AI & DESIGN
Start Human, Finish Fast
The best AI work I’ve seen starts slowly. Not because the tools are slow. They’re fast. Unreasonably fast. That’s the problem.
Thoughts & thinking
Writing about product design, AI in practice, leadership, and the work behind the work.
AI & DESIGN
The best AI work I’ve seen starts slowly. Not because the tools are slow. They’re fast. Unreasonably fast. That’s the problem.
AI & DESIGN
We are not fully there yet. But the direction is clear enough that the smart question is no longer whether AI will change things. It is what you do before it does.
AI & DESIGN
Someone recently pointed me towards a paper called Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider. Published in 1960. Before most of us were born. Before the internet existed.
DESIGN PROCESS
Your team is too polite. That's the problem. Most teams don't have a conflict problem. They have a silence problem.
LEADERSHIP
It works at every level of the organisation.
Most design leaders don't see this. They fixate on the team. They forget that leadership either scales or it suffocates.
DESIGN HIRING
Not because contractors are risky. But because most organisations bring them in without really knowing what they need.
THINKING WITH OTHERS
Great night at UX Crunch last night on the 9th April. Good to see it back.
IDENTITY CRISIS
Not because I've stopped caring about design. But because the title doesn't come close to describing what I actually do compared to what businesses think I do.
THINKING
The most effective designers I've worked with didn't get that way in one environment. They got there by moving between them.
DESIGNER'S MENTALITY
In-house designers are often the best kept secret in the building. And not in a good way.
DESIGNER'S MENTALITY
Clients will look at you like you have all the answers. That's the unspoken contract of agency life. You're the expert. You've been hired because you know things they don't.
DESIGNER'S MENTALITY
Nobody is waiting for you to get comfortable. In a startup, design doesn't get a runway. No extended discovery phase, no lengthy sign-off process, no time to perfect the brief before the work starts.
PROCESS
Designers will tear apart a bad user flow in seconds. They'll accept a mediocre career without a second thought.