Full-time? I feel a change coming
July 5, 2021
For readers of my newsletter, I hinted at some exciting news I wanted to share. Something that has come as a huge surprise to the people I've shared this news with and while the reactions have all been positive, everyone have been curious to know... why. I'm happy to share that I've decided to join Product Inc full-time as their Director of User Experience. As many (most) of you probably are not familiar with Product, let me share a back story first.
About a year ago, I started freelancing for Ueno. Historically, I was never a fan of freelancing for agencies. The agencies I had worked with previously all seemed to do 'gimmicky' products and spent a lot of time pursuing ideas that would get attention (but not actually solve actual problems) or design stuff that merely looked great (knowing deep inside that they're never going to launch). With Ueno, I finally experienced something different. The team was extremely skilled and I quickly realised it was a team I enjoyed working with. But as you might know, Ueno was acquired by Twitter in January. Our project wasn't quite wrapped up yet and since most of us on the team were freelancers, the project kept running under a new umbrella. Well, the person who initiated that umbrella was Aaron Shapiro (who once founded the agency HUGE). The project ultimately kept going and as Product, I realised I enjoyed working with the team even more as I was reunited with some old favorites like Nicole Hampton whom I had worked with on Herman Miller about a year ago. The new team also includes my visual counterpart, Creative Director Allen Orr as well as some of the people I really enjoyed working with from day 1 with Ueno, Louise Dreier, Amanda Chessa, Lee Simpson and many more. To top it all off, I've been reunited with my favorite producer Jessi Hall and the amazing designer Isabel Sousa.
I guess why I decided to try full-time is pretty obvious at this point - all because of the team I get to work with. We're spread out over the world (Sweden, Russia, Portugal and both east and west coast in the US) meaning a remote-first mindset in everything we do.
A couple of years ago I read an article that outlined what humans need from their work in order to feel fulfilled:
- Passion, meaning you have to feel a passion and a connection to the work you do
- Education and improvement, the work has to allow you to get better over time and grow within your field
- Reward which can be financial, encouragement from co-workers, local appreciation, personal growth etc. Ideally your work covers multiple rewards
So looking at this list, I realised that with Product I'll have the opportunity to continue to work on something I'm passionate about, which is creating great user experiences. While this has already been my main focus for the past decade, as a freelancer I occasionally had to take on work that was related to this, but not quite right (build a design system or design a visual identity). At Product I get to focus on user experiences.
Secondly, working with a strong team is a game changer for anyone. I first experienced this working with SuperFriendly when I got to work with people that were true experts. Working with talented people doesn't just make it easier for me to grow, it forces me to stay focused more. There's the saying that if you're the smartest person in a room, you're in wrong room (or Zoom). Well, with my team mates here I don't have to worry about being in the wrong room. Working with people that challenge you and question your thinking is one of the most important aspects of a rewarding job.
I've really enjoyed the support system that I've felt working with these people. Having colleagues is a great feeling after having freelanced for nearly 12 years. I'm really curious about the future to see where this opportunity leads me, what people I will meet and how being employed again will affect my relationship with my work.
You need to confirm your email to confirm your subscription.
-
March, 2024
-
February, 2024
-
January, 2024
-
December, 2023
-
November, 2023
-
October, 2023
-
September, 2023
-
August, 2023
-
July, 2023
-
June, 2023
-
May, 2023
-
April, 2023
-
March, 2023
-
January, 2023
-
December, 2022
-
November, 2022
-
September, 2022
-
August, 2022
-
July, 2022
-
June, 2022
-
May, 2022
-
April, 2022
-
January, 2022
-
December, 2021
-
November, 2021
-
October, 2021
-
September, 2021
-
August, 2021
-
July, 2021
-
June, 2021
-
May, 2021
-
April, 2021
-
March, 2021
-
January, 2021
-
November, 2020
-
October, 2020
-
September, 2020
-
August, 2020
-
June, 2020
-
May, 2020
-
April, 2020
-
March, 2020
- Regarding Zoom
- Why wireframes are becoming obsolete
- Get static
- Emotions and work - know yourself
- All books are now free
- Wireframes are too concrete
- Stuck at home
- What Great Managers Do
- From Error to Understanding: The Importance of Brand Voice When Things Go Wrong
- Answering your question - How I design
- The Sliding Scale of Giving a Fuck
- Hard startups
-
February, 2020
-
January, 2020
- Debbie Millman - Time Well Spent
- The last tracker was just removed from Basecamp.com
- Fathom Analytics
- Redesign to learn
- How putting a price on speed helped one retailer increase mobile revenue in just 2 months
- Accessibility drives aesthetics
- Smart people use simple words to make others feel smart.
- The great paradox of our time: everything is both better and worse than ever before
-
December, 2019
-
November, 2019
-
October, 2019
-
September, 2019
-
August, 2019
- How we work with microcopy
- Measuring UX with HEART
- Mobile E-Commerce UX: Deemphasize ‘Install App’ Ads or Avoid Them Entirely
- Analytics are reshaping fashion’s old-school instincts
- What to Do When You Feel Uninspired at Work
- Stay in your lane and outlast your competition
- A Mindful Approach to Technology
- “I Just Knew I Was Going to Surpass These Guys I Was Working For”
- People Are Starting to Realize How Voice Assistants Actually Work
- Fast Software, the Best Software
- Data-Driven Design Is Killing Our Instincts
- Freelance and Business And Stuff
- UX can’t be defined by one set of "rules"
-
July, 2019
- 5 Years - 300+ Posts!
- Superhuman and email privacy
- Why Consultants Quit Their Jobs to Go Independent
- Give them candy: small details make all the difference
- Your inbox is spying on you
- On Modus: It’s Time for a Code of Ethics for Designers
- Frank Chimero on causing ’good trouble’ and re-imagining the status quo to combat achievement culture
- Advertising: contextual vs. behavioral and why it matters
-
June, 2019
- Citrix improves UX and cuts costs by 65%
- Delight Comes Last
- Tim Cook’s Stanford Commencement Address
- You care more about your privacy than you think
- The Cost of Lies
- Let’s assemble like the Avengers and... do work
- Big Mood Machine
- Simplicity is a war
- How Notion Is Going After Atlassian and Why It Just Might Win
- Hiring a Management Consultancy for Digital Is a Mistake
- Just write: why Product Designers should write, and how to get started
- Dos and dont’s on designing for accessibility
- I’ve redesigned my website and it looks exactly the same
-
May, 2019
-
April, 2019
- Scapegoating User Experience Design
- Clip sharing with Overcast
- Why don’t we just use Material Design?
- Accenture sued $32m+ over website redesign for Hertz
- Venture capital money kills more businesses than it helps
- Creating a UX Strategy
- The elegance of nothing
- Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa
- Working as a UX-lead
- Gumroadday: Get my books at -17% discount
-
March, 2019
- Working as a UX designer
- Meet Q: The First Genderless Voice
- It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
- How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of failure
- What’s the meaning of work?
- Wireframes are becoming less relevant — and that’s a good thing
- Neurodiversity and the Digital Divide: how our neurological differences shape the way we experience the web
- Accessibility, a powerful design tool
-
February, 2019
-
January, 2019
-
December, 2018
-
November, 2018
-
October, 2018
-
September, 2018
-
August, 2018
- Living among baby robots
- Yuval Noah Harari on what the year 2050 has in store for humankind
- Voice Input’s Effect on Social Norms
- How I kicked my email compulsion
- Facebook's struggle to moderate itself
- The Secret to Ant Efficiency Is Idleness
- Google Employees Are Organizing To Protest the Company’s Secret Search Engine
- Why Small Teams Win
- Back to Work!
- The Bullshit Web
- Nikhil Sonnad on the banal evil of Facebook
-
July, 2018
- Five questions UX employers should be asking
- Just keep at it
- Yes, Alan, There Is An ROI For UX Design
- High Fives, AI, and Connecting the Dots: MailChimp’s VP of Design on What Business can Learn from Design
- Rands Information Practises
- The Race to a Trillion
- What Elon Musk Should Learn From the Thailand Cave Rescue
- Cheap Shower Curtains
- Tech Sector Values are Broken?
-
June, 2018
- Confirmation Bias in Design
- Rise of the machines: has technology evolved beyond our control?
- Good product writing is conversational
- Retail is Not Dying, But it Has to Evolve
- The Netflix Binge Factory
- We are all trapped in the “Feed”
- Stop “feeding” your users
- Turn off your push notifications. All of them.
- From the Drawing Board to the Board Room
- Think inclusively at every step
- No classes, no professors: the alternative to business school
- Designer Ethics & The Moral Implications of our Apps
- Conversion optimization with A/B tests
-
May, 2018
- AI Ethics - A New Skill for UX-Designers
- Netlify now shows your deploy status on its favicon
- Let them eat cake
- Netflix Culture
- Skype
- How do you learn UX?
- The New Google Assistant
- What Happened to Apple’s Whimsy?
- Who would you trust more with your data, Apple or the government?
- Unfoundered
- Microcontent: A Few Small Words Have a Mega Impact on Business
- Twitter logged all user’s passwords in plain text
- Requests for Personal Data From Apple, Google, and Facebook Compared
- What’s in a pattern name
- GDPR is ruining my life
-
April, 2018
- A Modest Guide to Productivity
- Google Debuts a Standalone To-Do App, Google Tasks
- Apple Should Make an Instagram Clone
- Vanity Metrics
- Tech is not Neutral
- Facebook to exclude North American users from some privacy enhancements
- Netflix has to "produce great content, market it well, serve it up beautifully."
- Sen. Blumenthal: “Your business model is to maximize profit over privacy.”
- Productivity
- My #1 Piece of Advice to Freelancers: Lean Into The Moment
- Design Systems: Better UX through Defined Standards
- Tim Cook - We care about the user experience
- Europe’s tough new data-protection law
- The Real Technology Problem
- Why Small Teams Win
- Whose risk?
- Phone Bored
- Karim Rashid
- Creative Class is open
- Dieter Rams
- Being cash-free puts us at risk of attack: Swedes turn against cashlessness
- What’s a ‘User Experience’ Anyways?
-
March, 2018
- Fake News is spam
- Bleeding Out
- How Tech Giants Design For Transgender Users–Or Don’t
- Don't use the F word (freelancer)
- Dropbox
- Conversational Design
- Everyone Is Going Through Something
- It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
- Flight Crews Don’t Decide Where To Fly
- New Tools Don’t Always Equal Productivity
- The seat at the table
- Why Can Everyone Spot Fake News But YouTube, Facebook And Google?
- Cuba
- Bye bye Facebook
- Why I hate your fake redesign
- Givenchy
- Diversity in the design industry
- Your competitors don’t matter
- Apple’s "Sound on the Go" Strategy
- The Most Important Design Skill For An AI-Dominated World
- Love letters to trees
- Amazon has a fix for Alexa’s creepy laughs
- You have to make sure that you’re focused on the thing that matters.
- Voice Input is the Next Big Thing - Or is It?
-
February, 2018
- Specialize
- Pricing Philisophy
- AMP for email is a terrible idea
- Is this Finnish school the perfect design?
- The #1 reason Facebook won’t ever change
- A Year of Learning and Leading UX at Google
- C.A.R.E - A simple framework for user onboarding
- Inside Facebook´s Hellish Two Years
- A better user experience...or?
- Personas
- Reflections on working on an iPad
- Everything Easy is Hard Again
- How to succeed at freelancing
- The iPhone X is Apple’s underrated masterpiece
- Make me think
-
January, 2018
-
December, 2017
-
November, 2017
-
October, 2017
-
September, 2017
-
August, 2017
-
July, 2017
-
June, 2017
- The Why before the Why
- No Share Buttons on Mobile Sites
- Groundwork for Creating Great User Experiences
- ARKit
- 4 Reasons Why Your Body Text Should be Bigger
- Now that Apple is talking about AR and VR, should we be too?
- Think like an artist to create better designs
- Investing in businesses and products
- 10 Reasons Why All Designers Should Start Writing More
- Become a better UX-designer with these three words
- Vox Media Accessibility Guidelines
- Writing for UX: some practical tips
-
May, 2017
-
April, 2017
-
March, 2017
-
February, 2017
-
January, 2017
-
December, 2016
-
November, 2016
-
October, 2016
-
September, 2016
-
August, 2016
-
July, 2016
-
June, 2016
-
May, 2016
-
April, 2016
-
March, 2016
-
February, 2016
-
January, 2016
-
December, 2015
-
November, 2015
-
October, 2015
-
September, 2015
-
August, 2015
-
July, 2015
-
June, 2015
-
May, 2015
-
April, 2015
-
November, 2014
-
April, 2013