never notice.

Written by Stu Collett – web veteran & recovering perfectionist.
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In the cultural sector, digital still too often gets treated like a side dish - useful, necessary even, but never the main event. Something to quietly “make available online” after the real thing’s done. The mindset is archival, not experiential - a focus on what’s there rather than how it feels to engage with it. And that shows.

The result? Clean, well-behaved virtual tours. Digitised artefacts in tasteful grids. Video panels explaining context in gentle, reassuring tones. Technically sound. Emotionally vacant.

We talk about digital like it’s a limitation.

“We can’t quite recreate the atmosphere.”
“It’s hard to replicate the magic of being there.”
“We’ve translated the exhibition as best we can.”

But here’s the thing: the web isn’t a translation tool. It’s not a photocopier. It’s a medium in its own right - rich, layered, sensory in its own way. The problem isn’t that digital lacks the power to move people. The problem is we rarely give it permission to.

Part of that comes down to legacy thinking. Many institutions still see digital as a broadcast tool - a way to extend visibility, distribute information, log the archive. It’s not there to hold meaning. It’s not trusted to carry complexity. In some places, it’s barely trusted at all.

And so the real decisions - the creative risks, the emotional moments, the ideas that might raise an eyebrow - those tend to stay in the room. In the gallery. On the stage. Digital picks up the leftovers. A documentation pass. A backup.

Some of that comes from fear. Once something’s online, it’s permanent, right? It can be shared, misquoted, screenshotted. And that makes people cautious. But caution is no excuse for making something dull. A grid of objects with polite captions might be safe, but it’s not memorable. It’s not moving. And if we’ve decided digital should only ever be neutral and tidy, then we’ve misunderstood its potential entirely.

Prior to my career in web, I spent over a decade working as a live sound engineer - mostly for music, but often in crossover spaces too. Touring theatre productions, temporary exhibitions, private art installations - places where the lighting and audio were just as carefully tuned as the artwork. These weren’t just technical gigs. They were exercises in atmosphere. Sometimes it was subtle: a low hum under a lighting shift, a barely audible loop in an installation room. Other times it was bolder - audio that swelled, startled, echoed, unsettled.

We didn’t think of these things as “content”. They were part of the architecture. You didn’t watch them. You absorbed them.

And that’s what I keep coming back to when I see digital projects that still treat the web as a second-tier format. Culture doesn’t need to be “translated” for digital. It needs to be reimagined.

This doesn’t mean VR headsets and interactive 3D models for every exhibition. Sometimes the most powerful digital experiences are the simplest - a single story told well, a moment of silence designed in. But they only happen when we think with the medium - not around it.

If you start with “how do we get this online?”, you’ll likely end up with something flat.
If you start with “how might someone feel when they encounter this?”, you might get something worth staying for.

And maybe that’s the shift that needs to happen. Not just better tools, or better funding - but better instincts. A move away from digital as documentation, and toward digital as encounter. Not just a place to store meaning, but a place to create it.

The best digital work I’ve seen lately didn’t ask for permission. It led with feeling. It invited risk. That’s the work I want to see more of - and be part of.

Because the web isn’t holding us back. We are.

Written by Stu Collett – web veteran & recovering perfectionist.
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I clicked through three different cultural websites last week – and honestly, I couldn’t tell you which was which. Same layout. Same nav. Same polite welcome message in 16px grey. A homepage carousel shuffling through upcoming events, a big hero banner with barely enough contrast, and maybe – if they were feeling wild – an animated gradient on the newsletter signup.

Somewhere along the way, we streamlined our way into a kind of polite digital beige.

And to be fair, I get it. Templates make things quicker. Frameworks keep things consistent. Design systems reduce risk. These are sensible things. Responsible, even. Especially if you’re working in the public sector, or with tight budgets, or juggling five stakeholders and a CMS that’s allergic to creativity.

But still. I miss the weirdness.

I’m not talking about spinning logos and Comic Sans footers (although, let’s be honest, a few of those old sites were oddly joyful). I’m talking about a certain... texture. Personality. That feeling you’d get from stumbling across a page that didn’t quite behave, but made you smile anyway. Where someone clearly tried something. Even if it broke a bit in Netscape.

Now, so many digital experiences – especially the worthy ones – feel like they’ve been pressed from the same mould. Accessible. Responsive. Usable. But somehow lacking presence. No quirks, no surprises, no real sense of the people behind the pixels.

It’s not that standardisation is bad. Quite the opposite – shared patterns and practices help level the playing field. Accessibility especially benefits from that consistency, and it’s more achievable than ever. Performance can be baked in from the start. And design systems can empower teams instead of boxing them in – when done well.
But accessibility doesn’t mean things have to be boring. You can still be creative – and still be inclusive.

But I do worry that in chasing best practice, we’ve started filtering out personality by default. Because it’s safer. Less effort. Less debate. More “efficient.”

What gets lost in that trade is subtle but cumulative. Interfaces that feel sterile. Content that’s polite but bloodless. A digital presence that ticks all the right boxes but doesn’t leave a mark.

Maybe it’s time we brought back a bit of bravery.

Not wholesale reinvention – no one’s asking for dancing hamsters to make a comeback. But small things. A bolder colour choice. A playful heading. A layout that breaks rhythm on purpose. Moments of warmth or mischief or humanity that remind you this wasn’t made by a committee of robots.

There’s still room for originality, even inside a framework. There’s still space for craft, even on a deadline. It just takes a team that values it – or maybe just someone brave enough to ask “does it have to look like this?”

Written by Stu Collett – web veteran & recovering perfectionist.
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We spend a lot of time talking about the future of the web - and most of the time, it’s about speed. Faster load times. Faster transactions. Faster ways to squeeze a few more minutes from our overstretched lives. Speed has become the drumbeat behind every new tool, every keynote, every project launch.

Speed equals progress. Right?

Except... I’m not sure that's the future we actually need. Or even really want.

When I think about the web I want my daughter to grow up with, I don't picture her racing through websites that anticipate her every click and decision before she's had time to think. I picture her having time to think. To read. To wander a little. To get lost, in a good way. To feel safe enough to be curious.

Maybe even - and it sounds almost radical to say it out loud - to feel seen as a human being rather than a datapoint.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth: faster often means more extractive. More frantic. Less space for care, for accessibility, for those slower, quieter needs that don't tend to fit into quarterly KPIs. It's not just that we move quickly - it's that we stop noticing who gets left behind.

Somewhere along the way, "progress" became synonymous with shaving milliseconds off page loads and automating human moments out of existence. Signing up. Checking out. Logging in. Logging out. Faster, faster, faster.

But what are we actually rushing towards? And who benefits from that speed? It's not always the users. It’s not always us.

When we optimise everything for velocity, we risk building digital spaces that are technically impressive but emotionally empty. Efficient but joyless. Imposing, even. Spaces that demand our attention without earning it, that push us to react before we've had a chance to feel.

And it’s not sustainable, either. The relentless pursuit of speed feeds bigger, hungrier systems - ones that consume more data, more energy, more of our mental bandwidth. It asks us to be constantly available, constantly adaptable, constantly "on."

The future I want to help build is one where kindness is baked in, not bolted on as a reluctant accessibility statement or a post-hoc ethical review.

Websites and services that are thoughtful as much as they are efficient. Where friction isn’t always seen as a flaw, but sometimes as a deliberate invitation to pause. To reflect. To properly engage.

Not slower for the sake of it - but slower where it matters.

Where a service takes an extra beat to explain itself clearly, rather than railroading you through assumptions. Where content is designed for understanding, not just for SEO. Where the humans behind the technology actually acknowledge the humans using it.

Because technology doesn't have to be a race. It can be a conversation. It can be a craft. It can be a community.

Maybe the real next frontier isn't a faster web at all. Perhaps it's a kinder one.

Written by Stu Collett – web veteran & recovering perfectionist.
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