5 ways a team that designs together, sticks together. — I’ve left a lot of design teams. Sometimes it was because there wasn’t room for me to grow. Sometimes I left because I was underestimated and gaslighted. Sometimes I didn’t believe what I was being asked to design. There are a lot of big and small reasons designers move on…

What a pandemic teaches us about product design. — I plan ahead. Both as a product designer and in my personal life. It’s a pretty common human tendency. But there’s so much we can’t anticipate when we first make those plans. Things happen — whether it’s as local as a personnel change or as global as a pandemic. Then…

August 2014. This week I learned the meaning of burn out. For 8 months I’ve worked a job whose hours and emotional labor extend well past M-F 9–5. I live at the top of a 6-block hill in San Francisco’s Excelsior, and have had to adjust to hoisting groceries on…

If your city had to communicate without words — could it? — Icons transcend language. When communicating without language, you need images. But what happens when there aren’t icons for what you’re trying to say? What happens if you’re trying to tell someone applying for food stamps that they need a birth certificate? How do you say that without words? The Inspiration After helping…