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Teammate or Tool Call? A Decision Rule for Personifying Agents
Personification is a design decision with real implications. A four-question decision tree that routes every agent surface to its lowest sufficient posture.
Leveling and Hiring Calibration When Everyone Has a Copilot
AI narrows the gap between your strongest and weakest performers. Your leveling heuristics and interview bar need to recalibrate around critical thinking and judgment, lest you encounter lava.
The Mental-Model Reset: Designing Systems That Decide
Moving from deterministic screens to probabilistic behavior is the biggest design shift since mobile. A before/after worksheet to reorient your team’s assumptions.
The Agent is the Interface
When software acts on a user’s behalf, the interface stops being a surface and becomes a relationship. That changes what we design.
Org Design for an AI-Native Design Org
Meet the skill librarians, eval owners, and agent-ops. They’re the connective tissue your org is missing to prevent it from descending into AI-induced chaos.
Trust Is the Material You’re Actually Designing
Every AI/UX decision either deposits or withdraws trust. How to treat trust as the primary design substrate, not as an additive feature, but as the thing every surface runs on.
AI Adoption Is an Ops Problem, Not a Tools Problem
The bottleneck at scale isn’t which AI tool you buy. It’s distribution, standardization, and governance. Design has solved this problem before. We called it a design system.
Always Go Back
Visiting customers regularly after a major feature has been shipped often yields unexpected learnings.
Build for Now
Or… How to avoid imminent disaster
Culture in the Early Days
Culture is critically important in the earliest days of a startup. It can be the catalyst for success… or a disease that slowly rots and decays until the company dies.
Design Goggles
The next morning has a way of revealing the truth — in love and in craft.
How to be Creative
Sometimes all it takes to be creative is a good, long shower.
Jul 17, 2026
Teammate or Tool Call? A Decision Rule for Personifying Agents
Personification is a design decision with real implications. A four-question decision tree that routes every agent surface to its lowest sufficient posture.
Jul 10, 2026
Leveling and Hiring Calibration When Everyone Has a Copilot
AI narrows the gap between your strongest and weakest performers. Your leveling heuristics and interview bar need to recalibrate around critical thinking and judgment, lest you encounter lava.
Jul 3, 2026
The Mental-Model Reset: Designing Systems That Decide
Moving from deterministic screens to probabilistic behavior is the biggest design shift since mobile. A before/after worksheet to reorient your team’s assumptions.
Jun 26, 2026
The Agent is the Interface
When software acts on a user’s behalf, the interface stops being a surface and becomes a relationship. That changes what we design.
Jun 19, 2026
Org Design for an AI-Native Design Org
Meet the skill librarians, eval owners, and agent-ops. They’re the connective tissue your org is missing to prevent it from descending into AI-induced chaos.
May 2, 2026
Trust Is the Material You’re Actually Designing
Every AI/UX decision either deposits or withdraws trust. How to treat trust as the primary design substrate, not as an additive feature, but as the thing every surface runs on.
Apr 26, 2026
AI Adoption Is an Ops Problem, Not a Tools Problem
The bottleneck at scale isn’t which AI tool you buy. It’s distribution, standardization, and governance. Design has solved this problem before. We called it a design system.
Dec 16, 2015
Always Go Back
Visiting customers regularly after a major feature has been shipped often yields unexpected learnings.
Feb 13, 2015
Build for Now
Or… How to avoid imminent disaster
Nov 19, 2014
Culture in the Early Days
Culture is critically important in the earliest days of a startup. It can be the catalyst for success… or a disease that slowly rots and decays until the company dies.
Dec 10, 2013
Design Goggles
The next morning has a way of revealing the truth — in love and in craft.
Nov 29, 2011
How to be Creative
Sometimes all it takes to be creative is a good, long shower.