Halftank Fuel - Product Inspiration

For full disclosure, I have a design background and I am certified in design thinking techniques. This doesn’t mean that I can’t be critical of those techniques when I see flaws. And there are many flaws! When I have hosted or participated in workshops, most of the time I see the same pattern: Workshops are full of senior executives and often the CEO Everyone else in the workshop is low key concerned about what those executives will think of them and their ideas The workshop results in going...

When I worked at a certain software startup as a UX designer, several of the other designers there would often pull all-nighters to get something done. Every single time, when they would show their work after an all-nighter, it would be a hot mess. Navigation items left out, typos everywhere, incorrect shades of brand colors, all kinds of small things. During these presentations, people in the room would latch onto typos and the other mistakes shown on screen and would not leave them alone. A...

A large part of creativity requires buying yourself the right tools to do what you want to do. In other words, you need good supplies to create things. In the past, there was easy access to art supply stores in most towns in the USA. Nowadays, online shopping has caused many types of physical shops to disappear, and unfortunately this includes art supply stores. There has been consolidation in the art supply shop industry - looking at you Blick and Utrecht. Recently Michael’s - technically an...

I live with regret every time I go to the dentist, but not for the reasons you would think. About ten years ago, I was driving home from work. It was a sunny day, nothing too out of the ordinary was going on. That said, I was working at a particularly dysfunctional startup. Sprint planning sessions would break out into constant fights, and physical threats between team members very very common. They were not only very common, but the office was just redesigned so that all cubicle walls were...

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” ― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax If you work in digital products or in UX, it can be easy to forget that this is a relatively new profession. This means that it is still being defined. Unfortunately this also means that there is no agreement in what roles in this profession mean. It also means that authority is also often undefined. I entered this profession in part because of its promise to help people, which...

As a creative person who has worked on engineering teams for years, I got used to being perceived as “flaky”. You probably know that “creative” is not a synonym for “flaky”. The truth is that creative people are the most determined and organized people that I have encountered. Creative people - whether or not they make a living from their creativity - have to be both determined and organized in order to exist in the world. While creativity can be highly valued in our society, often creators...

If you have ever tried to learn how to draw digitally, it can be a frustrating experience. It does not matter if you already know how to draw on paper or not. For instance, a mouse and a pencil are two very different tools. Drawing with a mouse is like drawing with a hockey puck. Touchpads are a little better as a drawing tool, but they are very small. For a long time, I have been trying to master how to draw on a computer. It has been a mind bending experience. This is because I have been...