Principal Product Designer @Pluralsight, previously Design Director @ProfitWell (acquired) and Boundless Learning (acquired). Tweets and opinions are my own.
Boston
Joined March 2011
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I have this belief that every PM should have a hill they're willing to die on. They live at the intersection of business value and product experience. They have to have a vision for their product, which requires them to also identify things that could hamstring it in the future.
I've been using BlueSky for 2 days. I indicated I'm only interested in technology and tv/movies; however, my feed is full of politics. It's full of hyper left takes with no counterbalance from other opinions. It feels like its creators think left = correct. This feels dangerous.
Where is the discourse? What keeps this echo chamber in check? I'm saying this as a registered independent voter and what many would label as a "centrist".
Unpopular opinion: There are specific scenarios when small iterative releases are not worth the squeeze and it's counterproductive. Sometimes larger, holistic releases make more sense. Small iterative releases is sometimes dogma companies force upon its prod dev teams.
The core skill I look for in a product designer is the ability to rapidly create disparate solutions to a problem. If you can do this then you can be coached on everything else.
Recommendation engines are still in a funny state for items that are clearly one-time purchases. It's like "I see you bought a food processor, so here's 5 more food processors you might like" rather than presenting me with recs that are complimentary like a cook book, etc
Startup idea: an OOUX based project management system with anomaly detection for design orgs. "It looks like you're working on [object]. We've just notified 5 other designers because it impacts their work."
LinkedIn Catchup: "Help this random person hire for X position."
Me: "Do I get a referral bonus or....?"
I always find it weird when designers say they're doing IA work when what they're actually doing is just determining the information and visual hierarchy of the elements on a single page. Am I alone in feeling like this isn't IA work?
Currently working on a case study of what I worked on and went through the past 2 years. Doing so has made me realize how crazy it all was. It's no wonder I was so burned out at the beginning of the year. Excited to tell this story.
Patrick Feger retweeted
90% of creating a good design is really just:
Sitting down to do the work.
Exploring more than you think is necessary.
Prioritizing and cutting more than is comfortable.
The little stuff that makes all the difference.
[off topic + oversimplified] If you live in America and you care about your health, here is how you should grocery shop. Take it from someone who had severe Crohn's + autoimmune issues and has been both medication free and symptom free for almost 10 years. Don't @ me or whatever
Today I witnessed designers make free form, low-fi wireframes to brainstorm and ideate. A vast majority of them were focused on “componentizing” every element of their wireframes rather than focusing on the quality and quantity of the ideation itself. Why? What for?
I don't know who needs to hear this, but content still dictates form even in the era of design systems. Design systems should evolve based on new design patterns that come from new content + user needs to deliver a quality experience.
