Fresh ideas about craft, clarity, creativity, and personal growth, as well as updates on my projects, media recommendations, and links to all the weird and delightful things I find on the internet.
In 2018, I started collecting songs I heard out in the world to a playlist. Anything that resonated in the moment, new or nostalgic. Obviously, the world was quite different when I started this habit. Like most folks who weren’t essential workers or selfish assholes, I spent most of 2020 at home. No concerts, no…Continue readingMy 2020 Playlist
This essay originally appeared in Issue 025 of my UX Writing Events newsletter. You may have read that Facebook’s content strategy team is now their content design team. In the relatively small world of UX content people like you and me, it’s generated a lot of discussion. I’ve been bothered by how narrow and 1-dimensional the conversation has…Continue readingContent strategy is not just one thing
Many product teams struggle to collaborate well on projects — making websites, building apps, creating content, authoring documentation, etc. — because they have not distinguished jobs from roles. Too often, teams allow roles to be merely inferred by job title, rather than slowing down to have a conversation about who’s doing what and why. This…Continue readingDesign jobs and design roles are not the same thing
Conceptual debt accrues when we take shortcuts in developing the foundational concepts behind our products. Continue readingConceptual debt is killing your design process
A collection of articles you’ll want to send to someone else.Continue readingThe Most Useful Articles about UX Content and Design
If I could nominate one book to be our UX Writing Bible, it would be the Yahoo! Style Guide.Continue readingThe UX Writing Bible
Job one is doing the job.Continue readingThe effortful way
Solid evergreen advice in this piece on providing feedback on longform content like blog articles. I especially echo this sentiment: [M]ultiple teammates giving feedback can confuse the writer and may also contradict each other’s feedback. Put some trust in the writer you’re working with and understand that you need one or two, at best, sets…Continue readingOne or two readers will do
Some thoughts on producing high-quality design articles that actually get shared.Continue readingFour Tips on Writing About Design
Excited for this new book coming up from Cyd Harrell (who’s also a good follow on Twitter, btw), especially the part about “how to show up in spaces dedicated to stewardship rather than profit.” Always happy for design conversations that aren’t about algorithmically testing the conversion rate of different shades of cornflower blue.Continue readingA Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide