In July, I opened the Design & Content Conference with a brand-new talk based on my book with Eric Meyer, Design for Real Life. In it, I go deep on some of the topics that have been keeping me up lately: bias and blindspots in tech products, and why it’s on all of us to spend less time thinking … Continue reading Talk: Design for Real Life
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Design for Real Life
Design for Real Life is now on sale! It’s been an honor to write this book with Eric Meyer, and I’m so excited to share it with you. Order your copy from A Book Apart. Design for Real Life, available in print and digital editions. What it’s about When we design for the web, we … Continue reading Design for Real Life
Everybody Hurts: Content for Kindness
Last month, I gave the most difficult talk I've ever given. It's about something I've been thinking a lot about recently: making our content and design work for people who don't fit our narrow perception of "normal." Here's the description: We all want interfaces that feel human—where the content is friendly and everything flows right along. But … Continue reading Everybody Hurts: Content for Kindness
Share Your Story: The Web, Crisis & Trauma
Back in January, I wrote about personal histories—about the experiences in my past that make me feel vulnerable, that dredge up emotion—and the way those experiences sometimes spill over into tasks and forms online: Every question carries weight. Every bit we collect is part of a personal history—a story of a life lived. And those … Continue reading Share Your Story: The Web, Crisis & Trauma
Content Amid Chaos
This is an article version of the talk I delivered in February at An Event Apart Atlanta. See the slides here. The Magic Gardens are one of my favorite things about Philadelphia—a frenetic mix of mosaic and poesy, of dinnerware and bike wheels and old bottles turned into wandering walls and grottos. They were built … Continue reading Content Amid Chaos
Personal Histories
It's the summer of 2014, and I’m sitting in the consul’s office filling out form after form proving my right to German citizenship: filing notarized birth certificates, declaring my mother’s birthplace, documenting my parents’ marriage. Ich bin das __ Kind meiner Mutter, one form says: “I am the __ child of my mother.” My pen … Continue reading Personal Histories
Less Training, More Practice
It was September in Oregon the first time I ran a mile. Or “the mile,” I should say. I was 11 years old, just recently made aware of how wrong my body and clothes and hair and family were (chubby, cheap, cut by my father, weird). I was not very good at it. It took … Continue reading Less Training, More Practice
Empathy and (Dis)content
It’s easy to write off empathy for our clients and colleagues as just a way to go soft: a way to talk about feelings instead of the work, to keep things vague, to avoid the complexities of information and interaction. I get why people hate this stuff: it’s squishy, squirmy, and vague. UX and content … Continue reading Empathy and (Dis)content
Just Do One Thing
Last fall, I was thinking a lot about A List Apart, where I’m the editor in chief. It had been a big year for us: we’d launched a new design at the start of 2013, and a whole bunch of strategic changes along with it. We started publishing columns and blog posts. We added staff … Continue reading Just Do One Thing
The Imperfectionist
You know those childhood memories that are burned so deep you can remember the shirt you were wearing, or the way the grass smelled? I’ve got a few: The Time I Fell Off My Bike Riding With No Hands; The Time I Couldn’t Keep My Balance On The Rope Tow And All The Skiers Stared. But … Continue reading The Imperfectionist