Full-context overview for my international friends. I’m curious what history books will claim Putin’s motivation was, I wonder if he’s deadly sick and cares no more if he takes the whole continent to hell with him. …

When you tell people you wrote a book, you get a lot of “I’ve always dreamed of doing that!” Well, I didn’t. — In fact, I couldn’t get past a ten-page fanfiction. My 80-page Master’s thesis took a year and a threat of losing a scholarship, my essays always ended before the minimum word cutoff. I knew I could write but raging ADHD and multi-directional focus never allowed me to even dream of…

Approaching software design like math and mountain climbing to fight the routine. Our most enjoyable time in life is productive hyperfocus. We are happier at work than on a beach with a cocktail, and there’s research to prove it. This idea and the supporting research belongs to the papá of…

What will the world look in 50 years if we reverse climate change, get our shit together, keep our hands off the nuclear bomb launcher, and not get into petty civil wars. In design, we call a prediction like this the “happy path.” Laptops. While nice and convenient, they are…

Meet Suzy. She works for a small company of 10, where she’s the only writer on the team. A year later the company hires another writer. Now, whether or not Suzy mastered anything in her role, beyond missing the accountant’s head when playing darts, she is now a Senior Writer…

I’m a UX Writer. It’s a designated human on the software development team who writes words for interfaces. All the words. From the tiniest tooltips to navigation, to buttons, to errors, and so on, ad infinitum. UX writing is less writing and more solving puzzles. For instance, try naming a…

The earth submerged in summer rain My feet collecting grass and treading lightly On air, or almost, if it matters. Splashing the sand in puddles, Warm and rushing down the street I have no headphones, music ringing Born in my head, loud, perfectly composed To fit the storm, to feed…

Six years ago, Ukraine had its first violent revolution since independence. More than one hundred people died near the central street, shot by Russia-backed snipers and our own policemen. The protesters burned old car tires and smashed police shields with pavement bricks they cut out right from under their feet…

The line between feedback and trespassing in design is hair-thin. Our feedback culture and the torch-wielding debate around it has bothered me for a while, and I could never pin-point why it had felt so important. Why everyone jumps out of their pants trying to prove that giving feedback in…