I’m in NYC for Leading Design 2022, and I’m livebloging the event (taking notes in real time, updated for each talk). You can alos see my notes from the 2021 and 2016 events. Comments in brackets [] are mine. 1. Kat Vellos – Better Than Small Talk Vellos is the author of the excellent book, We Should Get Together. In addition to being a design leader she’s a facilitator and community builder. Conversations are a key part of this. But we live in a world starved of meaningful connection, even before the pandemic. She created better than small talk, a simple system for better conversati ..read more

This is my first blog post in almost six months, the longest lapse I’ve ever had. Hi! How have you been? I’ve had a rough year but I’m doing better now and wanted to catch you up on some things. In June of last year my right vocal chord was paralyzed. During a simple surgery on my neck some nerves stopped working for reasons not entirely understood. I was still able to speak, but I was suddenly a very quiet person, unable to raise my voice. I was told it was likely permement and if I recovered it could take up to a year. This had a profound effect on my mental health, as I wrote about in my n ..read more

These last three months have been a wild ride. If you’re on my newsletter you’ve been getting updates about what has happened. My voice was injured during a routine surgery making it harder to speak, which was rough. Fortunately, after two months, my voice did recover. Which has been great news! Yet I’ve felt over the last few years that the solitary work of writing books hasn’t been as interesting to me as it used to be. Then the pandemic hit and like everyone, I’ve felt more isolated. And now with this experience of losing and recovering my voice, my passions have shifted. I need to be part ..read more

Excited to announce the audiobook for How Design Makes The World is now available on most platforms. I worked with a great narrator, Keith McCarthy, to craft an excellent listening experience for you. The book is about how design applies to everything, but it’s already in the top #10 audiobooks for architecture on Amazon and Audible. Audible / Amazon Libro.fm Google Play Nook Scribd Kobo ..read more

Two weeks from today tune in for this live presentation on the greatest design lessons I know. It’s a free event and all are invited. There are many important lessons to learn about good design but I’ve picked the five most important and powerful ones. This interactive session is aimed at everyone who makes things for others, from UX designers to team leaders to engineers and managers. Surprisingly the fundamental mistakes we all make are often the same, but the real lessons run deep and are easy to overlook, and that’s where my advice comes from. When: Tuesday, June 8th, 1pm PST / 10am EST W ..read more

Remote work expert David Tate wrote that when fearful CEOs talk about workplace culture, they’re really talking about workplace control. Their insecurities demand that the way work is done by employees is always visible, highly regulated and uses the methods executives prefer, rather than what’s best for everyone’s productivity. Remote work is seen as a threat to many CEOs simply because of their fear of change and resistance to progress. That fear leads to an irrational rejection of remote work, instead of a thoughtful examination of where it has succeeded and what can be learned. In her May ..read more

Designers are hired to change things. No one hires a designer to keep everything the same. The challenge is often we want those changes to happen on our terms, using our ideas, methods and beliefs. This creates a natural conflict. The way we understand design is different from how ordinary people like clients, coworkers and executives do. It makes sense that designers often feel ignored, misunderstood or even lost. Yet somehow we’re surprised by these feelings. And over a career, they can grow into disappointment and resentment because we expect things to be different from how they are. Design ..read more

Do you wonder why we obsess about categories and labels for things? It goes back to Plato, Aristotle and the birth of Western philosophy. They pioneered ways to use language to understand the world, but there were some unintended consequences. Richard Farson wrote: “The great contribution that Eastern philosophies can make to our own thinking is that they have little difficulty embracing the co-existence of opposites. That’s because they were very little influenced by Aristotle. He had the idea that things should be categorized; that if something was true, then it couldn’t be not true. He lef ..read more

The concept of evangelism is flawed. It’s the word we often use, but it’s a bad model. No one likes to be on the receiving end of evangelism. The self-righteousness inherent in deciding ahead of time to convert other people to your views without knowing anything about them has a dubious history and is often self-defeating. The first lesson is to use a wiser approach. I realized this years ago and wrote How Design Makes The World to give designers and UX pros more constructive ways to show regular people the value of what we do. If you want lessons on this approach, join my free live event on W ..read more

Did you enjoy the book? Or own it but haven’t read it yet? This session is for you. To help you get as much value from the book as possible, this session will give you a fresh perspective on what you learned. I’ll give a quick recap on the core ideas, with new advice on how to apply these lessons in your work and your organization. I’ll share some new and behind the scenes stories as well as answer your questions on how to put the book to work for you. When: Wednesday, April 7th, 12pm PST What: Beyond How Design Makes The World / Design Evangelism Register: click here or on image ..read more