Writing
Notes on the craft and practice of product design.
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How I decide when a design is “done enough” to ship
Waiting until a design feels done is how you miss the window. "Done enough" is a real standard, but it’s one most designers aren’t taught.
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Why “move fast and break things” breaks design
I've watched teams ship broken flows at impressive speed. The velocity was real. So was the cleanup. "Move fast and break things" made sense for shipping software experiments. It was never meant to be a design philosophy.
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When to design for edge cases, and when to cut them
Most edge cases don't hurt teams because they were cut. They hurt because nobody ever made a decision about them.
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Signs a junior designer is ready to level up
The shift from “doing the work” to “owning the problem” doesn’t happen overnight. But you’ll know it when you see it.
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Why I still use paper in my process
Figma is great at making things look resolved. That’s exactly the problem.
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What I wish someone had told me at the start of my career
Nobody hands you a manual. But a few of these lessons would have saved me some time.
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How to run a design critique that actually improves the work
4 rules. 4 roles. 1 format for presenting. That’s all it takes to run a critique that actually improves the work.
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How I use journey maps without making them useless
Most journey maps fail the same way: they're built to document, not to decide.
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What actually gets you promoted to senior designer
Pixel-level craft gets you in the door. Judgment, ownership, and communication get you to the next level.
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Why principal designers need to think like product managers
The best PMs I've worked with think like designers. The best principal designers I know think like PMs
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