Design Thoughts

There’s a big search on for what’s next after design thinking. Over the past five years, people have lined up to write critiques of design thinking (also known as human-centered design). In the case of the more thoughtful critiques, those thinkers have offered alternatives. Instead of people centered design, we need systemic design. Or we need strategic design. Or we… Read More ￫

When it comes to job titles in the design world, it’s people’s favourite thing to debate on Medium, and I suspect also in general. I think that it’s testament to a really interesting time that we live in: UI/UX design as a career wasn’t even a real option until about 10 years ago, and product design traditionally referred to people… Read More ￫

In short Atomic Research is the concept of breaking UX knowledge down into its constituent parts: The Atomic Research model — a funnel from data to conclusions, then around again Experiments “We did this…” Facts “…and we found out this…” Insights “…which makes us think this…” Conclusions “…so we’ll do that.” By breaking knowledge down like this allows for some extraordinary possibilities. How It… Read More ￫

A little over nine months ago, I left Etsy to co-found Related Works. During my last year and a half there, I managed Etsy’s first dedicated Design Systems team. Below are my thoughts about what it meant to make the team and the work successful. As tech companies grow, the creation of their design system can become a powerful and… Read More ￫

The Problem It drives me crazy that the text bounding box almost always brings in extra space above and below the actual text. Therefore, when the bounding box is used to measure space, it ends up being bigger than you intended. The bigger the line height, the bigger the problem. In the example below, the design was created by measuring… Read More ￫

Design Systems has become a key part of my everyday work… And from the surrounding discussions, it is now the case for many people ;) After reading Alla Kholmatova’s book last year, I was lucky to attend the first European conference on the subject in March. All of this strengthened my conviction that, in the future, every brand and every… Read More ￫

I recently created a case-study for my colleagues in New York about a multi-brand Design System project I worked on, for one of our clients back in London. While gathering information for this presentation, I was inspired to write an article and share my thoughts about what I’ve learned during this year-long experience and how it opened my eyes to… Read More ￫

It’s a practice of creating apps, sites, and products usable for everyone, including people with visual, motor, auditory, speech, or cognitive disabilities. Why should you support accessibility? You can impact someone’s life by making inclusive and easy-to-use products. One billion people have disabilities: your product can be used by them. Better accessibility support leads to better UX and cleaner code…. Read More ￫

We’ve curated a list of diversity job boards, tools and resources to help you or your company attract diverse talent throughout your design organisation recruitment. Let’s kick this post off with a few stats: The UK design industry is 89.5% white and 60%, male. While the US design industry is 73% white and 55%, male. According to the Office for… Read More ￫

Recently, MongoDB held a design meetup that focused on imposter syndrome and, more importantly, how we deal with it as designers. I was asked to speak on behalf of my own experience and share advice for those who may also be in this headspace. Personally, I suffered massively from these feelings of self-doubt as I was just starting out in… Read More ￫

Right off the bat, let’s clarify: we can’t change your physiology. If you naturally struggle with interpersonal conflict, there is some mental preparation we can do and some tactics we can employ, but we can’t change your brain. That’s a good thing. We want to arm your natural strengths, not change you. So let’s go! As a team, we should… Read More ￫

It’s time to change a lot of the dialogue we have in the design industry. It’s time for us to start thinking about the impact our designs have on the world. We’ve spent far too long thinking about how cool something is. Meanwhile, the products we’ve made have changed how elections work, shifted the workforce in multiple industries, raised depression… Read More ￫