Back in the day as a software consultant, someone told me to not think of it the job as churning out code but to ultimately be an agent of change. Applies to design consultancy and in-house design too.

Competing on parity is a tough game against companies that are leading the market. Customers will always compare you to them. You will lose. Niche down and focus on using novel new tech to fix well known problems reframes you as the main player there. Big fish, small pond.

Mike Rapp Exactly right. And the reason people in UX roles struggle with those decisions is because they don't understand why they happen. What motivates them. What the real rules of the game we are all playing really are. Until you understand all that, can learn to work with it and by

Creating the stimuli is part of the fun. “The prototype is the stimuli. It’s not yet the solution.” I like this positioning as it is something that is malleable and could be multiple things focused on aspects that form/shape the complete solution

Working in an async culture allows for time travelling. I can get context of a problem what was explored 3 years ago via writing and recorded meetings, reflect on those points with hindsight, then use that to influence design decisions today. All w/o additional meetings.

With all of the design systems and guidelines out there, knowing where to put a button on the screen is not a trivial task - AI or not.

There is an impact on the final product when a designer optimizes user testing for 5/5 participants liking the concept versus 2/5 participants loving the concept

This is cheap considering the cost of finding & hiring a full time employee or an agency to do the same with same background history

Im glad skinny jeans era is over

Designs systems are a starting point of creativity. Like music producers using drumkits & samples, designers remix elements of a design system to make new arrangements. Innovation is when you compose sampled patterns with the design system. Context, taste & skills make a hit.

Design in reality is more mixed martial arts than a practice of one of style. Mastery of design frameworks is useful to shape information. The mistake is thinking that there is only one framework or system.

So what does the inverse look like? Start the company with the goal to be the best for something (Linear is the best tool for software teams to plan and build). Each market can only support 1-2 winners, so if you are not going to be the best, you probably have already lost.

Any time you solve a problem with more than ten browser tabs open, you should be obligated to write up the answer so other people can find it in the future.

DeepSeek just proved the 'worthless' GPT wrapper startups are actually the ones with real moats. A week ago, nothing was more LOW status than being a 'GPT wrapper' startup. But I think we're learning that's DEAD wrong. Turns out they were just early to the only game that

Yesterday a simple prompt I gave Claude generated a React component. Today I used Claude to create a whole Vue app complete with paginated queries and state management. I was impressed by both experiences in quality of output and ease of use.

🎵💿Built an MCP that lets Claude talk directly to Ableton. Now you can create music with just prompts! Here’s a demo of me creating a lush, 80s synthwave track in just two prompts. It picks the right instruments, creates melodies, and adds effects like reverb and distortion 🔊

The rise of AI-assisted coding (vibe, agentic, etc.) is really putting pressure on designers and I don’t think it’s being talked about that much Let’s think about how software at tech companies used to be created, broadly: Some people would figure out what the next thing to

Design being shared these days on X and Mobbin is so good. It’s been years since it has been like this for myself