A framework for providing feedback to your peers I think I’m a feedback junkie. I am drawn to feedback like raindrops to the ground, or a plant to light. I seek it out during check-ins with managers, in emails to professors, sometimes even on first dates. …

Design’s accidental consequences In the early 1990s, John Sylvan, an entrepreneurial Bostonian, quit his day job to start a business. His goal was to bring good coffee to the masses. For years he had resented the pitiable percolators that dotted America’s offices and street corners. …

Microsoft’s new take on designing for accessibility — In eighth grade, two days before my year-end math test, I slipped while playing soccer and broke my wrist. I was demonstrably bad at the game, and as a thirteen-year-old I tried to compensate for it by kicking the ball with all my strength. Usually, the ball went careening off…

The diary of a portfoliomaker Friday, Aug 25: Here I am, in Pittsburgh, on a muggy blue evening. Carnegie Mellon smells of sweat and wet paint. A salesman in a banana suit waves at me from a street corner. I ignore him. …

Gender, ethics, and the conversational user interface Earlier this year, a six-year-old girl used her family’s Amazon Alexa to order four pounds of cookies and a dollhouse. Her parents were bewildered when the packages showed up at their door. Then, a news channel reporting on the story awakened Alexas in…

How to reimagine your resume Let’s face it. You already know a ton about resumes. Chances are you have a resume of your own. It has probably taken you weeks to create, years to polish. You have poured your heart into it, perhaps even your spleen. You’ve squeezed your history…

My first fortnight in design school If you’re reading this, you’re probably a walrus. You’re on an ice floe with friends. You’ve just cleaned your whiskers, and your breath smells like Arctic cod. You’re probably thinking, “How do I figure out what I don’t know that I don’t know?” In…

Advice from a stranger So, your feathers have been ruffled. People more powerful than you are doing things that you do not like. You feel as if your country no longer represents you. That demons have taken control. You have two choices: Do Nothing Perhaps you believe in God, or a universal…