Hello Reader, Today I want to talk about how to be brutally honest with ourselves on how much design influences we actually have in our organization. You can read this article online here If we want to continue to improve the UX maturity of our organization, we first need to be clear on where we are on the totem pool, so we can plan strategically on how to increase our influence. The problem is, we designers are often delusional. We confuse how we think the world works versus how the world...

Hello Reader, The other day, I was running an origami workshop to teach people how to fold an origami Siu Mai (燒賣), a form of Dim Sum. Most of the guests were respectful. However, there was one lady that was struggling and was asking for my help with an accompanying “the beckoning finger” hand gesture signaling me to go over to her. “the beckoning finger” I was FURIOUS! This gesture is only used to beckon dogs in my country, so I thought this lady was being extremely rude. I assumed she is a...

What does “Users need this feature” mean? Welcome to Food for Thoughts Thursday, a new experimental series where I send a short piece of content in addition to my monthly long-form content. If this is well received, I will continue to do more. Let me know your thoughts! Be vigilant when a stakeholder says “Users need this feature”. It can be interpreted in a lot of ways, a little riddle: Which of the following is true? Users actually need this feature Users say they need this but they don’t...