Learning “best practices” by rote has produced a cohort of shallow generalists. Solving real-world challenges requires tailoring your methods to the problem's unique context.
The building blocks of feedback loops are learn, design, build – in that order. It's Design's job to create these loops, because no one else will do it for you.
A seat at the table is no good unless design is part of the strategy. To find the right place to apply leverage, designers need to embrace systems thinking.
The work of design starts long before you open Figma. We must first seek out – or create – conditions in which good design is even possible, by building our own relational power.
At the root of design's crisis is an incentives crisis throughout tech. But we have tools that let us cut through the magical thinking of feature factories - if we're willing to use them.
You'll never be able to make effective trade-offs without thinking holistically about the entire system, and the other people within it
Algorithmic search has pushed both users and designers towards design patterns that use removing friction as an excuse to take away control. But some tools are bringing thoughtfulness back.
Using LLMs to rush the design process to the output at the end cuts out the very feedback loop that makes design worth doing in the first place.
Elevating quantitative methods above all other ways of informing decisions is a great example of "making things worse by making them better."
Like our products, visual artifacts should be designed to fit their audience and purpose. That purpose is not "so that someone can look at it."
UX teams are optimizing themselves into being bad at UX.
User research would have prevented this week's extremely expensive mistakes - but leaders are determined to keep making them.
