That’s not an unlucky fate; it’s a design challenge. — Murphy’s Law is a much used but often misunderstood and misapplied adage. Below are four corollaries that broaden the law to product design contexts. Corollary 1: If someone can interpret it wrong, they will We’re all familiar with Murphy’s Law — at least we think we are: “If anything can go wrong, it will.” It comes up during our least…

Raymond Loewy and the birth of the design discipline — Like many UX designers, I didn’t aspire to be a UX designer when I was young. And like some of you converted UX designers, I did want to design products when I grew up. Physical products, appliances, shiny, rounded edges, ergonomic buttons, clever interfaces. At the time I didn’t know…

This year, resolve to nourish your calendar with fewer, more meaningful meetings — Welcome to 2023. While we’re all making new resolutions and changes in our lives, I want to introduce you to a new fad diet. It’s a meet-less diet, and it doesn’t involve tofu, meat substitutes, or even any extra vegetables. …

Searching for something healthy among our toxic traits — I’ve spent a lot of the last few years following a variety of thought leaders on a variety of social media. I follow some extremely talented designers, researchers, inventors, and authors, and these people have a wealth of valuable wisdom to share with the world. Some of them are frequently…

Figma dropped some huge new features this month and you need to embrace them — Figma has had a big year. Sure, it surpassed 4 million users and a $10B valuation over the last 12 months, but even more notable is that Figma was also hard at work behind the scenes to drop a whole load of new features that they unveiled at this year’s…

How can we explain something so simple yet so popular? — Every once in a generation something beautifully simple comes along and revolutionizes our lives: the paperclip, Post-its, the iPod, Wordle. Wordle? Okay, maybe that one doesn’t quite fit with the others, but by now you must be familiar with the cryptic square emojis filling your feed on every social medium…

Setting New Year resolutions in another bleak, unmotivating year of pandemic life — Welcome to 2022, our third calendar year of this pandemic, where we might be trying to strike a better equilibrium between our depression vices and our quickly abandoned hobby ambitions. I’ve never been a firm believer in setting New Year resolutions, and two years of Covid-hell have spoiled a lot…

User research is a science — don’t overlook the scientific method — User research comes in many forms, but popular among them is RITE, or Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation. The RITE Method isn’t just a popular way to conduct research, but its buzzword status seems to resonate with executives who might otherwise be loath to invest in research. So much so…

A heuristic tale of two candidates — To say that Seattle’s recent election for City Attorney was heated and polarizing would be the understatement of the decade. Two candidates faced off with starkly opposite approaches to law enforcement, and the respective media outlets that attached themselves to each one did the rest of us no favors by…