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Opinion

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Embrace the process. Not every piece will resonate.

They are all not bangers.

Incidental complexity rears its head.

The Hilariously Large Straw

Longer is better?

The Story We Tell Ourselves

Data Is Not a USP

Data Is Not Differentiation

We're drowning in content yet starving for substance.

Cheap Content

Keep your site nourished with fresh content, fine-tune regularly, and maintain a balanced, consistent approach to thrive.

Feeding Your Website

We're drowning in companies that operate on a scale we can't even fathom.

Human Scale is Just Fine

Are you creating content that matters or just adding to the noise?

Mediocre is About to Get Automated

Every choice, every detail adds up to that final expression.

A Series of Small Decisions

You never know what new ideas are hiding in plain sight.

Invent by listening.

I fucking hate dark mode.

Unnecessary Complexity: Dark Mode

Good UX extends to food.

Ingredients matter, just not all of them.

Cars need eyebrows.

Car taillights should be eyebrows.

Don’t put your site's feet in cement.

Living web experiences.

I hope you've had inspiring individuals in your life.

Reconnecting with mentors: gratitude and rediscovery.

How did we keep things so cheap for so long?

The reckoning of cheapness.

The reality of design work.

Young designers get 10% made. An experienced designer gets 30% if you are lucky.

Designing user interfaces for complicated systems.

The UI reflects the tasks you ask of your user.

Minor inconsistencies and overly generic responses that frequently mar AI's output.

Robot Juice

Robot, meet robot.

Robots all the way down, baby.

The endless ride: the attention economy.

Too much of everything.

We spent $30 million to create the world's most optimal breaded chicken experience.

Chicken tenders are breaded by robots.

Unveiling the morality crisis in the age of AI.

Capitalism has no clothes.

What the title says.

The UX of Crypto Sucks

A safe critique stemming from uncertainty about providing more comprehensive feedback.

Drop-Shadow Comments: A Drop-Dead Sign

Tap into the web's core philosophy of open, intuitive access.

Everything should be a website.

If an icon doesn't come to mind within five seconds, opt for a word instead.

Berry's Law

Visibility is everything in design.

If your work isn't for sale in a store, in a museum, or on a website, it doesn’t exist.

Measuring a player's contribution compared to a "replacement-level" player.

Applying Sports Metrics to Startup Talent Evaluation

Investing in scaling without addressing internal flaws amplifies inefficiencies.

The Cost of Scaling: Improving Before Expanding

A heuristic for organizing and presenting your data.

Simplifying List Management: The Few-Some-Many Heuristic

Early commitment to an unorthodox name reflects the founders' long-term vision, passion, and courage.

Quirky Brand Naming: Timing is Everything

Centralized computing poses a risk to serendipitous discovery.

Preserving Discovery

Promoting inclusivity and empathy, counterbalancing impersonal global solutions, and enriching our collective human experience.

Solving Problems at Human Scale

Demystifying the elusive 'magic' in product design.

Crafting Magic in Product Design

The art of balancing innovation and agility.

Navigating Application Surface Area

The future of long-form content creation.

Dictation Event Horizon

A unique experience for passionate fans will justify the investment.

Sports Driving VR Adoption

It delivers the promise science fiction describes.

Apple Vision Pro: "Uh oh."

AI shifts software from low-entropy precision to high-entropy creativity.

Embracing Digital Entropy

Crafting a resilient design is a process of patience and precision.

Layers of fidelity.

Web development is complex, but embracing simplicity leads to resilient and timeless web experiences that are accessible and relevant.

Why is the web so damn complicated?

Call 878-PATTERN!

Bad Design Hotline

Turning food illness into an Orson Welles saga.

Never waste an opportunity offered by a good crisis.

Forgetting curates attention.

Forgetting is a feature.

Digital consumption today is like fast food: quick and engaging but not always healthy.

The slow web.

A refreshing approach to creativity.

Design Snacks

Web usability is always about returning to basics.

Put important things first.

Commerce has evolved from conversations to industrial standardization and now back to conversations.

Conversations as Commerce

POSE advocates for content ownership by creating on your own platform and syndicating elsewhere.

Post Once, Syndicate Elsewhere

Tragedy of the Commons affects virtual spaces too, leading to overuse and misuse on open platforms like Twitter, Facebook.

Tragedy of the Commons: Online Communities

Actively develop small AI apps to understand their potential and become AI literate.

Build your own AI

Optimal code remains unwritten, mirroring how the best UI feels invisible.

Write Less Software

Listening is a paramount skill for UX consultants diving into new domains.

You can listen only once.

In the digital realm, limitless potential drives unparalleled growth. Embrace or be left behind.

There is no gravity online.

Photo taken from Venice, California, at ~9:30am.

The solar eclipse is pretty cool.

Automate only after repeating a task many times, and understanding its complexities and bottlenecks.

Automate once it hurts.

Use unique tones to differentiate tests from real alerts.

Attention: no action is required by the public.

Advanced tech seems magical, echoing religious narratives & skepticism.

ChatGPT is Robot Jesus

It is a cheap but ultimately unfulfilling solution that borrows narratives and lacks authenticity.

Premium Mediocre Branding

Thought Merchants: A unique design studio merging creativity and code. Small scale, massive impact.

The Uncommon Design Studio That Crafts Better Business Outcomes

Data shows a weak but significant correlation between public interest in UFOs and indictments. Stay discerning amidst information overload.

Unidentified Phenomena and Political Disruptions

Embrace simplicity to scale effectively. While it may cost more initially, simplicity reduces long-term expenses and aids swift growth.

Scaling Simplicity: Designing Growth with Grace.

Excited to launch a podcast with my friend Desmond Bowe. A space to learn, explore, and challenge norms, particularly in tech.

Introducing We Know Better

TikTok is eroding our attention spans while revolutionizing content engagement. Is immediate entertainment worth the cost?

The TikTok Conundrum

Hyper-automation is shaking industries by reducing workforce demand and creating conflicts over AI and image rights in Hollywood.

The New Paradigm Shaking the Foundation of Industries

Prioritize simplicity, communicability, and long-term recognition. Remember, you're building a brand, not just a logo.

Building Your Brand Identity: The Art of Logo Design

The world's complicated enough. Design shouldn't be.

Simplicity in Design

From human chats to machine buttons, AI brings the conversation back as the future interface.

Conversation as the Next Interface

Innovative apps like Instagram, TikTok, made vertical videos mainstream by prioritizing convenience over form, revolutionizing consumption.

The Ascendance of Vertical Videos

Midjourney is absurd, exhilarating, and filled with unexpected turns. Destination unknown, adventure certain.

Midjourney is the Batmobile.

Venice has had 5 months of gloom, making it feel less sunny paradise, more moody teen.

Did we move to London?

From 3-hour paperwork hassles at dealerships to a seamless, app-based experience with Tesla - the future of car buying is here!

The Death of Car Dealerships

Rapid tech advancements incite fear, offering escapism, yet global challenges pose greater concerns.

This is fine.

AI's rapid creation of artistic iteration propels the art world into uncharted territory.

Embracing the Evolution of Art in the AI Era

Arrogance is leadership: the Dan Snyder way.

Naming the Washington Football Team

"Evolution is cleverer than you are."

COVID Lotto Ticket Glory Hole

Ambient findability can be valuable even in human relationships.

My clever public ambient findability solution.

Agile methodology pierces the veil by stack ranking tasks so that the one at the top of the list is the most valuable.

If everything is important, nothing is really important.

The infinite value of digital creations.

Future of Everything

I pulled out my camera, leaned against the front door frame to steady my hand, and captured the horror that is 2020.

9/11 @ 7:31am. 69 degrees. Smoky.

We have been working with Neomind Labs for a year, improving their brand, crafting more effective communication, and focusing the brilliance

Craft meaningful content for clients.

Responding to the CEO of a company admitting their product wasn't any good.

Ben from NUGGS

A content-based web experience is exceedingly light on content.

The web is a mess.

Each day (nearly), I sent out a survey on Mechanical Turk asking: "Since yesterday, how are you feeling?" The audience has three choices: mo

COVID-19 Daily Sentiment Survey

Thought Merchants' message to E-Scooters.

If you have to deliver bad news it helps if you are not ugly.

It appears the new boss is the same as the old boss.

Facebook is whatever you want it to be.

The dashboard always has potential but make sure to make every other page even more valuable.

Design the dashboard last

If the roots are your brand are borrowed, the tree that grows from them will be borrowed, too.

Premium Mediocre Branding

Extracting the pure essence of an idea from a page of ongoing thoughts.

A page. A paragraph. A sentence.

Whether you are a start-up or an established company, a brand-driven design is more than just visual aesthetics.

Are you ready to work with a designer to create a brand?

How the selfie economy is changing mobile form factors.

Screens just became non-rectangular.

Middlemen only obfuscate simplicity, options, and price in traditional franchise models.

Direct to consumer model is the future of car leasing.

Why normality yields better data than ambiguity in NPS tests.

A simpler net promotor score.

Business cards are still an effective direct marketing tool for your brand. There are really only two printing options.

How much should you spend on business cards?

Decoupling secrecy and ideas is the first step towards actually getting something done.

Your idea is the cheapest thing you own.

A summary of the concepts around the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Cluetrain Manifesto in short.

A resilient design stands the test of time since it's built off the most successful basic design patterns over time.

Build resilient products incrementally.