Continuously improve user experience: meaningfully finishing software features #product hilton.org.uk/blog/ux-impr...

It's March, which means it's one month to April Cools, which means time to start writing *something* www.aprilcools.club

UXsky: how do we feel about perky greetings and messages in software UI? Does a ‘Good morning – here’s your inbox!’ and a ‘Well done – you’ve submitted the form!’ work, even though software-generated and therefore fake. Or do the humans roll their eyes, and resent being patronised? #UX

Progressive organisations moved from word-processors to wikis 20 years ago, and stopped using PowerPoint. Sadly, these moves didn’t become universal.

Software quality is a decision: casual software and software products worth paying for #product hilton.org.uk/blog/softwar...

Picard programming tip: The first version of any software will be buggy. That's why so many holodeck programs try to kill you.

Ok, so I wrote a very long and kinda personal thing about existential dread and the end of programming, and I'm not really sure I want to endure the discourse, but if you want to read it, it's here - gist.github.com/davidwhitney... It's like 6,000 words long, sorry.

Normalise search query characters: searching for Türkiye #data #DDD hilton.org.uk/blog/search-...

Starting product discovery: how to bootstrap understanding customer needs #product #management hilton.org.uk/blog/discovery

Meanwhile in transport SF&F 🚄

2025 H2 startup company ideas: another half a year, more free ideas #startups hilton.org.uk/blog/startup...

Are corporate email footers’ legal disclaimers ✨graffiti for legal teams✨?

Consumer SaaS review: The StoryGraph: the independent book tracker #books #reading #review hilton.org.uk/blog/thestor...

How to work with me: a remote work user guide #collaboration hilton.org.uk/blog/work-wi...

Track unread books: solving another domestic inventory management problem #books #reading hilton.org.uk/blog/track-b...

Curate an unread books collection: establishing varied options for what to read next #books #reading hilton.org.uk/blog/curate-...

🇳🇴 so hear me out, what if Smash were sweet, salty, crunchy… 🌶️and spicy🌶️?!

Get an unread-books bookcase: the joy of accommodating ‘too many’ books #books #reading hilton.org.uk/blog/unread-...

Awkward silence inspires the existence of comfortable silence

Accumulate unread books: why your wish list doesn’t belong in a database #books #reading hilton.org.uk/blog/unread-...

I’m in this picture and I like it 😀

What has more potential to improve software quality, in enterprise software development? Better code quality, or better data quality? 🤔

Document trade-offs and compromises – Northern Europe’s crimes against Italian cuisine #documentation #cooking hilton.org.uk/blog/documen...

Minimum viable inventory management: using Apple Notes to manage supermarket orders #product hilton.org.uk/blog/invento...

Startup idea: solve the problem of accidentally taking a job at a company that uses 20 year-old software tools, instead of modern alternatives. For example, create a job-board that lets you filter on usage of the most-loved and most-hated B2B software products.

Startup idea: solve the problem of pet-feeding drama, when putting the clocks back suddenly makes meals one hour 'late'. For example, program automatic pet feeders to gradually phase out daylight savings time over the course of several weeks.

🇳🇱 Coolhaven, Rotterdam

Why do product managers so often fail to sustain interesting conversations in online (and sometimes offline) communities, compared to, say, developers? Correct answers only, please 😅 #product

Domestic inventory management tooling: the ultimate nerd shopping list #product hilton.org.uk/blog/invento...

🇳🇱 Linker Rottekade, Rotterdam

Deconstructed inventory management: the basis for a home information management project #product hilton.org.uk/blog/invento...

What’s a software product that got significantly better at its core value proposition, over time, while avoiding complexity and bloat caused by adding ways to serve a larger market?

Startup idea: solve the problem of Excel thinking everything’s a date. Make a spreadsheet that’s completely normal, except that dates are only ever in an ISO 8601 date format, and anything else is never interpreted as a date.

Domestic inventory management: optimising supermarket home delivery #product hilton.org.uk/blog/invento...

If only there were a software product development discipline that focused on maximising meaningful impact 😅

Dear readers, I would like you to know that: 1. I wrote a four-part series about my supermarket shopping list 2. I’ll publish the first part on my blog tomorrow 3. I’m not sorry 😅

Why do so many testers think they aren’t enough? That they should be ashamed of their role? That they should be called something different in order to get the respect they desire and deserve? Well, I can venture a guess! www.maaikebrinkhof.nl/why-do-so-ma...

Startup idea: Rate My OKRs / Roast My OKRs 🔥 #product

Startup idea: solve the (taboo) problem of source attribution in legal contracts. For example, use stylometry and similar natural language analysis to trace the source of specific contract clauses 😈 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylome...

Feature intelligence: a thought experiment about feature lifecycle visibility #product hilton.org.uk/blog/feature...

💡 Saturday tip: I have just used a dental soft pick to clean the compacted fluff from my phone’s charging socket, with damaging the connectors. Now it reliably starts charging when I plug it in ⚡️

Own a car, but are tired of paying tax on fuel? Reclassify it as an aircraft and get your fuel tax free. https://wewinganycar.com/

Laughing here in the back at @maritvandijk.bsky.social and @peterhilton.bsky.social talk at #JFall 😂!!! Indeed essential programming jokes collected by these two!

Slides for our ‘Essential programming jokes’ #JFall presentation just now: hilton.org.uk/presentation...

New HTTP API error response status - Tonny Garić at #JFall

Looking forward to doing not one, but two talks at @nljug.bsky.social #JFall this week, one of which is a new talk (😱!) with cospeaker @hilton.org.uk. Will I see you there?

Programming joke cycles: joke variation templates’ different purposes #programming #humour hilton.org.uk/blog/program...

People in companies are allowed to benefit from and enjoy hanging out together, even after a project no longer needs it. I suppose it can be called a ‘book club’ or something if it needs legitimacy 💡

What’s the third binary number *called* (0, 1, 10, …)? How do you pronounce it? Is it ‘three’, because we name the natural numbers as concepts, separate from their representations in base-10 or base-2? Is it ‘ten’, because number names assume base-10, and there is no number ‘three’ in base-2?

Curate a product feedback database: where so-called product ‘feature requests’ belong #product #management hilton.org.uk/blog/product...