A useful analogy that’s helped me to understand—and manage—difficult situations. — I. I try every day to be the best version of myself. Some days — many days — this is easy. Other days, it takes a lot of hard work. While there is certainly an internal component to all this, my energy reserve (ahem, patience!) is largely challenged by external circumstances…

It’s about much more than leaving Twitter, or ‘switching’ to Mastodon… — I’ve almost—almost—completely weaned myself off of Twitter. Yeah, yeah, I know — please keep reading. It’s deeper than all that. This is something I’ve been thinking about long before the recent swirl and chaos… This is about investing in something with a solid core, something more sustainable, and something… that…

I want to share an article and a thought… Essentially, a different way to look at the work we do as designers (or anyone who touches the user experience or does service design kinds of work!). Prelude: My Discomfort with Customer Journeys Context: I’ve always felt weird about using customer journeys for an experience where we…

Or, the Value of ‘Underspecifying’ a Product Feature — A potentially contentious point I bring up in my “Paths to Sandboxes” talk is the value of “underspecifying” a feature. Essentially, I suggest we might design, build, and ship a feature with no specified use case. That’s right. No “As a [user]… I want to… so that…” statement. …

I have strong beliefs, you might even say convictions, about how certain ways of working can make the world a better place. Consider this passage, from the final paragraph of the final chapter of my book Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding. “From confusing parking signs to dynamic…

Email sent to members of The Mighty Minds Club. Re-posting it here so more people can catch up on what’s been going on and what’s ahead! Helloooooooo! In this final installment of the “What Next for the Mighty Minds Club?” …

Email sent to members of The Mighty Minds Club. Re-posting it here so more people can catch up on what’s been going on and what’s ahead! Howdy! Welcome to email #2 (of 3) as we look at ‘What’s Next for the Mighty Minds Club’. NOTE: If you’ve signed up recently…

Email sent to members of The Mighty Minds Club. Re-posting it here so more people can catch up on what’s been going on and what’s ahead! Welcome, fellow Mighty Minds! After several weeks away from this newsletter (and Mighty Minds in general), I’m back! …

A transcript of my Euro IA 2020 keynote. — There’s a quote I’ve been thinking about, a lot: The greatest mapmakers of old were not the ones who made better maps of places that were known. They gleaned insights about the places yet to be explored and mapped out uncharted territory In this, I see two roles. One role…