I originally published this in March 2019 in another personal space I used to keep on the internet. I’m republishing it on Medium to keep my online writing together. This morning when I arrived at work, almost the moment I stepped through the door, the strap on my purse broke…

Unsolicited career advice for people in R&D — One of the best pieces of advice I have for people who are early on in a career in R&D is to learn to hold tension and sit with it, rather than seeing tension as negative or to be resolved. When I look back, I can see that many of…

For as many years as I can remember, I’ve wanted to improve my technical photography skills. iPhones and automatic settings on digital cameras make taking nice enough images convenient and easy, but the experience is so lightweight that the outcome feels disposable. I take hundreds of photos on my phone…

Design systems — how they’re documented, shared, and maintained — matter because of what they facilitate and represent. If the system is created to enable real work, it should reflect how an organization makes things and what it values. …

Hey there! I’m writing a book about interface content called From button copy to bots: Writing for user interfaces to be published by Rosenfeld Media in 2018. This is my first post about the book. It was originally shared on Rosenfeld Media. I’ve written quite a bit about why interface…

A case study featuring Uber’s November 2016 update — In the UX world, we talk a lot about how important it is to design with the needs of users in mind. We’re passionate advocates for patterns that are recognizable, set clear expectations, and are easy to follow. We’re aghast at companies that place misleading text on buttons to inflate…

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do content strategy for chatbots and other conversational interfaces. These days, everyone seems to want their interface to talk. …

I’m currently staying in a hotel in an area of London I don’t know very well. I woke up early today and have spent the morning preparing for three days of consultancy I’m doing here. There’s no coffee in my hotel room and hotel breakfasts are notoriously low in value…

Empathy is a buzzword in the tech industry. Although it’s important to work to understand the needs of the humans using our products, sometimes it seems like we talk about empathy more than we actually do it. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Silicon…