Ben Holliday
@benholliday.com
Design and digital transformation | Chief Design Officer at TPXimpact | UK Lake District
Reposted by Ben Holliday
⭐ New blog: I've been doing some writing about Service Design recently... In this post, I explain how importance of the shift from product to a "service mindset" …
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
From product to a service mindset
Exploring the need for a service mindset in product-focused organisations.
benholliday.com
November 19, 2025 at 9:37 AM
⭐ New blog: I've been doing some writing about Service Design recently... In this post, I explain how importance of the shift from product to a "service mindset" …
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
⭐ New blog: I've been doing some writing about Service Design recently... In this post, I explain how importance of the shift from product to a "service mindset" …
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
From product to a service mindset
Exploring the need for a service mindset in product-focused organisations.
benholliday.com
November 19, 2025 at 9:37 AM
⭐ New blog: I've been doing some writing about Service Design recently... In this post, I explain how importance of the shift from product to a "service mindset" …
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
Thanks to Mica Moore (not on BSky) who contributed to this and provided feedback.
benholliday.com/2025/11/18/f...
#ServiceDesign
Snow on the mountains in the distance this morning #UKLakeDistrict
November 19, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Snow on the mountains in the distance this morning #UKLakeDistrict
Working to the sound of the heavy rain outside today. We've reached the point of the year where we all need to find small things to lift our spirits. Soup for lunch today, and I might even put some lights up in my home office later
November 18, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Working to the sound of the heavy rain outside today. We've reached the point of the year where we all need to find small things to lift our spirits. Soup for lunch today, and I might even put some lights up in my home office later
Enjoyed this long-read post from Christine Browne
“What can be measured and calculated becomes all that matters. The most valuable things—trust, judgment, understanding what someone needs when they don’t know themselves—are the things that resist quantification.”
open.substack.com/pub/christin...
“What can be measured and calculated becomes all that matters. The most valuable things—trust, judgment, understanding what someone needs when they don’t know themselves—are the things that resist quantification.”
open.substack.com/pub/christin...
The Electronic Brain Will See You Now:
What Desk Set Taught Me About AI
open.substack.com
November 18, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Enjoyed this long-read post from Christine Browne
“What can be measured and calculated becomes all that matters. The most valuable things—trust, judgment, understanding what someone needs when they don’t know themselves—are the things that resist quantification.”
open.substack.com/pub/christin...
“What can be measured and calculated becomes all that matters. The most valuable things—trust, judgment, understanding what someone needs when they don’t know themselves—are the things that resist quantification.”
open.substack.com/pub/christin...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
Quiet Stories 191: Stop Craft Negging, Thoughts on Responding to Change, Seeing Like a Software Company, and lots more!
mailchi.mp/aecf565f3683...
Includes work from @catt.design, @ames.world, Sean Goedecke, @grimalkina.bsky.social, @benholliday.com
& many others!
mailchi.mp/aecf565f3683...
Includes work from @catt.design, @ames.world, Sean Goedecke, @grimalkina.bsky.social, @benholliday.com
& many others!
Quiet Stories #191
Stop Craft Negging, Thoughts on Responding to Change, Seeing Like a Software Company, and lots more!
mailchi.mp
November 17, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Quiet Stories 191: Stop Craft Negging, Thoughts on Responding to Change, Seeing Like a Software Company, and lots more!
mailchi.mp/aecf565f3683...
Includes work from @catt.design, @ames.world, Sean Goedecke, @grimalkina.bsky.social, @benholliday.com
& many others!
mailchi.mp/aecf565f3683...
Includes work from @catt.design, @ames.world, Sean Goedecke, @grimalkina.bsky.social, @benholliday.com
& many others!
Good listen on BBC Radio 4 from earlier today - featuring three books now on my reading list. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Start the Week - Digital Futures and Information Crises - BBC Sounds
Cory Doctorow, Naomi Alderman and Oliver Moody with Tom Sutcliffe.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 17, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Good listen on BBC Radio 4 from earlier today - featuring three books now on my reading list. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
Early-Bird tickets are now on sale for next year's Agile Manchester conference (13-14th May): agilemanchester.net/tickets
"Agile Manchester is designed to create and nurture ‘change agents’. We provide actionable insights, practical tools and new ideas"
/ @agilemanc.bsky.social
"Agile Manchester is designed to create and nurture ‘change agents’. We provide actionable insights, practical tools and new ideas"
/ @agilemanc.bsky.social
Tickets
2026 Super Early Bird tickets now available
agilemanchester.net
November 17, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Early-Bird tickets are now on sale for next year's Agile Manchester conference (13-14th May): agilemanchester.net/tickets
"Agile Manchester is designed to create and nurture ‘change agents’. We provide actionable insights, practical tools and new ideas"
/ @agilemanc.bsky.social
"Agile Manchester is designed to create and nurture ‘change agents’. We provide actionable insights, practical tools and new ideas"
/ @agilemanc.bsky.social
Reposted by Ben Holliday
“The NHS is still struggling to improve productivity, the report finds, with fewer than 10% of areas managing to raise the number of elective procedures they carry out by any more than the number of extra staff they hire.”
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Wes Streeting accused of ‘chaotic and incoherent approach’ to NHS reform
Exclusive: thinktank report finds health secretary has failed to improve productivity, with the health service unlikely to meet its targets
www.theguardian.com
November 15, 2025 at 4:51 PM
“The NHS is still struggling to improve productivity, the report finds, with fewer than 10% of areas managing to raise the number of elective procedures they carry out by any more than the number of extra staff they hire.”
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
I get frustrated by the press release culture around time savings from AI tools. I couldn't resist responding to a recent one about Microsoft Copilot in the NHS. There's still a missing step of being able to reimagine the future of work with technology benholliday.com/2025/10/23/4...
43 minutes per staff member per day
Looking at the latest NHS framing of time savings from investment in AI, and the continued need to better reimagine how we work with technology.
benholliday.com
November 14, 2025 at 11:57 AM
I get frustrated by the press release culture around time savings from AI tools. I couldn't resist responding to a recent one about Microsoft Copilot in the NHS. There's still a missing step of being able to reimagine the future of work with technology benholliday.com/2025/10/23/4...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...
November 14, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
Good share from the BBC's design team on AI content labelling patterns - something that's going to become increasingly important on public services and sites. Very interested in how GOV.UK might already be going similar research and testing? www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...
How we’re designing user-centred AI labels at the BBC
As a public service organisation, it’s vital that audiences can trust what they see in BBC content and understand how AI is used.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 4, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Good share from the BBC's design team on AI content labelling patterns - something that's going to become increasingly important on public services and sites. Very interested in how GOV.UK might already be going similar research and testing? www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
A bit of a holiday rant...
We need to stop designing "target architectures." They're a fantasy. A waste of money.
An approach that forces decisions too early, kills speed, and guarantees you'll never fix legacy tech.
A utopian plan that's an anchor, not a map.
dafyddvaughan.uk/blog/2025/th...
We need to stop designing "target architectures." They're a fantasy. A waste of money.
An approach that forces decisions too early, kills speed, and guarantees you'll never fix legacy tech.
A utopian plan that's an anchor, not a map.
dafyddvaughan.uk/blog/2025/th...
The bridge to nowhere: Why your ‘Target Architecture' won’t ever deliver
Stop funding fictional target architecture blueprints and start funding empowered, long-lived teams. The traditional, rigid approach is too slow for the age of AI and will never solve your real-world ...
dafyddvaughan.uk
November 3, 2025 at 10:31 AM
A bit of a holiday rant...
We need to stop designing "target architectures." They're a fantasy. A waste of money.
An approach that forces decisions too early, kills speed, and guarantees you'll never fix legacy tech.
A utopian plan that's an anchor, not a map.
dafyddvaughan.uk/blog/2025/th...
We need to stop designing "target architectures." They're a fantasy. A waste of money.
An approach that forces decisions too early, kills speed, and guarantees you'll never fix legacy tech.
A utopian plan that's an anchor, not a map.
dafyddvaughan.uk/blog/2025/th...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
New TPX design blog this week shares some great work with Defra - the team created a four metre illustrative ecosystem map that shows how all their environmental services connect and overlap www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu... #servicedesign #govdesign
Beyond a blueprint: Visualising whole service areas - TPXimpact
How we approached visualising a service eco-system for Defra.
www.tpximpact.com
November 1, 2025 at 9:33 AM
New TPX design blog this week shares some great work with Defra - the team created a four metre illustrative ecosystem map that shows how all their environmental services connect and overlap www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu... #servicedesign #govdesign
Sunday and some calm between the storms 🌦️ #UKLakeDistrict #breathe
November 2, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Sunday and some calm between the storms 🌦️ #UKLakeDistrict #breathe
New TPX design blog this week shares some great work with Defra - the team created a four metre illustrative ecosystem map that shows how all their environmental services connect and overlap www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu... #servicedesign #govdesign
Beyond a blueprint: Visualising whole service areas - TPXimpact
How we approached visualising a service eco-system for Defra.
www.tpximpact.com
November 1, 2025 at 9:33 AM
New TPX design blog this week shares some great work with Defra - the team created a four metre illustrative ecosystem map that shows how all their environmental services connect and overlap www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu... #servicedesign #govdesign
Reposted by Ben Holliday
As with everything, the technology is not the thing. OpenAI is a financial instrument more than it is a tech company.
"Many of the deals OpenAI has struck — with chipmakers, cloud computing companies and others — are strangely circular. OpenAI receives billions from tech companies before sending those billions back to the same companies to pay for computing power and other services." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
How OpenAI Uses Complex and Circular Deals to Fuel Its Multibillion-Dollar Rise
Here are seven unusual financial agreements helping to drive the ambitions of the poster child of the A.I. revolution.
www.nytimes.com
November 1, 2025 at 5:12 AM
As with everything, the technology is not the thing. OpenAI is a financial instrument more than it is a tech company.
Reposted by Ben Holliday
The whole of the HMRC Board got me to present to them about the opportunities and risks of AI about 18 months ago and my main messages were be very careful with high stakes decision making and remember the Horizon Post Office scandal which was about governance and accountability…
Somebody at HMRC needs to be canned for this idiotic ‘fraud-detection’ idea. And I fear future use of AI in welfare cases might well produce this kind of story regularly (as they have in Nevada for example).
UK woman who booked Oslo flight but did not fly loses child benefit ‘because she emigrated’
Exclusive: HMRC told Lisa Morris-Almond there was no record of her return to UK, but she did not take the trip
www.theguardian.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:38 PM
The whole of the HMRC Board got me to present to them about the opportunities and risks of AI about 18 months ago and my main messages were be very careful with high stakes decision making and remember the Horizon Post Office scandal which was about governance and accountability…
New on the TPX design blog this week …this post is a good example of transforming a relatively small internal service in the courts and prisons system www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu...
Designing an accessible internal service for HMPPS - TPXimpact
How we adapted the GOV.UK Design System to best meet the accessibility needs of a diverse workforce.
www.tpximpact.com
October 21, 2025 at 8:58 AM
New on the TPX design blog this week …this post is a good example of transforming a relatively small internal service in the courts and prisons system www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hu...
Reposted by Ben Holliday
A very good post from Sam which feels familiar.
I know I rant too often about queuing theory and the NHS but too often “efficiency” and “rationalisation” takes no account of the brute realities of the mathematics.
It’s also why Sam’s understandable desire for a place in the queue app is so hard.
I know I rant too often about queuing theory and the NHS but too often “efficiency” and “rationalisation” takes no account of the brute realities of the mathematics.
It’s also why Sam’s understandable desire for a place in the queue app is so hard.
New post just out:
"On the edge"
On my unexpected week in hospital and five things I learnt about the state of the NHS.
(Free to read)
open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/o...
"On the edge"
On my unexpected week in hospital and five things I learnt about the state of the NHS.
(Free to read)
open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/o...
On the edge
My week in the NHS
open.substack.com
October 19, 2025 at 8:23 AM
A very good post from Sam which feels familiar.
I know I rant too often about queuing theory and the NHS but too often “efficiency” and “rationalisation” takes no account of the brute realities of the mathematics.
It’s also why Sam’s understandable desire for a place in the queue app is so hard.
I know I rant too often about queuing theory and the NHS but too often “efficiency” and “rationalisation” takes no account of the brute realities of the mathematics.
It’s also why Sam’s understandable desire for a place in the queue app is so hard.
Reposted by Ben Holliday
I very much appreciate this: "Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value."
Okay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!
The Majority AI View - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
anildash.com
October 18, 2025 at 6:06 PM
I very much appreciate this: "Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value."
One thing I’ve noticed in the last month is that some design schools are rushing to introduce design/fashion courses ‘with AI’ without really being able to explain what they are
October 18, 2025 at 3:51 PM
One thing I’ve noticed in the last month is that some design schools are rushing to introduce design/fashion courses ‘with AI’ without really being able to explain what they are