Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated with movies. I loved the characters and the excitement but most of all the stories. I wanted to be an actor. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting adventures. I even dreamed up ideas for movies that my...

   Picture this. You’ve joined a squad at your company that’s designing new product features with an emphasis on automation or AI. Or your company has just implemented a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with data. Now what When it comes to designing for personalization, there are...

   I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and...

   In reading Joe Dolson’s recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility...

   I am a creative. What I do is alchemy. It is a mystery. I do not so much do it, as let it be done through me. I am a creative. Not all creative people like this label. Not all see themselves this way. Some creative people see science in what they do. That is their truth, and I respect it. Maybe...

   Humility, a designer’s essential value that has a nice ring to it. What about humility, an office manager’s essential value Or a dentist’s Or a librarian’s They all sound great. When humility is our guiding light, the path is always open for fulfillment, evolution, connection, and engagement. In...

   As a UX professional in today’s data driven landscape, it’s increasingly likely that you’ve been asked to design a personalized digital experience, whether it’s a public website, user portal, or native application. Yet while there continues to be no shortage of marketing hype around personalization...

   The mobile first design methodology is great it focuses on what really matters to the user, it’s well practiced, and it’s been a common design pattern for years. So developing your CSS mobile first should also be great, too...right Well, not necessarily. Classic mobile first CSS development is...

   About two and a half years ago, I introduced the idea of daily ethical design. It was born out of my frustration with the many obstacles to achieving design that’s usable and equitable; protects people’s privacy, agency, and focus; benefits society; and restores nature. I argued that we need to...

   CSS is about styling boxes. In fact, the whole web is made of boxes, from the browser viewport to elements on a page. But every once in a while a new feature comes along that makes us rethink our design approach. Round displays, for example, make it fun to play with circular clip areas. Mobile...

   Do you find yourself designing screens with only a vague idea of how the things on the screen relate to the things elsewhere in the system Do you leave stakeholder meetings with unclear directives that often seem to contradict previous conversations You know a better understanding of user needs...

   Do you remember when having a great website was enough Now, people are getting answers from Siri, Google search snippets, and mobile apps, not just our websites. Forward thinking organizations have adopted an omnichannel content strategy, whose mission is to reach audiences across multiple digital...

   Antiracist economist Kim Crayton says that intention without strategy is chaos. We’ve discussed how our biases, assumptions, and inattention toward marginalized and vulnerable groups lead to dangerous and unethical tech but what, specifically, do we need to do to fix it The intention to make...

   In the s, many in the elite running community had begun to believe it wasn’t possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Runners had been attempting it since the late th century and were beginning to draw the conclusion that the human body simply wasn’t built for the task. But on...

   We’ve been having conversations for thousands of years. Whether to convey information, conduct transactions, or simply to check in on one another, people have yammered away, chattering and gesticulating, through spoken conversation for countless generations. Only in the last few millennia have we...

   I’m not sure when I first heard this quote, but it’s something that has stayed with me over the years. How do you create services for situations you can’t imagine Or design products that work on devices yet to be invented Flash, Photoshop, and responsive design When I first started...

   Any comment is probably one of the worst ways to ask for feedback. It’s vague and open ended, and it doesn’t provide any indication of what we’re looking for. Getting good feedback starts earlier than we might expect: it starts with the request. It might seem counterintuitive to start the...

   Feedback, in whichever form it takes, and whatever it may be called, is one of the most effective soft skills that we have at our disposal to collaboratively get our designs to a better place while growing our own skills and perspectives. Feedback is also one of the most underestimated tools,...

   Are you like me, reading about people fading away as they burn out, and feeling unable to relate Do you feel like your feelings are invisible to the world because you’re experiencing burnout differently When burnout starts to push down on us, our core comes through more. Beautiful, peaceful souls...

   This Person Does Not Exist is a website that generates human faces with a machine learning algorithm. It takes real portraits and recombines them into fake human faces. We recently scrolled past a LinkedIn post stating that this website could be useful if you are developing a persona and looking...