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…

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…

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…

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. …

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…

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…

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…

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…