Over the past few years my knees have been progressively getting worse. This has nothing to do with product design, but I use my blog sometimes to just journal what has been going on in my life. Symptoms Walking down stairs in the morning hurts. Playing tennis required progressively heavy knee braces or within a…
Honestly, I have loved my 2020 Tesla Model 3. It has been a wonderful car and way ahead of its time. If not for the buffoonery, cruelty, greed, and stupidity of their CEO (Elon Musk), I would have purchased more Tesla cars. Additionally, I would not have been in a hurry to get a new…
This is just like 2000 and 2007. Sound familiar? It preceded the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble and it’s happening now. The hype cycle This is the way bubbles are formed and evolved. The timing is sometimes variable and not everything eventually reaches productivity. For example, the Tulip bubble of 1634 was not a…
Many designers are anxiously wondering, “will I be replaced with AI?” To jump to the conclusion, I think many designers are at risk and the job of interaction designer will change dramatically in the next 2-7 years. However, as an optimist, I think it may have a happy ending. Bubble? Sure, we are in a…
We have had a large liquid oak tree in front of our house. It grew and grew for decades. Eventually it started to break the sidewalk and encroach on the foundation of the house. Very sadly, the city decided that our glorious tree would have to go. The tree provided excellent shade to the house…
Fewer and fewer people host their own website using a hosting service. Designers use Framer or Webflow or EditorX or even trying the new Figma sites. Corporate websites are usually hosted in the corporate cloud like AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. Content creators have moved on from blogging to either short form text like…
Two shows I really enjoyed in the last few years are Andor (a Star Wars saga) and The Penguin (a Batman spinoff). The reason for both is how they completely delivered an unexpected product. Andor In he case of Andor, it is a Star Wars movie that chronicles the time leading up to the first…
Who is this post for? This is a true chronicle of an experiment for my youngest son to skip college and directly enter the workforce. If you know a young person who is considering skipping college, this may be helpful to see what someone else did. Fair warning: It’s long. I tried to be as…
Our bodies need constant oxygen. Even a minute without it can do serious damage. Our organs, our brains, our plants, our pets, our stoves…everything needs oxygen. It is the single most important thing in our lives. We need metaphorical oxygen too. I am going to skip all of the ways kids need intellectual oxygen growing…
I am a fan of Black Mirror on Netflix. It is an anthology series focusing on technology and culture in the near future. Most of the time the future is sad, terrifying, or horrible in one dystopian way or another. Sounds good, right? Season 7 just dropped 6 episodes, which feels short, but the quality…
Uncertainty report from 3 years ago with image excerpt. I think the last 3 years have increased the uncertainty on the right. Uncertainty is the big U in FUD. It leads directly to the other two, Fear and Doubt. One thing the world abhors in uncertainty. (Take that Heisenberg!) Uncertainty leads to wars, to famine,…
One technique that I teach almost every mentee is to conduct informational interviews as often as you can. This is especially useful in the early stages as you graduate from school, start your first job, and navigate your career. Informational interview 101 Simply put, it is a meeting (in person or remote) where you ask…
LinkedIn is the only social media platform that I actively engage in. I don’t use Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. I like to doom scroll TikTok a bit, but it’s not like I talk to anyone on it. LinkedIn is the one platform that I will actually talk to people. I accept connection requests from any…
Corporations are not human beings, no matter what Citizens United and the Supreme Court says. As non-human entities, they have no compassion, no empathy, no sense of right and wrong. Corporations are set up for one purpose: to create value, usually in the form of money. Now obviously, I don’t recommend living off the grid,…