I’ve started a new project. It’s called Leading to Design, a site where I share my learnings as a product designer, and the journey I’m taking to support and lead a design vision within my company. Check it out! The first few posts are up, and you can subscribe to my something-weekly newsletter. 😀

A few weeks ago I shared why I write. The heart of it is sometimes I write what I wish I could read. So many of us have a thirst to learn, an undying curiosity. While you may find that starts to take the edge off of your curiosity, more often then not you can […]

Yesterday a story running around caught my attention. In the beta version of iOS 13 FaceTime is doing something pretty unique for iPhone XS and iPhone XR users. Normally, if you make a FaceTime call, and are looking at the screen to watch the person you’re calling, it looks like your eyes are looking down. […]

There’s a movie that came out a few years ago starring Eddie Murphy. In it he could only speak 1,000 words, and if he went over that amount something bad would happen. That’s all I know, I never saw the movie. Some days I feel the same with writing, that I have a limited amount […]

The above sketch is from my work on the product filter blocks for WooCommerce. For the past three months I’ve been working at Automattic as a Product Designer with the WooCommerce team. The first few weeks were Support Rotation, followed by onboarding, and then jumping into some smaller projects and attending a few meetups. Right […]

Over the years I’ve had various motivations for writing on this site. Recently the main reason has been because I have something I want to get out of my system. Writing can be for others to read, but it can also be for me to process how I’m thinking about something. So, I’ve begun writing […]

As a post-apocalyptic story, this film explores themes that dig into what it means to be human, and how humanity affects the world around us; all this against a backdrop that isn’t the exact world we live in, but something similar. I Am Mother begins with a brief text description of an event that has […]

I’m too closely intwined with my digital life. I have a problem. At times it holds my attention more than my real life, and some days it’s hard to tell the two apart. Technology has been wonderful for me. As a teenager, with unknown prospects for where I could take my life and career, technology […]

Recently I did an illustration for Jonathan Wold for an article he wrote on his site. In this post I wanted to share a bit of the process, and hopefully inspire others with how messy it can be to get from the beginning to the end. We’ve worked together quite a bit in the past […]

For traveling If I’m working at a coffee shop for the day (I like to do that 1-2 days/week, even though I work from home), or if I’m on a trip, I’ll likely bring some combination of the following. Backpack – My current favorite is the Bullet Ruck 15L. It fits a 15″ laptop quite […]

Or, another title could be, my quest for my perfect backpack. For quite a few years I’ve tried backpacks of all types. It’s a funny hobby for me to research different backpacks and see what makes the most sense for me. I wrote previously about a trip I took with the Bullet 10L (shown at […]

I’m just a few weeks into a new job, and I have a few observations I want to share. I’ve been inspired by a new book, It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work. This book, combined with Deep Work, has encouraged me to explore ways to focus and get things done, without tons of […]

Tomorrow I’ll be starting a new job at Automattic as a Product Designer. I’m both excited and reflective as I think about what’s ahead in 2019 and beyond. For the past 3 1/2 years I’ve worked full-time at XWP. I started as a Team Lead, then brought the role of Product Owner (while learning it […]

Over the past few years I’ve been privileged to work with some amazing designers and engineers! When you can bring design and engineering together in a true partnership, great things can happen. If either of them are treated as second class citizens, you’ll fall into deep ditches that can sink teams and companies. “Without a […]

Since January 2017 I’ve been an iPad Pro user. For a short period I even made it my primary computer. It’s become one of the most important tools I have as a Product Designer. Each week I use it to create sketches during the research and conceptual stages of a project. There are some situations […]

WordPress 5.0 has finally launched. It’s been a long time coming, and provides a huge update and change to how the editor works in WordPress. I was privileged to be able to contribute to this release, spending several months in 2017 contributing to design ideas and concepts for early work on Gutenberg. Earlier this week […]

In 2016 our team at XWP was able to work with the Beachbody on Demand folks to create a new editorial workflow for the content creation staff. You can read the case study to learn about the work that was done. During this process I was covering the role of Product Owner for our team, […]

You can check out the original Trac issue. This was such an eye opening feature for me. Several of my team members were discussing the the need to save drafts in the Customizer. I got pulled in and was able to lend UI/UX support to the project. Over the course of about six months we worked on […]

I spoke about this at WordCamp Seattle 2018, but I wanted to dive into a short post to talk about some of the contributions I’ve been able to make. Since 2016 I’ve been involved in one way or another, helping out in a number of issues related to the WordPress admin experience. Here’s the thing, […]

On November 11, 2018 I was able to speak at WordCamp Seattle  on my experience contributing to WordPress Core as a non-developer. In 2017 I wrote about my initial experience, and now now I’ll be planning to expand on what’s happened since.  Let me tell you, it’s been an amazing ride! For years I’d had interest […]