I write and speak about the future of product design as a discipline, how to organize a team around design, and how we apply these ideas at Quora.
- The Momentary Compression of Design I speculate that we’re in the middle of a confusing, temporary phase in design that will soon end with a rapid expansion of the field.
- Designing Quora An attempt to describe the central challenge of designing Quora: the strength of a close community, but at internet scale.
- The Mechanics & Dynamics of Product Design A new talk that provides a framework for reasoning about product design decisions. Not yet online, but I’m available to deliver this talk at conferences.
- What questions should I ask when interviewing for a product design position at a startup? Many product designers are ill-equipped to distinguish the good opportunities from the bad ones, which I try to help correct.
- Made to Measure My piece for Issue 4 of The Manual. A destructive model positions data and design in opposition, but redefining and embracing data opens up deeper understanding and greater ability to design for reality.
- Applied Discovery The materials from the talk I gave at Build 2013, in which I ask designers to reconsider their identity and broaden their impact.
- The Myth of the Myth of the Unicorn Designer I argue that so-called “unicorn” designers are very real, and that the generalist approach has underappreciated benefits.
- Designers Will Code Based on my experience at Quora, I argue that the “should designers code?” debate will eventually be rendered moot by new technology.
I’m also interested in games, the frameworks utilized by game design, the emerging world of competitive video games, and tournament design.
- Rooklike The only game of my design that I’ve released. An attempt to merge what I like about crossword puzzles, chess, and the X-COM games.
- What can software product designers learn from game designers? Game design is ahead of product design in a number of areas, which I detail here.
- Determinant Tournaments Exploring the role of chance and advantage in different competitive games and the effect that has on tournament play.
- What should everyone know about video games? A rare moment where I touch the games-as-art conversation.
- Why I Watch StarCraft Contrasting my experience following competitive StarCraft with other professional sports.
- Metagames and Containers Playing with the effects of structure on the reading experience. I promise I wrote this before “gamification” was a thing.
A few more scraps from other interests and pasts.
- Does the Apple logo really adhere to the golden ratio? I investigate and hopefully debunk the widely-believed myth that Apple’s logo is derived from the Fibonacci sequence.
- Cartoons & Forked Reality A swirling conversation with Frank Chimero.
- List of films with associated hip hop songs A legitimate Wikipedia article I created that I can’t believe hasn’t been deleted by now.
- My profile in the Home and Garden section of the New York Times Obviously this exists.
- Interview with Chris Wayan About constructing artificial worlds as a form of art and commentary.
A touch more detail about me.
- I reside in San Jose, California with my lovely wife and son.
- I currently run the design team at Quora. Clients and past employers include The Colbert Report, EtherPad, Earwolf, Disqus, Sandwich Video, The City of New York, Photojojo, McSweeney’s, Fluther, and Mission Pie.
- Around 2010 I ran a studio with my friend Tag called Sleepover, focusing on boutique and experimental online publishing.
- One time I accidentally sparked a small subculture of people tweeting as Pokémon.