JMCQUARRIE.co.uk
James McQuarrie is a UK-based product leader helping teams turn ambiguity into clear direction, fast learning, and real-world products.
Blog
A collection of thoughts and observations on product, technology, startups, consulting, the web, and climate change - the challenge that increasingly shapes everything else.
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The gap between knowing and acting
01 June 2026
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My 2025 reading (listening) list
29 January 2026
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Jesse James Garrett - The Elements of User Experience and AI presentation
13 November 2025
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Using NotebookLM to accelerate my learning
27 March 2025
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Glad Tidings: The Climate Cleanup Podcast. Episode 6 - Removals Do Not Equal Offsets?
27 February 2025
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Glad Tidings: The Climate Cleanup Podcast. Episode 5 - Should Glad be a Charity?
10 February 2025
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Glad Tidings: The Climate Cleanup Podcast
30 January 2025
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Time for a new Path?
14 January 2025
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My 2024 reading (listening) list
20 December 2024
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Kevin Anderson lecture on the reality and impact of climate change
16 October 2024
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University of Bath guest lecture - Decarbonisation MSc
11 October 2024
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Employee Pollution Removal Plan - live in Beta at Glad
10 October 2024
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Microsoft has "monopsony power" in carbon removal
24 September 2024
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How important is sustainability to you?
04 September 2024
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Can you reach net zero by 2050? A game
01 August 2024
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Progress in reducing emissions 2024 - Report to Parliament
23 July 2024
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Meet The Stripe Exec Who Leads a $1 Billion Carbon Removal Fund
22 July 2024
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We all know pollution is bad
28 May 2024
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A second year long experiment: Do Nothing
21 February 2024
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My 2023 reading (listening) list
29 December 2023
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A year long experiment to try and grow traffic to an eCommerce store. Part 3 - the results
14 September 2023
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A year long experiment to try and grow traffic to an eCommerce store. Part 2 - the execution
07 September 2023
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A year long experiment to try and grow traffic to an eCommerce store. Part 1 - the plan
24 August 2023
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Using solid shampoo bars - three years on
05 July 2023
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Introducing Tidy - A new solid shampoo for Men
18 September 2020
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91% of people responding to a recent poll asking if they'd thought about how they could reduce their use of single use plastics said "Yes".
18 August 2020
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How I approach Product Management
13 July 2020
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How we redesigned tools used to manage a community of 100 million users a month as a live Beta
02 July 2020
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How "paving a cow path" resulted in a 10x increase in the number of people sharing content
26 June 2020
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How we learnt we needed to slow our app down from observing user behaviour
22 June 2020
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Designing a startup's product based on insights learnt from mapping out an end to end Customer Experience Journey
09 June 2020
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Following one guiding design principle lead to a big flaw in our design of NEXTFREE
22 August 2019
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Who governs the tech industry?
15 June 2017
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Legacy "what the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life" recommended reading
24 February 2017
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Opening my eyes to the wider Twitter Universe
05 May 2016
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Freelancers can update their availability in under 30 seconds with NEXTFREE
28 April 2016
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How to make the most of your NEXTFREE Freelancer profile
22 March 2016
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Introducing External links on NEXTFREE profiles
14 March 2016
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My first call with a DAD Home Repair Expert
09 March 2016
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Introducing NEXTFREE reminder emails
18 February 2016
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I joined another start up - I am now Head of Experience at DAD
04 January 2016
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How NEXTFREE works for Freelancers
16 December 2015
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Why we are building NEXTFREE - a simple tool designed to help freelancers and contractors share their availability
07 December 2015
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Imagine if your watch knew what you were holding - Disney Research shows you how
10 November 2015
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We talk to our target audiences not to ask what they want but to understand why they want it
09 December 2014
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Will today mark the beginning of the end for the iPhone?
09 September 2014
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What if there were no screens?
08 August 2014
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The Startup Maze
29 May 2014
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Introducing Wello - a health monitoring iPhone case
06 March 2014
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A New Car UI: How touch screen controls in cars should work
19 February 2014
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Could your next car come with a companion drone? Renault think so
07 February 2014
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My first week with the Misfit Shine physical activity tracker
08 September 2013
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As predicted 6 years ago rooftop advertising is go
16 July 2013
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Introducing iRumourGenerator - Apple rumours at the touch of a button
05 June 2013
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Redesign
21 May 2013
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Why Apple will dominate the living room with the new Apple TV (or "iTV" or whatever they call it)
07 March 2012
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Why a device that can auto detect what you eat and drink could be the most important consumer electronic device of our time
01 February 2012
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Scrolling is not the root of all evil and there is no such thing as "the fold"
02 December 2011
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Native mobile apps and mobile optimised web apps are not mutually exclusive, you can have both.
08 November 2011
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Could audio QR codes help unsigned musicians find their audience
31 October 2011
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User Experience design is not User Interface design and neither is an optional extra in product development
25 October 2011
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Contractor tip: Use Highrise to manage recruiter contact
10 October 2011
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Interface design - Simple vs. Sparse
30 September 2011
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The death of the web app? I do not think so
19 August 2011
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Do not aim to fail fast aim to learn and adapt fast
19 July 2011
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Virgin Media - How 1 misleading web page led to a bad Customer Experience
15 July 2011
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Notes from MC ThinkCamp - mHealth June 3 2011
06 July 2011
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A few words on the redesign / realignment of JMCQUARRIE.co.uk
29 June 2011
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Reeder - My new favourite app
03 February 2011
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Why growing your development team lowers their productivity
02 February 2011
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Latest client work - The CV Nurse
04 November 2010
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Blending online and offline: ASDA take a step in the right direction
06 September 2010
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New web site Consultive Magazine launched
02 August 2010
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How supermarkets could blend the online and the off line Worlds to make customers more loyal
20 July 2010
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Three reasons why Enterprise software, as a rule, offers such a poor User Experience
05 July 2010
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Why you need to offer a great User Experience as a cloud computing organisation
27 June 2010
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As of today I am a freelance web consultant, designer and developer for hire
22 June 2010
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HTML tables: Not totally bad. Part three: Putting tables into practise
24 January 2008
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HTML tables: Not totally bad. Part two: An introduction to the table element and its associates
20 December 2007
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HTML tables: Not totally bad. Part one: HTML tables are not the root of all evil
13 December 2007
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How card counting could make content personalisation possible
06 December 2007
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One reason why cross browser compatability is a business issue
29 November 2007
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Where then what vs. What then where
22 November 2007
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The results - Your experiences of online shopping poll
15 November 2007
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Online shopping. What is your experience?
08 November 2007
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Sometimes trees grow sideways
01 November 2007
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Top web tools and resources that no web designer (or developer) should live without
25 October 2007
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CSS tip:- Using whitespace: nowrap and line-height on horizontal lists to stop splintering and overlapping
18 October 2007
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10 point Design Manifesto - "my top 10 web design principles"
11 October 2007
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Aligning systems development with company strategy
04 October 2007
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5 simple ways to make your mark up more manageable
20 September 2007
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With the advent of Google earth and Google maps, a new dawn in advertising was quietly ushered in.
13 September 2007
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Introducing the "FAVE" pattern for web application administration functionality
06 September 2007
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Designing and building User Experiences for web applications is very much like designing and building special effects for movies; in both cases you know you have been truly successful when no one notices what you did.
30 August 2007
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Documenting the design of a web application -Part three: Using "Page state" diagrams to illustrate dynamic interaction
23 August 2007
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Documenting the design of a web application -Part two: Using static HTML mock up screens to document the User Interface and show the User Experience
16 August 2007
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Documenting the design of a web application - Part one: Using Garrett's Visual Vocabulary to document the Information Architecture
09 August 2007
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Could Social Networking be the answer (or at least part of it) to the Knowledge Management problem? (UPDATED 22 Aug 2007)
02 August 2007
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Welcome
27 July 2007