Designer, Researcher, Manager
I struggle mightily to describe the collaborative nature being lost with “AI” assisted thinking partners. When I try to articulate it in person, the response ends up miles away from what I intended to discuss. Someday I hope to get closer to the heart of this topic. For now I’ll try this: I want to brainstorm ideas with other design and product leaders. I want to intellectually spar through my…
Lately I’ve been putting more effort into trusting and verifying my instincts. When I recognize they’re trying to get me do something, I give them my full attention. Then I pry and rip (aka writing) these nudges from my intuition out into the open. I want them to exist separate from my imagination in a way that can be inspected and critiqued. My guess is that I fail to untangle these moments…
Imagine receiving a package while going into your home and along the way you pass a recycle bin. You remember ordering the item and know it isn’t fragile. Jamming a key into a gap between cardboard flaps and dragging it to tear through as much of the tape as possible. You then Hulk-Rip™ the rest of the flaps open. After dropping the remnants of what was previously a box into the recycle bin, you…
For the last year I’ve been following dozens of people on various socials and RSS feeds for artificial intelligence ideas and news. When someone shares a cool story using tools and techniques under the AI umbrella, I attempt to recreate it myself. I want to see how they work. I want to personally explore and critique their potential value. I want to have a “library” of experiments to pull from as…
A while back I wrote about doing work I couldn’t explain while remaining confident I was getting intellectually rigorous and effective results. It’s been on my mind ever since. I don’t have an exhaustive explanation, but I think I have a general explanation for what’s going on while I work. You can slice themes of work up however granularly you want, but I like to think of distinct progress bars.…
The more I study systems literature and attempt to apply what I learn, the more I encounter people (including me, almost constantly) concentrating on levels of systems that are out of our direct or indirect influence. We’re in a dysfunctional local system with authority to change it, but are focused on what they believe to be a larger, global dysfunctional system that requires help from “above” to…
A while back I was having a work discussion and had a strong intuition we were going further than we needed to resolve a point of tension. I was having trouble articulating why I felt that way, but something was telling me I shouldn’t let this concern go unspoken. Desperately grasping for any example or metaphor, I brought up a recent frustration using meal planning applications. It connected well…
My favorite design book — without question. The Design Way , written by Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman can be summarized as dismantling problems and solutions as the primary intellectual framing of design, and software development in general. Thirteen years after being published, our industry has yet to absorb much — if any — of its wisdom. What is Design? To come up with an idea of what we…
A short, fun book written by Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner telling their story of starting Newman’s Own and building it into an enormous, profitable, and beloved food company while donating more than $600 million to children along the way. Aren't they adorable? Go Get ‘Em! Paul had a lot of faith in everybody. He just assumed it was going to turn out all right. He never questioned the ability of…
For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to craft a sturdy set of design principles. To make design less “magic” to outsiders. To help designers stay focused on what matters. To further legitimize a chronically overlooked source of value. My favorite effort was Nelson Joyce and I collaborating with Josh Porter to write these: Principles of Product Design Principles of User Interface Design I love…