Archive

The guessing game

Building software is a massive guessing game. You hope that what you're building will help somebody solve a problem. You don't know, though. Until your code hits the real world, gets used by people with real needs, it's all just theoretical. Time and again

Make something wonderful

If you're following this blog, you're probably the type of reader who creates things. You find joy in taking atoms—or the digital representation of them—and pushing against entropy. It's your mission in life to bring pieces together (alright, that's a

The human bottleneck

There's been a lot of talk about finding ways to 10x productivity amongst folks in tech. I've been part of that conversation, trying to identify how I can speed up what I do. This, of course, juxtaposes with my desire to slow down, have deep work

A time for learning

I've been writing a lot about product design the last year or so. With all these new AI tools I'm constantly wrestling with where design can fit in. Well you know what? I'm almost settled on how I feel; even if I'm

A different tactic

I've had an internal goal for the last year to write 750 words each day. Some days I meet that goal, some days I get overwhelmed and my writing goes nowhere. Earlier this week I was encouraged by my friend to focus on a specific topic on this

Product design's future

Over the last year, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going to happen to product design as a field. I started my career as a graphic designer, and I loved it. But after a few years, I realized it wasn’t a great path to really build

Google Omni and Product Design changes

Refocusing this blog For the last few weeks I've been wondering what to write about. It's not that I have nothing to say, but rather that the things I want to say don't quite match how I want to say them. A recent episode

Product design thinking

Like many other designers in the industry, I was mostly self-taught. When I was starting, there wasn't really a field of product design for taking classes. We had to figure it out from others along the way, along with our own musings and trial-and-error. I

Joy in a hobby

Over the last four years I've found a new hobby: basketball. And funnily enough, I don't even playExcept. It's important to have something we care about that isn't motivated by a financial return. Me? I like getting lost; spending time diving into

Doing a hard thing

It might just be that I'm getting old, but I appreciate what I've had to struggle for. Back in community college my brother and I attended a few semesters together. In one English class, a summer condensed course, my first essay came back with a ton

We need your brain

Last week I was working through a challenging design problem. I needed to create a new set of screens for an app. Because of some limits on the hardware used for the app, there's a lot of constraints on how the problem can be approached. The designs are

Slow reading

Last month I bought a new e-reader. I've been following the cycle of new devices over the years, and have been particularly interested in small screens. I have a Kindle Paperwhite—and it's fine. But it's not pocketable, at least not if you

Change is assured

Ask me twenty years ago what I'd be thinking—on almost any given topic, and it's likely that the younger version of me would be surprised by the person who has had 38 cycles around the sun. We shift as we get older, we modify, we

A primer on Claude Code for beginners

Claude Code is an amazing tool. And with each update it gets better. I've been using it since last summer, when a friend strongly encouraged I give it a try. I'd been a fan of Replit before, but they charge a per usage fee, and the

Embrace the seasons

I've been thinking about seasons lately. It might be a result of a recent Cal Newport episode (great podcast by the way), or just the fact that we're shifting from Winter into Spring here in the northern hemisphere. Life can't just be the same

The Joy of Tinkering

I was talking to a friend recently about career progression and the challenges I've faced over the last two decades in navigating work and life. So much of what we talk about as a society is related to the effort we're supposed to put in, and

You can help

Product design, product management, any roles that touch the digital creation space for app development: all of these are shifting and changing so fast. In the last couple of weeks, I've had numerous conversations with people in and around these jobs. I've met a lot of

Following the leader

Leadership is tricky. It's easy to get wrong. It's easy to take the wrong assumptions from finding a willing follower and believing that their adoption of you means anything in particular for your greatness. That's not it at all. We could all do with

Look to help

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ― Fred Rogers I've been thinking about this quote a lot lately, and it keeps coming

Fun and play

I have an annoying trait that I've come to appreciate. The energy with which you demand I do something creates an equally inverse desire to not do it. Thankfully I'm not the only one. But for some reason it seems to be built in a bit