Part 1 in an occasional series about how digital products and services can learn from real world experiences.

Last year I flew out to Stockholm to give a lecture to the good folks at Hyper Island. A day before the flight I received a text message telling me I could check-in via my mobile. I clicked on a link in the message and was given my boarding pass, there on my phone. A slip of paper you had to queue up for at the airport (or print out before), and then clutch in a sweaty palm had been replaced by a completely digital service.

This is a small thing, but something I really like: a story well-told with lots of pictures and a few words, but a story of the kind that's usually told with one picture and about a thousand words - a match report. 

The next two images show Madrid's early missed chances, then comes Barca's two goals before half time, Madrid's incredible fight back to 2-2 (Renaldo's incredible hairstyle), lost hope with Ramos sent off, Barca holding out to the final whistle, then celebrations as they go through to the next round, 4-3 on aggregate.

Mourinho, evil genius reviled for defensive tactics and gamesmanship, is defeated by swashbuckling Barca.  It's like Rupert Bear or Marvel Comics and related in much the same way - but only on the web, of course; in the newspaper it was business as usual.

The Guardian picture editors and caption writers have combined brilliant sports photography pulled from three different agencies (AP, Getty, Reuters) with tight, concise, clever caption writing. It takes a new journalistic mentality to appreciate that the internet offers these kind of possibilities after years of economy imposed by scarce column inches. The web has limitless space and here they use it well to combine the best of news and magazine journalism.

And, interestingly, the quality of this piece is amplified on the iPhone app by the form of the device and resolution of the screen, by the ability to swipe from one picture to another and to push away the caption. You just don't get the same feeling from the web version here or from the pics below, so do it justice and check out the gallery on iphone or ipad if you can. but it's also delightful when viewed on an iPhone or iPad.

Two weekends ago, Andrew and I went along to the third Good for Nothing hack weekend, appropriately titled Occupy Blue Monday. It was as inspirational and invigorating as ever. I've written before about what it's like to do a Good for Nothing. I love the way they take new, collaborative ways of working and hack culture to support the true innovators in social enterprise. As a participant, it's amazing to be able to use your skills to provide real value - a new kind of volunteering with tangible results.

Everyone I know who has done a GFN weekend comes away saying "that was amazing, I wish I could work like that all the time". Ok, so there are some obvious reasons why typical working life isn't going to be like doing good for nothing every day. It's a pretty special environment working with a bunch of strangers on an adrenaline-fueled, time-boxed project - most memorably  described as 'creative collaboration meets rave'. You can't sustain that kind of feeling on a daily basis.

It might not be a full on rave up all the time, but I know the GFN crew have been thinking about how to extend what happens over the weekend into more structured support after the event. Inevitably, because of the time constraints, a number of things get started but not ended. It's also not quite the same as a participant to polish up some copy or finish testing code when you're trying to fit it in on your own at home after work's over. 

This week, we welcomed Will Roissetter to the Many. Being such a fresh addition, he's yet to be given an avatar. So while we wait to put a face to a name on the blog, we thought we'd ask him to introduce himself to you in his own words. 

Good Day,

I arrive here from Futerra sustainability communications, where I was marketing and insight assistant. This meant I had the job of keeping the team and clients up to speed on the world of sustainability, marketing, social media, psychology and branding. 

I will be attempting to curate the thoughts, ideas and essences (does that sound weird?) of Made by Many through tweeting, blogging and strategising. I will also be demonstrating a fairly powerful collection of knitwear. 

My interests include tweed, the British summertime, Cohen brothers films and the positive and purposeful role that digital has to play in an exciting and enlightened future. 

To get an idea of some of the sites I love to nourish my brain with check out the below.

The Fox is Black 

FutureLab 

The Chap

Brain Picking 

The Selby

Have you ever read Fuck My Life? If you haven’t, you really should stop by at least once a month. It’s a continuous stream of everyday stories in which people share the shitty moments that ruined their day. The stories are often hilarious or eye-watering, sometimes both at the same time. A heavy sense of irony is essential.

It was in this mindset that I opened the site on my mobile phone this morning and saw this ad banner at the top of the page:

Seriously? Once I’ve steered myself clear of any deeply inappropriate jokes about lifeboat chasing lawyers I’m left with a profound bewilderment about how this ad ended up here. Somehow, a mobile search algorithm decided that:

1. the readers of Fuck My Life are the kind of people that go on cruises
2. that of those readers that do go on cruises, some of them were on a ship that held only 4,000 passengers
3. that of those 4,000 passengers enough of them speak English fluently enough to understand a site laden with sarcasm and local idioms

This is the grid I use to help me draw sketch wireframes. It may be tatty and covered in splotches, but it helps me draw straight lines quickly.

The grid also helps me sketch pages around advertising. For the last five years the two constants of virtually every project I’ve worked on have been the width of the page and the size of ad banners. Got to fit an MPU above the fold. Can’t go above 980 pixels wide. Better make that column the same width as a skyscraper, just in case…

You can see the grid in the background of nearly every sketch wireframe I’ve done in the last five years:

Imperica magazine recently asked me if I would be interested in taking part in an 'In Conversation With' on their site. 

We are trying to create useful, long-lasting things here at Made by Many, so I thought it would interesting to talk to someone from a company whose motto suggests a different sort of approach. I've always wanted to get to the bottom of Dentsu's Making Future Magic in the light of our emphasis on usefulness, and I've always wanted an excuse to talk at length to Dentsu's creative technologist Chris Heathcote. So we had a chat.

Check out the article, in which we discuss futurism as a form of marketing, fantasy vs utility, and where our current obsession with the technological past fits into all this.

We're lucky enough to share this space with a really interesting and smart group of people, and Duncan and I thought it would be fun to tell some of their stories. We've kicked off with a chat with  Murray Steele, a Rails developer from Unboxed who works for us so much he is now completely 'one of the family'... He's also one of the brains behind the regular Ruby meet-up LRUG and the annual Ruby Manor conference. Find out more over the turn!

Murray Steele from MXM Labs on Vimeo.

There's a popular technique in interaction design known as Progressive Disclosure. You can see this in wizard-style interfaces that show you a single question at a time. The theory is that it's better to show one single thing at a time than to show a big wall of stuff that makes you run away.

Take a look at sparked.com's sign-up form. They disclose just one beautifully designed page at a time. It takes you on a journey, ensuring it only gives you the minimum amount of information needed to proceed, while keeping the 'scaring away' to a minimum.