For the past few years, I have watched from the sidelines as amazing CSS art is posted every day of the month of October as part of a challenge called #divtober. The challenge created and organized by Lynn Fisher is to use a one-word prompt daily to make a piece…

When it comes to your finances, who are your influences? My answer would depend upon when you are asking. I wish I could say my first financial advisor, but I found him shady and didn’t stay with him long. …

Empathy is a core skill for every designer. Displaying empathy for their users’ needs, wants, and behaviors lead to understanding. Understanding unlocks possibilities. Possibilities lead to better products and experiences tailored to users’ needs. The user group that Designers often ignore Ironically, a group that Design teams do not provide the same amount of understanding and empathy…

Working at The Motley Fool, a day doesn’t go by without reading about the best way to save or invest for retirement. …

I started building websites in the early nascent Internet days, the Netscape Navigator days. I was in college and seeking to learn more about building websites, but courses available at the time (this was the late 1990s), were all through the Computer Science department and were geared towards software development…

Back when I started, there was no UX or Product or Marketing, just Web Design. And we didn’t have boot camps; we had to bootstrap. There are so many more ways to learn design today. Here are a few of the best ones I know. The best ways to learn Design today Take a class online (at…

These are three topics that I can’t stop coming back to again and again and much of my reading, listening, and ruminating falls back into these questions. #1: What will happen next with AI? In 2007, I was at SXSW when Twitter was unveiled and adopted it early to share essential musings like getting BBQ for lunch…

Can learning to ski can make you a better designer? As I was packing up for a weekend away at the slopes, this question popped into my head. I didn’t know the answer, but it sounded interesting, and that’s a perfect recipe for ChatGPT. I asked ChatGPT this question and…

As the sabbatical comes to a close, I am looking back over what I made of these 15 weeks and realizing I was busy. Here are 15 things I am delighted to have accomplished in the 15 weeks of my sabbatical. 1. Completing a Design Thinking certification from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. I timed this sabbatical to get a certification in…