I’m a lifelong maker — it’s my thing. I work as a designer in tech because being part of a team allows me to build things at a scale and impact I could never reach on my own. Product design* is my core skill but it is backed up with seasoned business acumen, a healthy dose of development skills, and two decades of experience in how not to do things that way again.
*If “product” makes you think of things on shelves in shops, you are probably looking at the wrong website. Start over.
Principles
My design process changes according to the needs of the project. My principles do not.
Focus on the wood
It is in the nature of working on large platforms that we spend our time down in the details and cannot see the wood for the trees. However, our real job is to look at the wood and see how the tree we work on contributes to it. Sometimes it is better to cut that tree down, so don’t get attached to it.
Engineering is a core part of UX
Systems structured the way users think, will work the way the user wants. Trying to deliver a good user experience without involving engineering is like trying to build a good car without thinking about the engine, transmission or chassis.
Everyone is a designer
Those of us lucky enough to have “designer” in our job title are constantly ideating, prototyping and testing, but these are not skills unique to us. By involving users and cross-functional teams in every part of the design process we can improve outcomes and increase alignment.
Talk to your users
Building something truly valuable is hard. Doing it without a solid understanding of your user base is impossible. Metrics are important for understanding what your users are doing, but to understand the why, it is crucial to interact with them. Use interviews, co-creation sessions or moderated testing – any method that involves talking to the people that use your product.
Tools
All tools are not created equal. These are the really good ones.
Figma
I have used Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, Axure, InDesign, Sketch and even Dreamweaver. Figma has answered every single shortcoming these tools had, and added co-creation, proper design system management, an MCP server, dev mode, decent(ish) prototyping and so much more. Also, I think it’s the only design tool anyone cares about today.
Fullstory
Telemetry tools have suffered over the past decade with a flurry of acquisitions, mergers and rebrands. Fullstory seems to have avoided this and is all the better for it. Intuitive and full-featured, Fullstory gives the most insight for effort of any behavioural analysis platform I have tried to date.
Cursor
This may be a little unfair as I haven’t tried any other AI IDE, but I haven’t felt any need to. With Cursor I can now code around 5-10 times faster than before. This is leading me to question the wisdom of prototyping in Figma when I can build the actual UI in Cursor in a similar amount of time.
Google Sheets
The swiss-army-knife of analytics. Any amount of integrations, libraries and add-ons exist. Use GA4 Magic Reports to aggregate data from multiple Google Analytics accounts. Use PyGSheets to track model training metrics. You can even use “triggers” to run code at regular time intervals.
Miro
The original zero-learning-curve collaboration tool. It’s good for wireframing, ideation, mapping, practically anything. For remote teams, it’s essential. (FigJam is a good runner up, but it’s too design-oriented for most people)
I also make things outside of my job.
I made a headless ML model training PC.
I made a series of play-doh monsters during meetings.
I made the office.
I made a door closer from fishing line, bearings and an old iron doohickey.
I made yin and yang out of the dogs.
I made a mess.
I made a staircase.
I made cinnamon buns.
I made track lighting from drainpipe.
I made a pumpkin. Or maybe that was one of the kids – I forget.
We made a friend.
I made a big hole.
I made kids. (Ok, ok – WE made kids. Actually she made kids and I helped.)
I made hedgerow blackberry and apple jam.
I made Toasthenge.