I had the great pleasure of visiting Tokyo recently, to speak at the long-running, COVID-interrupted UX Days event. From my perspective it was over 3 years in the making, from the initial invitation to actually being able to attend. Wild. The trip was a lot of firsts for me; my first time in Japan, my first … Read more
My book advises designers to be intentional about the tools they choose and use to do the writing on their projects. For writing a book, a thing I’d never done before, I ran a few experiments to see if there was any good and smart tool I hadn’t tried before that would make it easier. … Read more
I’ve been asked a few times what writing a book was like. Sometimes people mean: “What’s it like to be someone who wrote a book?” It’s nice! Glad to have done it, glad to know I can do it, lots of new opportunities, nice to have something unambiguously mine, and so on. It’s interesting to … Read more
My first book, Writing for Designers, was released by A Book Apart one year ago today. Personally, much of the past year has been a blur. I experienced a profound loss in December in the death of my mother, a scant 68 days after the book was first released. Reflecting on a year since the … Read more
A friend who’s working on a new book (hi Corey!) asked if he could pick my brain about book marketing, seeing as I’d recently released one. Most of the advice I was able to share was just stuff I’d learned from others. Abby Covert sent me a very nice and helpful email of tips when … Read more
My book is in print now. Available in print, anyway. Print on demand. I have a printed copy. (I don’t want to get “you wrote a text”-ed about my book and its relationship to paper. But I digress.) I did not know this was going to happen when I agreed to write for the Briefs … Read more
Recently back from an overnight trip to Chicago to speak with their UX Book Club. My book Writing for Designers was the featured book, and they hosted a Q&A style event with the author, who is me! This was the first time I’ve been at an in-person event specifically because I wrote a book. I … Read more
There’s a joke that having a writing deadline is the best way to get your house clean. Personally, I channeled this form of productive procrastination into digital spaces while getting to a finished first draft of the book. This was also partly out of thoroughness and desperation — “I know I’ve thought thoughts about this … Read more
The introduction of my book Writing for Designers is available to read for free on A List Apart.
I learned a lot while writing the book, and honestly it feels like I’m just barely starting to unpack the lessons from this project.