Buying views with coffee

At Automattic we love to experiment, and as part of an initiative to be more empathetic with our customers we were posed with the following challenge: Pick a colleague’s post, and explain why you chose that one. Outline a plan for the post to get 1,000+ views. Imagine that you have a US $20 budget …

Resetting to create

I like to think I'm organised. I try to have my calendar as up to speed as possible and scheduled everything that involves interacting with other people. I keep my to-do list as updated as possible. I use a habits app to track things that I want to do everyday (eating well, meditating, reading, etc.), …

Exclusion by generalization

How often do designers struggle when presented with a new user interface? It may take us a few moments to read it, but because our cognitive muscle is so developed for these tasks it takes far less time than an individual that doesn't work in this industry. It's even harder when an interface was designed …

Conquering isolation on a remote design team

Every designer has experienced overlooking something along a project lifecycle. We are so focused on the task at hand that we want to keep going and fail to request feedback. In a context of remote work there’s even more room for this to happen as there's more isolation, and we need to have mechanisms in place …

When did web design become so boring?

I remember the moment I fell in love with web design: I landed on an agency website called 2advanced. I was immediately blown away: stylish intro animation, futuristic visuals employing lots of panels and strokes, blocks of solely decorative text, the avant-gard sound effects, and the quirky navigation that took a moment to figure out. …