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User-centred design (UCD) often gets taught as a clear, structured process: speak to users, validate decisions, iterate, deliver. In an ideal world, everything flows neatly. But in reality? It very rarely works like that.  Here, Opencast Senior Interaction Designer James Tabiner shares his perspective on what it means to practise UCD in the real world, especially in environments shaped by constraints like tight budgets, shifting deadlines, limited user access, or small teams.  His core message: the real skill isn’t just doing UCD well; it’s knowing what to do when you can’t. 

In this blog, Rachel Derbyshire, Senior Interaction Designer at Opencast, explores the increasingly complex global landscape of AI regulation in 2026. As governments accelerate efforts to govern artificial intelligence, organisations are facing a fragmented and often challenging environment to navigate. From the EU’s rigorous, risk-based framework to China’s highly targeted regulatory controls and the UK’s flexible, pro-innovation approach, the rules shaping AI are evolving rapidly, and not always in alignment. This blog unpacks the key differences between these approaches and what they mean for businesses striving to remain compliant, competitive, and forward-thinking in a shifting regulatory world.

In Part One of this series, we explored how DevOps emerged as a response to the challenges of modern software delivery and why many organisations have struggled to realise its full value. In this second article, Opencast Practice Lead Scott McCarthy examines how DevOps has matured beyond its original foundations and become a set of complementary practices focused on delivering reliable, sustainable outcomes at scale. This article explores how DevOps continues to evolve and what organisations need to do to remain effective in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.