Viewpoint

I recently watched a talk by Austin Kleon from the first Creative Mornings event in Austin, Texas a few years ago. At the time, Austin was working on his new book, Show Your Work!, which is about something I’m very passionate about — the process of creating and the sharing of that process. I’ve been sharing my process work and… Read More ￫

Takeaways from my Journey On a Friday afternoon in Berlin, Germany, I stood in a movie theater-sized room about to speak to hundreds of people on behalf of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. As fragments of my speech swirled through my head, I reminded myself to breathe and enjoy the moment. This talk wasn’t my first foray… Read More ￫

In each entry in this “conversation” series I talk to a designer/product manager/engineer on a topic. I want to make basic practical skills education transparent and free. Today I’m talking to Ryan Scott, a senior product designer at DoorDash, about how product managers and designers should work together to create desirable products that solve business needs. What’s your experience working… Read More ￫

Who the hell am I to tell you anything about being a good product designer? I am not a personal trainer, a Human Resources specialist, a Guru or any type of Evangelist. I just try to do my best in every sphere of my work, enjoy every process and learn as much as I can on the journey. A big… Read More ￫

Work is work and will always be. Some people love it, some just roll with it. Like a service, the impressions we have about our jobs is based on how well the company culture, relationships, and work environment contribute to achieving our goals. As design professionals, we know that not every company praises the value provided by design-oriented approaches. Production-oriented… Read More ￫

Let your user show you the path “Once upon a time, there was a genius architect. After completing a new building, he decided to leave the courtyard and other grassy areas around the building without sidewalks. The idea was to let people use the building for a year and let their use form trails in the grass. Then lay the sidewalks… Read More ￫

“Fast, simple and easy to use”. This is the motto that drives the majority of tech companies nowadays. Fueled by Agile methodologies, these companies strive for fast deliveries and quick iteration cycles. But, in order to deliver fast, the outcome must be simple. But how simple? One of LEAN’s methodology principles says the following: (…) Keep things simple. Keep the… Read More ￫

In each entry in this “conversation” series I talk to a designer/product manager/engineer on a topic. I want to make basic practical skills education transparent and free. Today I’m talking to John Cutler, Senior Product Manager at Zendesk. John has written extensively on different product management topics and I love his views on product management and how it is evolving…. Read More ￫

Software is meant to be, above all things, useful. When we think about something useful we cannot help but think about the users (good thing we can’t). What if we were to build the best application ever but no one ever used it? So much for the usefulness of it, right? “There are multiple kinds of users implicated on a… Read More ￫

Design jobs are flooding the tech space with more rigor now than ever before. Companies are hiring designers specializing in interaction, UX, UI, and research to grow their established design teams. But for the majority this is not the case. You will probably at some point be one of the company’s first designer. I received the first designer role as… Read More ￫

Last week, I was reading Michael Horton’s article entitled “Complexion Reduction: a new trend in Mobile Design” and it got me thinking. In his article, he presents what he thinks is a new trend in mobile design which takes mobile minimal design a step further. Basically, it means that more and more apps look strangely alike: Complexion Reduction means white… Read More ￫

In each entry in this “conversation” series I talk to a designer/product manager/engineer on a topic. I want to make basic practical skills education transparent and free. Today I am speaking to Ravi Akella who currently runs the product team at the Digital Manufacturing Group at Autodesk and is on the PM Leadership Team at Autodesk. His team of product… Read More ￫