As AI systems mature, UI design alone can’t resolve subtle behavioral breakdowns. What’s missing is a shared language for expressing decision logic, constraints, and failure modes, something current design tools are only beginning to support. Until those capabilities fully exist, evaluation test benches are emerging as the most practical design surface for making system behavior legible, testable, and designable before interfaces are finalized.

Traditional persona slides often flatten the complexity of real user behavior, making it harder for teams to act on insights at scale. What began as an effort to tell richer, research-based user stories evolved into structured, networked representations of those personas using tools like Obsidian. While not a formal knowledge graph, these visualizations helped surface meaningful patterns and connections across customer experiences. That exploration has now progressed toward more agentic models and systems that can hold, respond to, and evolve with real user context. These approaches improve empathy while also enabling faster decisions, reducing misalignment, and helping teams stay focused on what actually matters to customers as business priorities evolve.

Impactful design often begins well before a formal brief. In this piece, UX leads upstream, shaping direction through deep research, speculative thinking, and a protected space for strategic alignment. The “greenhouse” sprint emerges as a design method, as well as a business capability: a way to reduce downstream risk, build cross-functional momentum, and deliver high-signal insight before resources are committed.

In today's tech-driven world with AI and the data economy on the horizon, let's dive into the fascinating topic of human identity. Think of it as a colorful tapestry made up of memories, relationships, values, and all the roles we play in life. But with so much of our life played out online, to what extent are we taking account of our digital identities? Some folks are actively aware of the weight of their digital presence, while others are passive participants sleepwalking through those login and authorization patterns without any sense of their digital agency. Imagine if we could own and control it, sparking self-awareness. We'd refine our online manners and ethics, paving the way for a more conscious and empowered digital self.

Speculative Design is a forward-thinking approach that challenges assumptions and sparks critical thinking. It uses storytelling, prototyping, and visualization to explore alternative futures and provoke discussions on the social, cultural, and ethical implications of technology and innovation. It has gained popularity across various fields, including art, architecture, product design, and technology. By embracing a speculative mindset, considering long-term implications, and engaging in reflective practices, Speculative Design offers a powerful tool for envisioning and shaping a more thoughtful and imaginative future.

March 2023 has been an intense month for text AI generation with several significant releases and announcements. Google unveiled AI functionality for its workspace tools, and GPT-4 was released. Microsoft introduced 365 co-pilot and business chat, and Adobe presented Firefly, which brings text-to-image generation to Photoshop. Additionally, NVIDIA announced a new GPU, H100 NVL, for large-language-model inference, and NVIDIA DGX Cloud, bringing NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputers to every company. OpenAI also introduced support for plugins in Chat GPT, highlighting its accessibility and versatility.

My experience with IDEO's Leading Complex Projects course provided valuable insights and practical advice for leaders looking to navigate complex project environments with confidence and clarity. By adopting a mindset that balances intuition with rational analysis, developing a flexible and adaptable approach, building collaborative relationships, and aligning around a clear purpose, leaders can effectively navigate uncertainties and succeed in complex project environments.

In this blog post, I share my insights on creating effective prompts for optimal AI-generated text outputs, specifically in the realm of marketing. I highlight the importance of maintaining control and guiding the AI to assist you, rather than the other way around. The importance of using commands and providing context is highlighted so you can tell the AI exactly what you want by experimenting with formulas for creating effective prompts. Actively tweaking the context by observing the output is crucial when working with AI.

While the novelty of AI text generation may eventually wear off, the practical benefits of automating repetitive AI tasks will continue to drive the adoption of this technology in businesses of all sizes and industries. As the pace of technological change continues to accelerate, companies that are quick to embrace these innovations and adapt their workflows accordingly will be the ones to succeed in the years ahead.

Scrolly-telling is a powerful tool for digital storytelling, using multimedia and interactive design for an immersive experience. To create a compelling scrolly-telling experience, designers and front-end engineers have several CSS tools at their disposal. But before designing, a clear storyboard is required, aligned with user needs and page goals. In the case of the Eargo 6 hearing aid launch, a narrative structure was built, generating storyboards that resonated with the audience and business goals.

Cultural differences impact how people use and interact with mobile technology, with designers needing to consider language, metaphors, color, style, and technology infrastructure. Understanding cultural norms around politeness, privacy, and social obligation is crucial, as is using frameworks such as Hofstede's 5 cultural dimensions to create inclusive experiences.

Airbnb's "The Way We Build" article by Alex Schleifer emphasizes the importance of creating a collaborative environment and a shared language among designers and engineers to innovate and improve the way we build products. The article suggests that investing in a Design Language System (DLS) based on core design principles can help close the collaboration gap and bring about consistency across product experiences. The article provides guidance on assessing the current state of affairs and identifying steps toward a unified experience design system. Other companies such as Salesforce and Mailchimp have also invested in DLSs and UX pattern libraries to improve their products.

Alain de Botton's explains the human condition and how companies like Airbnb and LinkedIn have reframed their mission to provide a deeper and more meaningful experience for their customers.

The Design Sprint book by Banfield/Lombardo/Wax emphasizes the importance of defining a problem statement before starting sprint activities. Crafting a specific sentence can be an effective approach to ensuring a shared understanding of the problem to be solved. Defining the problem statement helps to set the direction for subsequent sprint activities and avoids building solutions based on assumptions that may not solve the right problem for the customer.

Lately I find that I spent alot of time extolling the virtues of a pattern library. It’s so obvious to me why you’d need one, but I feel the need to list the actual arguments for why you’d be crazy not to invest in one.

We’ve all seen these visual descriptions of the user centered design process, yet it boggles the mind when teams habitually ignore the full spectrum of design activities as there’s so much to choose from when collaborating on empathy for our customers.

The Difficulty and Importance Matrix is a prioritization tool that can result in an actionable plan. You can identify top ideas and rank them by importance and difficulty. This result can expose an organization's design culture and lead to better design innovation and a more open-mindedness across product teams and beyond.

Collaboration is a main pillar in the design effort, yet it may not always be helpful. People are inherently complicated if not messy and getting people to work together to solve challenging problems cannot be managed without sensitivity and humility – nuanced thoughts are required to navigate the complex systems of teams.

I used to work with an agile team that relied heavily on collaboration, so I didn't need to spend much time on UX documentation. But in my current job, I've had to learn how to write design specs. I've found that starting with some ambiguity can actually be helpful, as it draws others into the design process and encourages co-ownership. I've developed a checklist for this less-than-agile environment that includes tasks like creating a rough task list and low-fidelity visualizations. By leaving some gaps for conversations, we're forced into an agile philosophy without even realizing it.