For the past six weeks I have been working to retire a small library of shared plugins on the VIP Go platform. It was a slow and delicate operation that needed to be coordinated with clients and development partners. It required patience, accuracy and lots of testing. My task was to manually open pull requests … Continue reading Plugins, Plugins, Plugins
product management
Crossing the digital divide
Taxiing home after my first Automattic Grand Meetup in Whistler, I was happy to get to know my driver Mohamed. He has been running his family business for over 20 years and also drives a taxi to help make ends meet. Like me, he has three kids and we spoke about them at length. We … Continue reading Crossing the digital divide
What Problem Are We Solving?
There is no such thing as Good Design. Sure, there's design that you personally like, which is nice. And there's good default practices that can help you get started. But over the course of my career, every time I came up with an iron-clad Rule of Good Design, I was generally one project away from … Continue reading What Problem Are We Solving?
Recruiting participants for remote user tests
I recently attended my first remote design sprint at Automattic. It ran over a two week period and was attended by fellow designers, developers, data scientists, happiness engineers, and marketers. Together we created two prototypes and tested them out with real customers. I found the experience to be both rewarding and inspiring. We came up … Continue reading Recruiting participants for remote user tests
Passing the Baton
On or around the 21st of August, my family and I will welcome a baby boy, officially making me the luckiest man in the world. That also means I'll be taking off from work for a bit, as I tend to my new highest priority. Until that time, and for the past several weeks, I've … Continue reading Passing the Baton
Design-led Product Management
Within the WooCommerce division at Automattic we've been taking a design-led approach to building products. What does this (design-led) mean? It means we start with empathy, focus on the experience, and emotions (how a person feels about product/service). We work on understanding the people using our products – their problems, needs, and goals – and … Continue reading Design-led Product Management
AUTOMATTIC DESIGN (FLOW RIP) 