Sometime around when I rented my first apartment in New York City, my Amazon usage increased dramatically. But despite all my searches for cheap furniture and cleaning supplies, the Amazon link that auto-filled in my browser’s search bar was a link to a product page for these BORN women’s sandals. …

Slack’s great. But what makes it so great? Digging into three usability heuristics that make Slack better the rest. — 1. Help and Documentation Onboarding Do you remember the first time you used Slack? It probably took a little getting used to, especially if the team was a big one. What channels should I join? How do I tame these notifications? Oooh! So many emojis. 🙃

Information architecture: the structural design of shared information environments But what about when the information isn’t technically “shared” and it’s just stored in a hockey disk on your kitchen counter and you can’t exactly see it? Yeah, I’m talking about Alexa. You don’t necessarily need to know how Alexa found…

Sometimes seeing is believing. But it doesn’t mean success. — After wanting to not just read about protests in Istanbul, but also see them, founder Kayvon Beykpour saw an opportunity in the social-sharing market. And thus, in February 2014, Periscope was born. Acquired by Twitter just over a year later, Periscope was often compared to SXSW’s darling Meerkat. Essentially a…

What would it look like if a child needed to deposit, withdrawal, or manage their money? — Working through the Design Thinking phases, I created some initial concepts for an ATM for children, KidATM. Empathize What is an ATM (both functionally and metaphorically)? An ATM is used to withdraw (cash) or deposit (checks or cash) money An ATM is part of a user’s financial management system, alongside the rest of your banking system (teller, mobile/online apps)

Aside from being useful, usable, and desirable, what makes a product great? — What makes you type in that website address or open that app? Why do you keep coming back to something that may or may not enhance your daily life? What makes you tell a friend “You need to download this”? Simplicity Great products are simple. It’s as simple as that. But not really. When a product is simple, it doesn’t make you think. Tasks are simple to accomplish, easy to remember, and you’re not left guessing where that specific settings pane you keep going back to is.

It’s a funk. It’s a ditch. It’s a hole. It’s your depression. Your anxiety. Your unhappiness. Whatever you want to name it, it’s not fun. And you probably want to get out of it. This is what worked for me, and what I’ll continue to do to stay away from…

I’ve been unemployed for over six months now. It feels like I’m a bit of a failure as I type that so let’s rephrase: I quit my job without a plan over six months ago. As New York got hard, I got overwhelmed, and my job(s) got even more stressful…

A group chat with my girlfriends somehow always comes back to the concept of ‘ghosting.’ Girl meets boy. Girl and boy flirt. Girl and boy part — likely in the morning. Girl and boy text for a few days. Girl or boy… … …is left on read by girl or…