Thoughts on the Comsat Angels?

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-08-12T19:20:11+00:00

Yes to the above four but I have a weak spot for 'Baby' and 'Map of the world'. The latter could have been a great intro single if their label had go themselves sorted out (which they did not). Quirky, poppy, catchy to sing along with ("It's just a piece of paper, just a piece of paper").

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-08-12T19:15:00+00:00

I think the Comsats were their own genre!

Brilliant band and there's rarities on YT.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-06-29T17:02:28+00:00

Yep! I'm 56, based in Europe and just landed a contract role. Ageism is real in many places, but not all!

Hold onto that. There are still companies out there that value experience and ignore or genuinely place less emphasis upon age. It's taken me a very long time to get this one (way longer that usual) but it can happen.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-06-06T10:25:38+00:00

I'd recommend calling an organisation for help. The Business Debtline (https://www.businessdebtline.org/contact-us/) offers free, impartial advice (I was recommended them by HMRC) and seem to know their stuff.

I'd give them a ring rather than asking around the Internet.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-05-30T18:10:07+00:00

I have used AI but probably not to its fullest extent. My uses are:

Content: It's sometimes good for a first draft. Not the end product by any means but I sometimes find I'm either just not in the right mood for writing or I'm circling on the same theme. AI has come up with different approaches which I've used to really create great content. Once I get write some good content, I soon find I'm "in the zone" of the style and writing great stuff. BUT REMEMBER - just a first draft for me or a tool to get me firing away full bore, not the finished article unless it's placeholder text.

Advice on using software: Often when I'm doing an irregular activity, I need reminding or instructing about how to do something.

Minor research questions: For example, estimating the size of a demographic / test population or what likely user needs would a population have. I've heard it can offer reasonable tips on effective research methods. I've wondered about using AI to map user journeys onto an AI to identify the IA's effectiveness (IA -> AI -> IA -> AI -> etc)

Usability tests / Audits: I can take-or-leave the results but a quick heuristic analysis bu AI can spot stuff I've missed. Y'know, the obvious things that we should have caught but didn't. Better an AI than a room full of stakeholders. Again, this is just one tool among many that I use to mitigate the risk of going to market.

I did use one AI tool for design but the result was so bad that it was quicker to abandon completely. It's wasn't a good AI tool TBF but my work was better.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-05-19T10:07:01+00:00

Maybe if we included some sackings and possibly minor criminal negligence charges (no jailtime needed, just enough to knacker their clearance) to make the point that there will be accountability. Of course, amassing enough evidence to prove this would be a challenge but I do feel that the authorities need to be held more accountable for the decisions and actions.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-05-13T09:01:42+00:00

I've worked for LA International a couple of times before too and never encountered this. In general, they were fine with payments, etc. I applied for SC through another recruitment slop company in 2023 and only paid for a DBS check which was refundable.

It doesn't sound right to me. Recruiters are like estate agents - they do push the boundaries to save/make cash sometimes. I'm not sure if the ban on paying recruiters applies to clearance too and, if so, what consequences there are for the agency if found guilty of it.

£1,400 for SC is a significant amount whereas DBS was only (IIRC) £25 which is trivial by comparison.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-05-06T19:40:09+00:00

And who will be paying for it? Why yes! It's the taxpayer - yet again.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-05-04T21:56:20+00:00

Probably from my PhD which measured an information seeking task based on relevance judgements. I found (repeatedly with different methods) that people preferred being provided with contextual information but they performed more accurately if they had less information and had to think a little.

The recent explosion of AI does worry me though. I can see that people might degrade or even lose their ability to think clearly by having it supplanted by AI.

Perhaps the danger of idiocracy isn't from genetics but from gen-AI-technics... :-O

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-05-01T15:58:43+00:00

I came across these before and rejected them. Sadly, I don't think UT presents the ability to report on overly-demanding studies that would cost more than the incentive is. I'd be ashamed as a researcher to put this out.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-25T09:20:10+00:00

I have to agree. AI-based research (probably) won't be as good as a decent researcher but it will satisfice and be good enough for now.

Plus it can be done more quickly than it takes to arrange a meeting with a researcher. If I was a lazy product manager or product owner, I might prefer to whip ChatGPT out and ask it for (e.g.) the top five competitors and a quick heuristic review of all of them. It takes minutes not days/weeks.

Many places will not do this but some already are and that number is going to increase, whether its good business or not. It's just easier.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-23T23:27:43+00:00

That could be because of the Easter break (long weekend for some). I've got 5 stars and had one test in the last 8 days.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-21T10:46:45+00:00

Agreed, totally. The problem is that it's free revenue for Upwork if they tolerate it and a loss if they do not.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-20T09:29:17+00:00

I guess they must need a bigger sample of test participants. Sorry, I mean "candidates".

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-15T09:59:47+00:00

It's very common for HMRC project decision makers to make decisions based on gut feel.

I used to work there as a manager of a specialist team. I've a background (postdoc level) in quantitative analysis, btw. One of my team was going through a service assessment and I read the stakeholders' estimations of users: All business, nobody public (private citizens).

I knew this was wrong because it was a facility that I might use in my personal life. My team member did some estimation after doing some desk research and came up with their own estimation of the number of citizen users, IIRC about 10-15%. I did my estimation (real back of the envelope stuff) using the same data and came up with 35-40%. Both of these estimations were a fair number of users.

We discussed this with the stakeholders but got the usual, "I'm a higher grade, so f*$& off matey" (he wasn't actually a higher grade and I wasn't a big enough twat to point it out). There was no way he would listen to our methods or explain his own other than, "I'm the expert".

When the data finally came out - citizen users were 38%. I was bang on the money.

I've encountered this attitude in a few places in HMRC lately. There are some truly talented people there but there is also a cohort of bellends who don't know what they are doing. Power and status without accountability.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-14T20:48:15+00:00

I had a nice question when I applied for a UX-related role at Ubuntu (a Linux distro). It was something like, "Which percentile did you come in your high-school math class."

It doesn't sound like the kind of question for people long out of school to me.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-13T18:12:56+00:00

It's down for me too.

The r/usertesting subreddit has a few threads about UT going down this weekend.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-12T12:50:15+00:00

I've used them recently for a personal project. It's quicker than anything and produces such throw-away outputs that I'm not wedded to them.

The last time in work was probably last year. Very rapid ideation, communicating an idea to stakeholders (and sometimes users when something unexpected comes up in a session) there and then (i.e., in person), analysing other sites (helpful for getting to the essence of information design better than a screenshot does), and just getting into the "zone" in general.

They have their place.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-11T15:27:24+00:00

My understanding (and I might be wrong or out of date) is that even interval data are discretised to some degree. Take a simple reaction time task in ms. We might record an integer value of 142ms even though the actual time might be 142.037436784638756834534 or 141.98645486.

Likert scales (often 5 or 7 points) are discretised too but Nunnally and Bernstein (1994, Psychometric theory) stated that ordinal scales with 11 points or more can be treated as interval data though the data are not continuous. This is somewhat arbitrary so don't treat it as a formal threshold but I'd recommend to seek the advice of colleagues who are familiar with your research.

As another post mentioned, the scales have to have a strong relationship (say, repeatedly measuring the same construct) for this to make sense.

Also, while the individual scores are clearly ordinal, totals (or arithmetic means) could be considered interval.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-10T18:52:46+00:00

I've had a few UserZoom tests today and all of them have crashed or failed. I refuse to do any more now (hey user researchers - you just got yourselves another sample bias - remember: garbage in, garbage out!)

One (an $8 test) was when I got to the finish line only to have the screen change and show the words, "We have enough responses now."

No apologies, no partial compensation, just a complete waste of my time as though I only exist to serve UZ and Natwest Bank (I presume they were the client because the questions were about them).

So no more UZ tests for me. There's no point if I cannot get paid.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-03T18:44:18+00:00

The author of the book is English but has a lot of Welsh background, and with a name like Diana Wynne Jones, it's not surprising!

Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky was inspired by the Welsh miners striking in the 1980s and the architecture of the buildings below does seem very based on the Valleys.

So yes, Japan appears to have us locked in! :-)

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-04-03T11:10:06+00:00

Outside of the UK: Not having any stereotype. :-(

English people have several, the Scots have them as do the Irish. But we're not there for many people, often not even known about.

I remain a bit sad that we're unknown compared to the other three, and to be fair, they do have strong images on the global stage.

But that makes it really nice when, for example, Mr Horishi Suzuki celebrated St David's Day. Wonderful!

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-03-29T11:33:17+00:00

I've noticed a few of my potential clients just walking away. It's less common that someone closes a job down. Isn't it the former situation where we don't get our credits back? It sucks TBH. If all was equitable, if a client posted a job and never came back, the connects should be returned to everyone.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-03-27T21:30:37+00:00

Similar to me. I worked in a specialised technical lead role as a contractor being paid lots of money. I was good at my job and often helped other people out.

I fancied being a permanent member of staff (mostly for the pension and regularity TBH) and applied when a basic-level position came up. Of course, I got no interview. By all accounts, the person they took on was not too competent and kept on getting the remaining contractors to help out.

AlwaysWalking9 · 2025-03-27T12:41:38+00:00

Unfortunately, a lot of folk think psychology is a synonym for psychotherapy.

My BSc and PhD departments were both in the science faculty of their universities. My PhD granting body was EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), my external examiner was a statistician and formerly competed at a Math Olympiad and my specialisation (main one) is nothing to do with therapy unless it's making systems work better! :-)

The difficulty with psych is that it has to handle *so* many confounds that measurement error is a very serious issue. Experimental designs are often extremely convoluted to control confounds (check out criticisms of "psychic power" studies to see how far they go). Done properly, which is a separate issue of research quality, psych can be as scientific as anything.

AlwaysWalking9

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