Federico Pizzutto

Why You Should Work As Though Your Kids Are Watching

Some years ago, right after we caught our breath from the financial crisis, I took my then-young-teenaged son to dinner to celebrate the end of the school year. He got to choose the restaurant; naturally, he chose a steak house.

The anatomy of a credit card form

Paying for something online with a credit card is simple, right? Yes and no. Yes, because we’ve been doing it since the early days of the Internet (e.g…

How Meteor Toys Bring Back the Joy of Autopublish and Insecure

Every Meteor application starts with two fairly loved and hated packages; autopublish and insecure. These two allow you to quickly write to and read from the database without having to care about security.

If I had to call it — it’s probably the secret sauce that makes Meteor so good for prototyping and…

Frankly Speaking: How I Found Purpose

This is not just another read on how to succeed. I should know. I spent years plowing through book after book on success.

When My Daughter Asks Me if She Looks Fat

My daughter is a collection of lines and points. Her bones are growing so fast that that her flesh can barely keep up. Her calves and thighs are…

Learning to design for growth

I’ve been a designer at Atlassian for over three years now. I’ve had the pleasure of designing a whole product from the very beginning and I also created the…

Be effective in a High Performing Team

You’re passionate, talented, and hungry to do the work of your life. Being in a high-performing team helps you achieve your…

How to Improve Retention With Design: 3 UX Laws to Retain Users

“Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.” — Jeffrey Gitomer

What did Billion Dollar Companies Look Like at the Series A?

There is a lot of coverage of the companies that have reached valuations of over a billion dollars. Many of these companies were not always fast growing businesses.

At Shasta Ventures, we focus on investing at the early stage, so we studied 32 high value consumer companies to see what they looked like…

Playing Musical Moneyball

How one entity’s exercise of its rights damages the music ecosystem

A month ago, another small-time live music gig ended in my…

Il coraggio di rimanere bambini.

Rimanere bambini non è un segno di immaturità ma anzi di grande maturità e serietà. L’azione più coraggiosa che possiamo fare come adulti è quella di…

The Endless Suck of Best Practice and Optimisation Experts

So what’s this week about? Unicorns, Useful Best Practice and Optimisation Experts — all rather rare and mystical beasts.

Super Normal

Innovation often starts with the ordinary.

I regularly get asked the question: What do you think of <insert social app here>? This question is usually…

Why Design at Facebook

The most classic story of Facebook, in my opinion, has nothing to do with its humble beginnings in a dorm room. It has nothing to do with Justin Timberlake swigging…

Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready

In 1966, a dyslexic sixteen-year-old boy dropped out of school. With the help of a friend, he started a magazine for students and made money by selling advertisements to local businesses. With only a little bit of money to get started, he ran the operation out of the crypt inside a local church.

Responsive Design: Why and how we ditched the good old select element

How rethinking the way users make complex selections across devices completely changed our…

Responsive Design: Getting Advanced Filtering Right

A practical example

Designing user interfaces for filtering content lists can be very challenging, especially…

X to Close

The origins of the use of [x] in UI design.

What is Product Design?

This frequently misunderstood field is in need of a proper definition. 

Chances are, if you are reading this, you work in the tech…

A Medium-Sized Family

A team that works and plays well together.

Startups are known for their flexible work hours, free food, and jeans-and-sneakers dress code. But…

Travel to Italy on a Budget

My 13 day travel itinerary with tips and tricks

My wanderlust is incurable so it comes out to be an expensive hobby. Fortunately in…