Let’s start with an example of communication skills: they are important for any profession, and you expect any professional to have a decent level. However, excellent communication skills won’t make up for the lack of core expertise. Imagine a plumber who is a great communicator (just look at his sense of humor!), would you still hire him if he was a terrible plumber? Nope.

The same goes for software and visual design — it’s good to have your app looking great, but it won’t make up for the lack of core functionality or bad experience. If I’m comparing two products…

As the spectrum of design skills grows — from only visual design 20 years ago to data analysis and user research now — so do the design portfolios and the case studies needed to showcase these skills.

Thousands of near-identical portfolios with near-identical case studies arise. Bootcamps emerge to teach more designers how to stand out less.

This is bad for candidates as it’s almost impossible to stand out with your unique skills; this is bad for employers as it’s impossible to distinguish between candidates anymore. …

Last year’s work with six products at the same time made me realize one thing about feedback. A lot of times it helps, but there’s also a dark side to it. Sometimes it’s just too much. Even excellent feedback can be damaging if it ignores context. Even the most horrible feedback can take a lot of effort to dismiss.

That got me thinking — where am I, too, a part of the problem? Can I apply the same logic to day-to-day life?

So I started this simple experiment and quite happy with the results so far (of course need to…

Here’s a thing no one tells in design schools:
If you’ll choose a design career,

Every day

For the rest of your life

Everybody will have (and probably share) an opinion about what you do.

Feedback might be constructive or not, you might learn to benefit from it or get paralyzed in indecisiveness, or you might grow a thick skin and ignore it completely. But the fact is, everybody will tell you what they think of your work.

Feedback is a gift

Creating an open culture of giving and receiving feedback is at the core of building exceptional products. …

Twenty-thirty years ago, when most of the designers were graphic designers, assessing design work was as easy as judging its looks. In most of the portfolios, you’d see the design itself, a brief if you’re lucky, and some community appreciation, whether it’s an award or number of likes on a platform.

With the growing complexity around digital products, it became clear that a lovely image is by far not enough to know if the work is good. We need to know how well it serves customer and business needs, and is it the best solution to customers’ problems in the…

Out of all the cultures out there, I’ve had the luxury to experience (and survive) both extremes of the decision-making spectrum:

• Decision-making driven by opinion (mostly HiPPO) — a big boss decides what a team (department, company) is going to do, and good luck dealing with it if it doesn’t make any sense. Working in this environment isn’t very pleasant unless you’re the one making the decisions.
• On the opposite side of the scale, there is decision-making driven by data. Sounds great since supposedly anyone can propose a change given the right set of data (and very often they can)…

Imagine this: you’re presenting a complex, well thought-through design (which was just updated based on feedback during a usability test). Five minutes into the presentation someone noticed that you used an old 4px border-radius on a button, where he thought everyone agreed to use 5px… Half an hour later you’re still trying to steer the conversation back on track.

Sounds familiar? Apparently, this is so not uncommon that there’s a term for it: meet bike-shedding.

The term is coming from an example of (an imaginary) committee who needed to approve plans for a nuclear power plant and spent the majority…

Sunny November day in beautiful Todra Gorge, my partner is climbing a route and I’m belaying. She takes a fall and next thing I know I’m knocked out, lying on the ground.

It turned out a broken hold caused the fall and landed on my head. It left me with 2 small holes (a few stitches each and a bad haircut for the next 12 months). The interesting part though is that I was wearing a helmet, so it’s easy to imagine the outcome without it.

I shared the story with a few friends and moved on — after all…