Feed for Joe Winter
Inspired by design leader Hardik Pandya’s Stuff I Use , I dug through some old folders to find photos of my past workspaces. Each one touches on a unique chapter of my adult life. As Hardik says, “ It’s fun to share things you use.” Here are my workspaces across the past 15 years. After graduating from the University of Vermont, my first job was at its freshwater ecology lab on Lake Champlain. I…
Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI This is Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI— a semi-regular discussion of the recent emergence of generative AI and its impact on design, technology, and life. My design process looks completely different than it did five months ago. Here I present how I use generative AI in my daily work as a product designer at Datadog. Disclaimer 1:…
Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI This is Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI— a semi-regular discussion of the recent emergence of generative AI and its impact on design, technology, and life. During my first week at Datadog, the CTO and co-founder, Alexis Lê-Quôc, discussed AI adoption at an all hands. Speaking primarily to engineers, who make up over half the…
I start at new job at the end of January. Yay! 🎉 This April marks 10 years in product and UX design. Roughly four of those years have been in agency, six in small startups. Of the 10 years, six have been working remotely. At the end of the month, I start a new job in a large tech company (5-10k employees) working in-person three days a week. This will be my first time at a big company and first…
I’ve never done one of these before, but I have some time on my hands during these final weeks of the year and want to take time to reflect a bit. In short, I am very blessed. It was a fantastic year. Personal This year I traveled to upstate New York, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Chicago, Idaho, Mexico, Disney World Florida, and up and down California. My husband and I saw Bad Bunny…
Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI This is Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI— a semi-regular discussion of the recent emergence of generative AI and its impact on design, technology, and life. A few things have been bouncing around my head recently regarding the impact of AI and LLMs on design and the tech world beyond. Models are a great way to make the abstract…
I wasn’t a good writer when I graduated college. As a requirement for my degree, I took a single English class: World Literature. The rest of my schedule was filled with science and art courses. I didn’t do much reading let alone writing. The only writing I did was for research papers. Very practical, very dry. Though I sometimes consider myself a ‘ creative,’ creative writing is something I’ve…
Toot toot, hey, beep beep. – Donna Summer, “ Bad Girls” I spend a lot of my time thinking about graphical user interfaces—layout, color, typography, the visual elements we interact with on screens. But lately I’ve been thinking about sound. Living in 2025 is noisy. Everything in our world is designed to grab our attention. Some of them helpful, others distracting, most unsolicited. From the beeps…
Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI This is Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI— a semi-regular discussion of the recent emergence of generative AI and its impact on design, technology, and life. Jony recently gave me one of the prototypes of the device for the first time to take home and I’ve been able to live with it. I think it is the coolest piece of technology the…
In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last. – Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian, “ File over app ” Throughout my adulthood, I’ve been curating a collection of notes covering significant life memories. It started as collections of things around a common theme, such as Things I Like ,…
Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI This is Not Entirely Stable: Continued Reflections on AI— a semi-regular discussion of the recent emergence of generative AI and its impact on design, technology, and life. With a technology like AI , it’s hard to know what’s real, what’s marketing, and where this is really going. Over the past year I’ve mostly observed and tried to make sense of it…
Sorry, your browser can’t play this video. Human-AI misalignment in a galaxy far, far away. Have you heard about this thing called AI? I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read over the past six months about AI in tech. Filled with a rotating mix of curiosity, dread, and ennui, I’ve been trying to keep up with the many discussions and hot takes from designers, thought leaders, and cynics. To be…
This week I worked on a high-priority feature. It’s a tool that captures information and generates a long, formal document for security compliance. It sounds simple, but the interaction model sparked a surprisingly deep debate. The document in question is a known requirement artifact in security frameworks, sometimes reaching 300+ pages, dense with repeated sections and compliance-ese language.…
Yes this is a post about pizza. And it’s my blog so I can write what I want! Over the years I’ve experimented with making pizza at home. Initially it was just a fun activity, something to mix up dinnertime and play with ingredients. We got really into cauliflower crusts for a while, with wildly varying levels of success. I admit I’ve made some pretty bad pies in the past. Only since becoming a…
Before the pandemic I had a draft essay titled “ Designers, Put Your Phone Down and Look Around.” The idea was simple: observing the world makes you a better designer. Then the pandemic hit, and opportunities for real-world observation disappeared. Now that a few years have passed and I’m back navigating the world, these ideas have come back to me. As people in modern society—especially as digital…
A few months ago, my family and I were exploring SoHo. We moved to Brooklyn last summer and have been exploring Manhattan on the weekends. On the street, a woman grabbed my attention asking, “ Hey! What state ends with the letter K?” When I hesitated, she followed up with, “ While you’re thinking about that mind if I talk to you about autism?” My husband and I walked away from the conversation…
Diplomacy, humility, introspection, and more—drawing parallels between practitioners of design thinking and wielders of the Force Originally posted on Medium on September 30, 2021. Hello there! I love Star Wars, and I love design. I spend a lot of time thinking about them both. So, naturally, I needed to write this piece comparing digital product designers and Jedi Knights. 😅 Product designers:…
Insights from three challenges during a recent UX design project Originally posted on Medium on June 18, 2019. One of the many things I love about working in a design agency is the variety of projects. We are hired to parachute into often unfamiliar territory to help bring a product vision to life. There are many variables to quickly adjust to; including problem domain, client team dynamics, and…
An exploration of the many surprising similarities between ASL and visual iconography Originally posted on Medium on August 28, 2018. This year, I was fortunate enough to enroll in San Francisco’s recently-implemented Free City program and spend a semester learning a language I’ve always wanted. American Sign Language ( ASL ) is a complex, naturally-evolving language that uses signs made by moving…
Extending UX and interface design principles beyond digital products Originally posted on Medium on March 6, 2018. Visual indicators are used to make certain items stand out from the crowd. They don’t require the user to take action, but act as communication tools to cue something noteworthy. Indicators are not always present but appear under certain conditions. To communicate their message,…