(Just in case there aren’t enough opinions floating around) — This week, I’m wrapping up an accelerated grad program in product design at CMCI Studio, so naturally I’m reflecting on the end of an era with all the attendant nostalgia, regrets, and gratitude. Here’s a collection of the best advice I’ve been given this year. Some of it I’ve lived…

An engineer-turned-creative technologist talks about the practices of problem-solving and creative thinking — In this world that is so focused on impact, it’s hard not to put all our focus as creatives on that end product and its ROI. But what we make is only an outcome. How we make a thing is more important in many ways — it shows how gritty…

Plus the resources you need to get started — I’m writing a product requirement document (PRD) for the first time, and I’ll admit, I didn’t know quite where to start. But I did know one thing: I knew that I was skeptical of such a time-intensive, technical document. Before I came back to grad school, I was a project…

(Since there’s not one, I made up a framework instead) — UX designers identify as problem solvers, because we’re always breaking big problems down into smaller, step-wise problems and solving them one question at a time. A big part of solving problems is just understanding the problem really, really well. And that, my friends, is called UX research. …

Spend the time figuring out what’s actually wrong — A professor once told me, as he was evaluating one of my early UX design projects, “You’re not wrong, you just could be more right.” And then he told me to dig deeper into the problem I was trying to solve. Notably, he didn’t tell me to bang my head…

On changing the rhetoric of design — We all know that cliche meeting, where you walk in to pitch design, intent on getting feedback on fundamental product design and its impact on key user needs, but someone won’t stop talking about the fonts. Or the grayscale of the wireframe. Everyone thinks they’re a designer. Whether they are…

What you find in unexpected places — I’m strongly drawn to any metaphor that helps explain me to myself, so it’s no wonder the Enneagram fascinates me. According to that framework, which supposedly describes your most inner motivation, I am an Enthusiast. A person who seeks out whatever is new and exciting. A person who lives in…

When wireframes just aren’t enough — I built an app prototype with code. I needed to test an interactive feature set that lets users visualize their current mood by personifying a blob. Javascript seemed like the best way forward. It was also a great chance for me to push my front-end dev skills. If you just…

Being a good UX designer requires leadership, and how you ‘show up’ is key — When we talk about UX education, it’s easy to get stuck on the technical or the strategic. But there’s something more. If we, as budding UX designers, hope to succeed in a field that is so dependent on hearing what others have to say — our clients, our users, and…