Product Design as Haiku
Haiku’s limits reveal a creative superpower. Embrace real world constraints, balance freedom with discipline, and watch work sharpen, teams align, and surprising solutions emerge where budgets, timelines, and purpose collide.
Brand & Positioning Insights
Short, practical perspectives on market stance, differentiation, and brand strategy — focused on what actually moves the needle for founder‑led service firms.
Project Management? Try Expectations Management
Why identical outcomes spark love or fury. Explore how dopamine, clear communication, and expectation management turn projects into loyalty. Discover healthcare inspired habits that keep customer experience steady.
Why Business Owners Fear Customer Research
Customer research is fundamental to the design process. It’s been well established that relying on assumptions alone leads us to make biased decisions that often fail to reflect the reality of the customer’s needs and wants, leading to poor results (including reduced revenue). Basically, it’s more e…
The Experience IS the Product
Inexperienced marketers tend to fall back on a benefit-focused approach, believing they’ll win customers by listing their virtues (better products, better customer service, technical improvements, etc.) Unfortunately, most practical benefits don’t address the issues that really frustrate consumers: …
Why is Mobile-First Design Failing?
There’s definitely some logic to the underlying philosophy of the “mobile first” approach to design, but there are also some hidden problems that cause even experienced designers to make some fundamental user experience mistakes. Doing it wrong serves only to reverse the underlying problem, creating…
The Power of Designer & Developer Collaboration
There are few forces as formidable as designers and developers working together. When they’re working effectively, they hardly need anyone else. Entire companies have sprung up around strong designer+developer teams, and these collaborative teams have built many of the tech and social platforms that…
Run Your Business Like an Astronaut
When I think of the people who were the most influential role models in shaping my approach to business and life, I keep coming back to astronauts. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for astronauts. You see, I’m an emotional guy. I cry easily at movies. My blood pressure rises when I see injust…
How Cognitive Bias Skews Design Reviews
Designers aren't always rational. Cognitive biases warp reviews and choices, from anchoring to loss aversion, and practical cues help you notice them and steer projects with clearer thinking.
Software Design Mistakes that Just Won’t Die
Six common UX pitfalls drain revenue. Prioritize research over reskins, design for humans not databases, respect power users, collaborate teams, and coach users kindly. Thoughtful process beats decorative polish.
Getting Past "Pretty"
When customers flee, the temptation is a glossy redesign. Instead, uncover buried UX flaws, align messaging, and iterate with research so users feel capable, trust grows, and sales recover.
Business Software Doesn’t Have to Hurt
I’ve worked on a lot of enterprise software projects over the years, and one of the common patterns I’ve observed is a surprisingly high tolerance for poor user experience. If you’ve ever worked in a cubicle farm, you’re probably all too familiar with the baffling HR systems, the agonizing time-trac…
What I Look for in Designers
I recently spoke to the seniors in Arizona State University’s Visual Communication Design department, and was asked the same question I’m asked almost every time I’m speaking to design students: “What do you look for when hiring designers?” (I should mention that I regard “Designers” as a broad and …
Marketing is Food, Not Medicine
Coca-Cola may already be one of the most recognized brands in the world, but they nevertheless spend billions of dollars every year on their marketing efforts. (And you can bet they’re not doing it on a whim. They know exactly what those dollars will bring them in return.) On the other side of the s…
20 Words You Can Drop From Your Core Values Right Now
Stop waving the same tired values as everyone else. Customers assume basics like quality and service. Ditch the defaults and uncover what truly sets you apart, something competitors won’t claim.
Being Best Beats Being First
Being first rarely wins anymore. In a fast moving market, underdogs iterate faster, learn from others' mistakes, and take the lead unless patents or relentless innovation protect an early edge.