Design Practice

So you want to be a strategist? I'm not sure it means what you think it means!

I meet a lot of designers who say something like, “I’m okay at UI design, but what I really want to be doing is strategy.”

I get it. In large organisations with mature design systems, visual and interaction design can start to feel like assembling someone else’s product from pre-approved parts. It’s easy to crave something higher up the food chain — a seat in those mysterious meetings where “strategy” supposedly happens.

In Defence of Enshittification

Every designer has felt it: that pang of frustration when you’re asked to make a product worse. Maybe it’s hiding a feature behind a paywall. Maybe it’s adding extra steps to the sign-up flow to capture more data. Maybe it’s cramming in additional ads in places you know will annoy people, just to squeeze out more revenue. It can feel like the opposite of what we signed up for. We’re here to improve things, not to degrade them.

Should Designers be Paid the Same as Engineers?

Why Designers Are Obsessed with Japan

Spend any time in Japan and it becomes obvious why so many designers treat it like a pilgrimage. It isn’t just the neon of Shinjuku or the minimalism of Muji that draws them in. It’s something more fundamental: a culture of care that seeps into every interaction, every sign, and every surface.

Every UX Designer Has a Strategy (Workshop)… Until They Get Punched in the Face

I grew up on a steady diet of martial arts movies Enter the Dragon. Fist of Fury. Bloodsport.

Bruce Lee slicing through opponents with surgical precision. Jackie Chan turning ladders and brooms into improvised weapons. Van Damme landing slow-motion head kicks that were somehow both brutal and balletic.

The Designer’s Dilemma: Reframing “I’m OK, You’re Not OK”

As a design leadership coach, I’ve spent years helping talented designers navigate the messy, ambiguous world of business. One theme I keep seeing — sometimes subtly, sometimes not — is how easy it is to fall into an unhelpful mindset when collaboration gets hard.