Tags: researchbythesea

Anchoring insights: Key learnings from Research by the Sea | Clearleft

This was a day of big conversations, but also one of connection, curiosity, and optimism.

Seeing it all laid out like this really drives home just how much was packed into Research By The Sea.

Throughout the day, speakers shared personal reflections, bold ideas, and practical insights, touching on themes of community, resilience, ethics, and the evolving role of technology.

Some talks brought hard truths about the impact of AI, the complexity of organisational change, and the ethical dilemmas researchers face. Others offered hope and direction, reminding us of the power of community, the importance of accessibility, and the need to listen to nature, to each other, and to the wider world.

Research By The Sea was last Thursday. I’m still digesting it all.

In short, it was excellent. The venue, how smoothly every thing was organised, the talks …oh boy, the talks!

Benjamin did a truly superb job curating this line-up. Everyone really brought their A-game.

As predicted, this wasn’t a day of talks just for researchers. It was far more like a dConstruct. This was big, big picture stuff. Themes of hope, community, nature, technology, inclusion and resilience.

I overheard more than one person in the breaks saying “this was not what I was expecting!” They were saying it in a very positive way, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a silent minority in the audience who were miffed that they weren’t getting a day of practical research techniques devoid of politics.

As host, I had the easiest job of the day. All I had to do was say a few words of introduction for each speaker, then sit back down and enjoy every minute of every talk.

The one time when I had to really work was the panel discussion at the end of the day. I really enjoy moderating panels. I’ve seen enough bad panels to know what does and doesn’t work. But this one was tough. The panelists were all great, but because the themes were soooo big, I was worried about it all getting a bit too high-falutin’. People seemed to enjoy it though.

All in all, it was a superb day. If you came along, thank you!

Gotta be honest, #ResearchByTheSea is one of the best conferences I’ve been to in yeeeeeears. So many good, useful, inspiring, thoughtful, provocative talks. Much more about ethics and power and possibility than I’d expected.

Loved it. Thank you, @clearleft.com!

— @visitmy.website

The Sunshine by the Sea: S20E08 - Harsh Browns

Research by the Sea was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in yeeeeeears. So many good, useful, inspiring, thoughtful, provocative talks. Much more about ethics and power and possibility than I’d expected. None of the ‘utopian bullshit’ you usually get at a product or digital conference, to quote one of the speakers!

From 2005 to 2015 Clearleft ran the dConstruct event here in Brighton (with one final anniversary event in 2022).

I had the great pleasure of curating dConstruct for a while. I’m really proud of the line-ups I put together.

It wasn’t your typical tech event, to put it mildy. You definitely weren’t going to learn practical techniques to bring back into work on Monday morning. If anything, it was the kind of event that might convince you to quit your job on Monday morning.

The talks were design-informed, but with oodles of philosophy, culture and politics.

As you can imagine, that’s not an easy sell. Hence why we stopped running the event. It’s pretty hard to convince your boss to send you to a conference like that.

Sometimes I really miss it though. With everything going on in the tech world right now (and the world in general), it sure would be nice to get together in a room full of like-minded people to discuss the current situation.

Well, here’s the funny thing. There’s a different Clearleft event happening next week. Research By The Sea. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound much like dConstruct. But damn if Benjamin hasn’t curated a line-up of talks that sound very dConstructy!

• Every minute you are here by Steph.
• What happens when we listen to the birds? by Tamsin.
• Picking up the pieces by Cennydd.
• Considering intersectionality and lived experience in inclusive design by Priyanca.
• In defence of refusal by Michael.

Those all sound like they’d fit perfectly in the dConstruct archive.

Research By The Sea is most definitely not just for UX researchers—this sounds to me like the event to attend if, like me, you’re alarmed by everything happening right now.

Next Thursday, February 27th, this is the place to be if you’ve been missing dConstruct. See you there!

I’m going to be hosting Research By The Sea on Thursday, February 27th right here in Brighton. I’m getting very excited and nervous about it.

The nervousness is understandable. I want to do a good job. Hosting a conference is like officiating a wedding. You want to put people at ease and ensure everything goes smoothly. But you don’t want to be the centre of attention. People aren’t there to see you. This is not your day.

As the schedule has firmed up, my excitement has increased.

See, I’m not a researcher. It would be perfectly understandable to expect this event to be about the ins and outs of various research techniques. But it’s become clear that that isn’t what Benjamin has planned.

Just as any good researcher or designer goes below the surface to explore the root issues, Research By The Sea is going to go deep.

I mean, just take a look at what Steph will be covering:

Steph discusses approaches in speculative fiction, particularly in the Solarpunk genre, that can help ground our thinking, and provide us—as researchers and designers—tenets to consider our work, and, as humans, to strive towards a better future.

Sign me up!

Michael’s talk covers something that’s been on my mind a lot lately:

Michael will challenge the prevailing belief that as many people as possible must participate in our digital economies.

You just know that a talk called In defence of refusal isn’t going to be your typical conference fare.

Then there are talks about accessibility and intersectionality, indigenous knowledge, designing communities, and navigating organisational complexity. And I positively squeeled with excitement when I read Cennydd’s talk description:

The world is crying out for new visions of the future: worlds in which technology is compassionate, not just profitable; where AI is responsible, not just powerful.

See? It’s very much not just for researchers. This is going to be a fascinating day for anyone who values curiosity.

If that’s you, you should grab a ticket. To sweeten the deal, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get a chunky 20% of the price — £276 for a conference ticket instead of £345.

Be sure to nab your ticket before February 15th when the price ratchets up a notch.

And if you are a researcher, well, you really shouldn’t miss this. It’s kind of like when I’ve run Responsive Day Out and Patterns Day; sure, the talks are great, but half the value comes from being in the same space as other people who share your challenges and experiences. I know that makes it sound like a kind of group therapy, but that’s because …well, it kind of is.

UX London isn’t the only event from Clearleft coming your way in 2025. There’s a brand new spin-off event dedicated to user research happening in February. It’s called Research By The Sea.

I’m not curating this one, though I will be hosting it. The curation is being carried out most excellently by Benjamin, who has written more about how he’s doing it:

We’ve invited some of the best thinkers and doers from from in the research space to explore how researchers might respond to today’s most gnarly and pressing problems. They’ll challenge current perspectives, tools, practices and thinking styles, and provide practical steps for getting started today to shape a better tomorrow.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, you should put February 27th 2025 in your calendar and grab yourself a ticket.

Although I’m not involved in curating the line-up for the event, I offered Benjamin my swor… my web dev skillz. I made the website for Research By The Sea and I really enjoyed doing it!

These one-day events are a great chance to have a bit of fun with the website. I wrote about how enjoyable it was making the website for this year’s Patterns Day:

I felt like I was truly designing in the browser. Adjusting spacing, playing around with layout, and all that squishy stuff. Some of the best results came from happy accidents—the way that certain elements behaved at certain screen sizes would lead me into little experiments that yielded interesting results.

I took the same approach with Research By The Sea. I had a design language to work with, based on UX London, but with more of a playful, brighter feel. The idea was that the website (and the event) should feel connected to UX London, while also being its own thing.

I kept the typography of the UX London site more or less intact. The page structure is also very similar. That was my foundation. From there I was free to explore some other directions.

I took the opportunity to explore some new features of CSS. But before I talk about the newer stuff, I want to mention the bits of CSS that I don’t consider new. These are the things that are just the way things are done ‘round here.

Custom properties. They’ve been around for years now, and they’re such a life-saver, especially on a project like this where I’m messing around with type, colour, and spacing. Even on a small site like this, it’s still worth having a section at the start where you define your custom properties.

Logical properties. Again, they’ve been around for years. At this point I’ve trained my brain to use them by default. Now when I see a left, right, width or height in a style sheet, it looks like a bug to me.

Fluid type. It’s kind of a natural extension of responsive design to me. If a website’s typography doesn’t adjust to my viewport, it feels slightly broken. On this project I used Utopia because I wanted different type scales as the viewport increased. On other projects I’ve just used on clamp declaration on the body element, which can also get the job done.

Okay, so those are the things that feel standard to me. So what could I play around with that was new?

View transitions. So easy! Just point to an element on two different pages and say “Hey, do a magic move!” You can see this in action with the logo as you move from the homepage to, say, the venue page. I’ve also added view transitions to the speaker headshots on the homepage so that when you click through to their full page, you get a nice swoosh.

Unless, like me, you’re using Firefox. In that case, you won’t see any view transitions. That’s okay. They are very much an enhancement. Speaking of which…

Scroll-driven animations. You’ll only get these in Chromium browsers right now, but again, they’re an enhancement. I’ve got multiple background images—a bunch of cute SVG shapes. I’m using scroll-driven animations to change the background positions and sizes as you scroll. It’s a bit silly, but hopefully kind of cute.

You might be wondering how I calculated the movements of each background image. Good question. I basically just messed around with the values. I had fun! But imagine what an actually-skilled interaction designer could do.

That brings up an interesting observation about both view transitions and scroll-driven animations: Figma will not help you here. You need to be in a web browser with dev tools popped open. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves get your hands into the machine. I know that sounds intimidating, but it’s also surprisingly enjoyable and empowering.

Oh, and I made sure to wrap both the view transitions and the scroll-driven animations in a prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference @media query.

I’m pleased with how the website turned out. It feels fun. More importantly, it feels fast. There is zero JavaScript. That’s the main reason why it’s very, very performant (and accessible).

Smooth transitions across pages; smooth animations as you scroll: it’s great what you can do with just HTML and CSS.