Wake Up Excited!

Andy Clarke shares what excites him lately, sparking memories of his early photography career and frequent trips to Schaffhausen. His pivot from art school and darkroom work into technical sales, and lessons about good selling as an art of solving real problems. The discussion moves to creative storytelling on the web, focus and distraction habits, challenges with open-plan offices, and how he’s built a work life around late-night rhythms and self-managed attention. Clarke also reflects on family history, his father’s suicide and trauma, changing views on mental health and heredity, and a desire to do more consequential political or social work while relearning how to create for pleasure. Topics: (00:00) - Introduction (01:17) - Rebuilding The Sinar Camera (08:28) - Pre Digital Car Shoots (14:28) - Sales Lessons That Stick (27:15) - Storytelling On The Web (37:10) - Writing Needs Silence (48:45) - Designing Your Rhythm with ADHD (01:08:01) - Turning 60 Reflections (01:12:36) - Mr Rogers Envy (01:17:49) - Providing vs Purpose (01:25:30) - Objects as Memory Anchors (01:40:43) - Music Picks and Billy Bragg (01:45:42) - Where to Follow Links:Up (2009 film) Love Story (1970 film) Philadelphia (1993 film) Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Mister Rogers biography Billy Bragg Motörhead Meat Loaf Led Zeppelin Miranda Lambert Megan Moroney The Rolling Stones Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Wilco Woody Guthrie Bat Out of Hell Between the Wars Power in a Union Unfinished Business stuffandnonsense.co.uk Sinar P2 Schneider Super-Angulon IWC Schaffhausen Rolex Hermès Rickenbacker Gibson Les Paul iPod Classic Game Boy Tiffany & Co. Amazon David Hockney Jeremy Keith Preston North End F.C.

We’re finding renewed excitement for discovering music through going to gigs and reflecting on how live shows offer an irreplaceable shared experience. The discussion shifts to the indie web, hyperlink culture, and how social platforms and chatbots reduce discoverability, while AI could lower barriers to building websites but raises concerns about credit, control, hosting complexity, and accessibility. Topics: (00:00) - What has you waking up excited? (01:03) - Music and Travel (07:16) - Owning Music Again (10:59) - Re-discovering the Indie Web (15:19) - AI for Personal Websites (23:47) - Accessible Defaults and Standards (39:02) - Web Trends Come Full Circle (43:02) - Smaller Models Better Choices (53:38) - Accessibility Positivity vs Policing (01:10:10) - Assistive Tech vs Novelty Use (01:12:42) - Music Picks Links: ◉ Songkick ◉ Bandcamp ◉ Open UI ◉ W3C ◉ How People with Disabilities Use the Web (W3C) ◉ WCAG / WCAG 3 ◉ CSS Day ◉ Green Web Foundation ◉ Green Software Foundation ◉ hidde.blog ◉ State of the Browser ◉ Massive Attack ◉ IJsland — Dutch punk/hip-hop ◉ James Blake — Trying Times ◉ React ◉ Tailwind CSS ◉ Bootstrap

Brad chats with Miriam Suzanne about pottery, theater, CSS, and why we shouldn’t just accept AI as the way. Miriam describes their through-line as collaborative creativity across pottery, theater, client work, and CSS standards, arguing process shapes results and that CSS is inherently collaborative with users, browsers, and devices. She critiques rigid notions of originality and authenticity, emphasizing growth and multiplicity. Miriam rejects “results over process” arguments, challenges claims of democratization amid surveillance, environmental costs, and corporate control, and calls for collective agency to imagine and build better tools and systems. Topics: (00:00) - Waking Up Excited (02:26) - Returning to Pottery (04:51) - Theater as Hybrid Art (07:00) - Inviting the Audience In (11:14) - Questioning Authenticity (17:20) - Theater in Prisons (28:36) - Facilitating Collaboration Everywhere (38:06) - Why CSS Feels Fuzzy (53:01) - AI for Early Prototypes (01:01:05) - Fix Orgs Not Tools (01:08:10) - Using AI Without Hype (01:17:40) - Uneasy Benefits Tradeoff (01:26:10) - AI's Original Sin And Accountability (01:36:28) - Vision And Agency (01:45:22) - Music Recommendation (01:48:09) - Where To Follow And CSS Courses Links:oddbird.net grapefruitlab.com miriamsuzanne.com courses.oddbird.net Balsamiq Harvest Claude ChatGPT Discord The Rolling Stones Velvet Underground Lou Reed Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk) Maggot Brain by Funkadelic Teacup Gorilla Emily Rogers "Franchise" by Isaac Asimov Walt Whitman John Allsopp — "Dao of Web Design" Busch Gardens Riverdance "12 Angry Men" Timnit Gebru Emily Bender

Scott Jenson joins Brad to chat about how UX designers thrive in ambiguity and why wrestling with confusing, failing experiments, especially around AI, can signal real progress. The conversation covers open source’s multiplier effect, the need for sustainable funding, and Scott’s work with Mastodon. Jenson also describes practical AI value for prototyping and coding, while emphasizing nuance, trust, and asking questions over online pile-ons. Topics: (00:00) - Why Ambiguity Excites (06:33) - Designers and the Messy Unknown (10:45) - Tech vs Capitalism (14:23) - Compromise and Stability (18:29) - Fixing Social Media Conversations (28:50) - Persistence and Craft Over Time (36:29) - Open Source as a Model (39:48) - Mastodon and Lowering Costs (46:54) - Consulting and Client Trust (52:38) - Designers vs Programmers (01:08:02) - Open Web vs AI Incentives (01:15:51) - Music Picks (01:19:22) - Where to Find Scott Jenson Links: ◉ Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin ◉ The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt ◉ Finding Nemo (Pixar, 2003) ◉ Jurassic Park (1993) ◉ Die Hard (1988) ◉ Pluribus (Apple TV+) ◉ Take Five – Dave Brubeck (Time Out album) ◉ Fleeting Future by Aksumi ◉ Sax Pax for a Sax by Moondog

Paul and Brad discuss how AI has reintroduced “Wild West” chaos to the web, which Paul finds energizing after years of predictable maturity in the industry. Drawing parallels to past disruptions like desktop publishing, CSS/web standards, and the dot-com bust, Paul argues that panic about AI replacing specialists will settle as organizations realize quality still matters. They emphasize learning through sharing, rejecting performative content marketing, and valuing humility over guru certainty. The conversation explores consulting as amplifying in-house teams’ knowledge, the need to adapt rigid UX processes, and how AI can help democratize UX by empowering non-specialists through playbooks, design systems, and easier access to research. Paul shares how he intentionally built a lifestyle business enabling RV travel, and closes on resilience, change, and optimism. Topics: (00:00) - Hello Chaos (04:10) - Tech Cycles And Jobs (07:27) - Letting Go To Grow (11:01) - Learning By Sharing (25:07) - Process Myths In UX (35:42) - Democratizing UX With AI (43:47) - AI As Meeting Facilitator (59:19) - Kill Handoff With AI (01:04:40) - Is Paul Retiring? (01:13:46) - Business Serves Life (01:33:16) - What Music Does Paul Want You to Know About? Links: ◉ Jeffrey Zeldman ◉ Ethan Marcotte ◉ Steve Krug ◉ Jakob Nielsen ◉ boagworld.com ◉ Atomic Design ◉ Starlink ◉ Perplexity ◉ Material Design ◉ Double Diamond design process ◉ Desktop publishing history ◉ Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band ◉ Against the Wind (Spotify) ◉ Against the Wind (YouTube)