Articles
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.
Thinking with paper
When I’m trying to figure out what I think, to unravel something new, I use paper. Email makes you think like email. Pick some people and tell them something. But maybe I don’t need to tell anyone anything. Maybe I need to make a to-do list, or write up a list of questions and add … Read more
Assessing Your User-Centered Content Strategy
Three important questions to ask yourself when moving toward a more user-centered content strategy.
No. 47 | Seven genetically modified food ideas
If we’re going to engineer our fruit and vegetable crops let’s have some fun with it, is all I’m saying.
Put the Work Before the Words
Don’t let vocabulary or office politics get you down. Your content strategy work is relevant, no matter what words are tied to it.
Links of late | 2018-06-01
New version of Ulysses is out. Lucky 13. Nothing I’ll make immediate use of but I see the appeal of the colored keywords, especially for a larger project like a book. A recent episode of 99% Invisible about Curb Cuts jumped right into their top ten for me. Design, usability, political activism, shitting on Jerry … Read more
stopit, Golden Principles, and the Golden Bridge
One my favorite talks I give is about making Dale Carnegie’s 9 Golden Principles for Being a Friendlier Person an accessible idea for UX designers. The first principle is often one of the hardest to adhere to, both IRL and on the web: Never criticize, condemn, or complain. When a user does something we perceive … Read more
How I put together my latest workshop
I did a completely new workshop (and related talk) at Confab this year. By completely new, I mean: Not upcycled from a talk I’ve already given Not an evolution on a previous talk or workshop Not based on a blog post or other writing So new, new, new. It was a lot of work. Confab … Read more
Conference diary: Confab 2018
Holy shit. So was that a conference or was that a conference? I’m still reeling from the end of Confab 2018, a (the) content strategy conference held annually here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My employer, Brain Traffic, produces the event. My primary contribution leading up to Confab is to interject unasked-for advice into conversations I overhear … Read more
Sketching a blog post
Used a couple of Sharpie twin tips and my Baron Fig Mastermind pad to prototype my latest post for the Brain Traffic blog. Normally when I use pen and paper in my writing workflow it’s very messy and haphazard — notes jotted in random places, maybe a partial mind map, maybe a bullet point of … Read more