When I set out to learn a new craft, I experienced a phenomenon that shifted my perspective on how both novices and experts approach their work.

While everyone may want a “unicorn designer,” it’s important to think about the implications of this idea on the designer-developer relationship.

As designers, we put so much thought and care into our designs before they go out in the world.  Once out in the wild, our designs are used by people who don’t always behave the way we expect them to.

In 2011, I traveled to India from my home in small-town Texas to study Hindi. A question I often got was, “Why Hindi?” The answer: empathy.

Your bags are packed, accommodations sorted, pets placated. There’s just one more thing between you and some well-earned time off: crafting your out-of-office message (OOO).

Will I make it through 8-hour days? Will I wake up early enough to join 9 AM meetings? Will I still have time for my summer plans? The answer to this is yes, barely, and yes.

If only we all started working on something at the same time, imagine the impact each team member could make, not to mention the benefit to our customers.

Somewhere between lists of pricey ingredients, pop-up video ads for things I don’t need, and thinking about ordering take-out again and bruising my wallet, I admit defeat. I’m completely over this dinner problem.

I had ordered a bar of soap on Etsy because of how cool it looked. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I snapped a photo of it anyway.