Luke Mitchell | Product Designer

Warm email

2025-12-29T00:00:00Z

I have an email address that you’ll find in the footer below this post, I rarely get emails to it, the ones I do get fall into two categories: very, very kind people paying compliments to me about this website; secondly some sort of cold email, usually from a SEO expert explaining that my SEO is shit. Like Eric I am often tempted to email back and see what they would do if I took them up on the offer.

The other day I got a cold email that stuck out, here’s what it said:

hey luke,

this is an out-of-the-blue email but i’m writing on behalf of the small team behind ruks.org: we’ve been (manually!) compiling a big database of design + creative individuals and firms who we think are awesome. if you’re reading this email, that means at some point and somehow, we came across your portfolio and/or your work. (manually. no web scrapers.)

for context, ruks.org is just a nice, short domain that we bought a while back, but we’ve decided it stands for the “[r]esource of [u]n[k]nown [s]pecialists.” that is to say, it’s a database of creative talent.

we are not venture-backed, and the platform is currently free. it’s a side project of family office, a design studio based in new york. long story short, our spreadsheet of portfolios we had saved got a little unwieldy, and we figured it’d be nice to make the resource public. our hope that it can help route opportunities for work to the inboxes of great creative talent.

you can click here to make an account and take a look at your profile. if you would like to correct your profile or would like to recommend that any other creatives be added, please let us know. you can respond directly to this email since this is a manually sent note.

all the best,

annie swanson at ruks.org + family office

What have I just learned?

I have been added to a database of other creative people
The database has been hand-crafted
It was hand-crafted by a small team
It was built to offer a resource to the wider community
It is currently free, probably not always
It does not need to be profitable because it has no outside funding
It is called ‘ruks’
The name has a fun back-story
It was originally an internal tool used by the small team
I can take a look at the entry they’ve created for me
This email was sent manually, by Annie
I can reply to this email because it was sent manually by Annie
The small team is called Family Office
Family Office is based in New York

And so on…

Isn’t that nice? It’s a cold email from a real person, at a real company, in a real place, who have built a real thing, that has a real use.

In those four paragraphs I have learned so much, it answered every question and settled every doubt I had in real time while I was reading it.

It gives me some decent, optional action items, and it gives me an easy way to ask more questions.

It’s very sad that this seems so original and refreshing to me. But let’s not dwell too much on that feeling.

Go check out ruks, I’m in it. Thanks Annie.

Everything in its place

2025-02-24T00:00:00Z

One of my favourite cookbooks is ‘Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook’s Manifesto’ by Michael Ruhlman. It’s interesting because it isn’t a list of recipes like a regular cookbook, it’s about cooking, how to cook, it teaches the process of cooking through concepts and techniques, and goes in depth into ingredients. It also has recipes. My favourite bit of the book is the introduction to mise en place:

Restaurant kitchens have a French term for organization and preparation - and it’s every bit as useful in a home kitchen — Mise en place. Mise en place (MEEZ ohn plahs) translates literally to “put in place,” but what it really means is “organize and prepare.” It means everything in its place, on your countertop, beside your stove, on your stove, and, most critically, in your mind.

The importance of mise en place cannot be overstated. It doesn’t mean simply putting all your ingredients in ramekins on your cutting board or next to your stove (let alone, if you’re following a recipe, to have read the recipe all the way through). It’s ultimately about thinking.

Organizing your mise en place forces you to think through your actions, to plan in your mind the course of your actions. The second mandate in the ethos of mise en place, one that is rarely made explicit, is to recognize not only what you need in front of you, but also what does not belong, what should not be on your board, beside the stove, in your brain.

It’s a concept that is very important to me, not only when I cook, but for lots of things that I do. Mise en place is something I try to practice in my life where I can.

I like to be organised, I love to be organised well ahead of time, otherwise I seem to fixate on what could go wrong, right up until the thing happens.

If I have big meeting or workshop coming up, I make sure that I am prepared with everything that we will need to make the most of the time. That means prepping any documents we might need to reference or use, building or templating the digital whiteboard, collecting and making notes, and writing an agenda. Right before the session starts I will organise everything on my screen or on my desk so that I don’t have to go looking for anything in the meeting.

This all gives me space to think about other things, I like to think it helps the other people too.

I like to think about things before I do them, I like to gather all the stuff I need to think well, read it, and then think about the task. I love a checklist.

I know my limits with DIY, but I will do small jobs around the house, if I’ve never done it before I will find as many tutorials as I can and read or watch them all to find a method that makes the most sense to my brain. I research the right hardware, I make sure I have the tools. Right before the main event happens I gather everything I need, in arms reach, so I don’t have to keep going to grab stuff from another room.

I feel more relaxed and confident doing this stuff by taking more time to think about it before I get started, and more importantly I think I fuck it up less too.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that mise en place is just a way of reducing stress. When everything is in place, I don’t have to second-guess myself, I don’t have to scramble, and I don’t panic halfway through. It means I actually enjoy doing things a lot more.

Don’t worry, I am capable of being spontaneous too, sometimes.

After 9 years at thoughbot, I am currently looking for a new remote role, ideally as a senior, lead, principle or director level product designer. Get in touch

Just

2025-02-21T00:00:00Z

“Just build it faster” says the stressed stakeholder. “We just need to add this feature” says the skint founder. “Can’t we just…” says the tired designer, “Just do it” says the giant corporation.

I’ve heard these phrases lots of times, it’s frustrating, and it’s easy to be angry at the person saying them. I’ve said them too, I won’t lie, nobody is perfect, except that hero you’ve not met yet.

I don’t think I need to say this, but I will just in case, saying things like this makes people stressed, it makes them frustrated, it makes them feel unrecognised, it makes them feel angry too. You really should try to stop it, that’s the bad news, and the hardest part, please work on it.

The good news is that you’re probably an expert in something, you probably know a lot about the problem that made you use the J-word. Even better news is that the people you’re speaking to are also experts, an expert in something different. Together, as a group you are incredibly knowledgeable about different sides of this problem, you’re basically ‘The Avengers’ of the tech industry — please don’t make many, many, many OK movies about your exploits though, please.

Take a break, then work on it together, speak to one another with openness, empathy and honesty, bring all your expert opinions together, lead by example, and work something out that lets everyone be the expert that they are.

Deep in my core is the urge to end this with a really tight and actionable list of things you can do next, but I just don’t think there is one, interpret the paragraph above the way you want to, or don’t.

Just do it.

Markdown is really good

2025-02-04T00:00:00Z

I was reading Manu’s post about ‘old tech’ and suddenly thought, markdown is really, really good.

What is it?

Markdown is a markup (get it?) language which aims to make formatting text as easy as possible, while still being easy to read. Markdown can be processed into HTML, which is what the web is made of. It was created by John Gruber and Aaron Schwartz, and released over 20 years ago. It is commonly found in blogging software, content management systems, software documentation, and many other places.

This post that you’re reading right now is written in markdown.

Most alternatives to markdown are what I call ‘rich text’, which vary quite a bit in how they work, they are often more complex and proprietary.

Here’s why I think that markdown is really, really good.

You write it

Markdown is for writing, and it’s designed to be written. You don’t need to memorise an interface to use markdown, you need to remember a syntax instead, and you can use that same syntax everywhere that you write markdown.

In markdown to write add a link to a webpage you type a ‘[‘ followed by the link text, if you’re really lucky whatever you’re typing into is smart enough to close that square bracket for you, then you type a ‘(‘ followed by the URL. Notice you never had to stop typing to add this link, this process is exactly the same wherever you are writing markdown, there is no keyboard shortcuts or special interface to remember.

In ‘rich text’ world you would need to stop typing and do a few things. You might need to type your link text then highlight it, then find then whichever button that you need to convert it to a link, then you may need to use whichever interface this particular app uses to add the link for you, they vary wildly.

It’s HTML

Markdown makes HTML, perfectly standard HTML that any web browser can understand, every single thing that you write with markdown becomes HTML, just like the HTML that you are reading right now.

Sadly in the ‘rich text’ world you can never really be sure what you’re going to get. Sometimes your web browser will receive a very sad knotty mess of spaghetti code, that creates all sort of problems, and bugs.

You can take it with you

Markdown files are plain text files, you don’t need a special app to open or edit them. Markdown by itself has no interface but they are plenty of great apps that can wrap it in one if you like. Markdown files are also tiny, they don’t come bundled with a bunch of proprietary metadata that a specific app needs to understand the file. This makes markdown very portable.

You can also copy and paste markdown between different markdown friendly places and nothing bad will happen. I find it very annoying that when I copy text from one ‘rich text’ editor to say, Google Docs nothing is formatted right, so I have to do it all again.

You can hack it

There are many, many plugins, add-on’s and other ways to add features to markdown. There are plugins out there that will automatically generate a table of contents based on the headings that you write, and plugins that allow you to write and generate footnotes, there’s a world of possibilities.

If you want something really specific you can write your own plugin, and something completely custom to markdown if you want.

Markdown may be old but I think it’s the best way to write. Markdown is for writing, it makes great HTML, it’s portable, and it’s customisable.

Chicken accessories for chickens

2025-01-17T00:00:00Z

A screenshot of a product on the marketplace ‘Temu’, the product is described as “Portable Pet Chicken Carrier Bag - Durable Polyester, Ideal for Ducks & Roosters Travel and Catching Duck Coop Accessories Chicken Accessories For Chickens”, the product image shows a Rooster in the bag, the bag has carrying handles.

This post originally appeared on thoughtbot.com

I was browsing an online marketplace the other day because I was a bit bored, and because I have a unique need to seek out dark patterns. Something caught my eye as I scrolled. Amongst all the other suspiciously cheap items, was a bag for a chicken. Not a bag with a chicken pattern, not a bag shaped like a chicken, no — a bag to carry a chicken. A living chicken. A bag for carrying a chicken.

It made me smile as I took a screenshot. After 30 seconds, I went back to scrolling with a blank expression. It wasn’t over. I kept thinking about this thing for days afterward. All I had were questions:

Why does this product exist?
Why does a chicken need to be carried in a chicken-carrying bag?
Where is the chicken going in the chicken-carrying bag?
Who is this chicken-carrying bag for?
How many chickens does this chicken toting person own?
In the absence of the chicken-carrying bag, how do they carry their chicken(s)?
How many chicken-carrying bags have been sold so far?
How many chicken-carrying bags need to be sold to break even on the initial investment?
Who came up with the idea for the chicken-carrying bag?
Do they have any first-hand experience with chicken carrying?
How do you get the chicken into the chicken-carrying bag?
Did the chicken-carrying bag manufacturer test the usability of the chicken-carrying bag?
How else did they test the chicken-carrying bag?
When did the chicken-carrying bag manufacturer consider the chicken-carrying bag good enough to sell?
How did they decide on the fabric to use for the chicken-carrying bag?
What does the next version of the chicken-carrying bag look like?
How will the chicken-carrying bag manufacturer find out the highest-priority feature to add next?
How do I get to a place in my life where my singular focus is improving my chicken-carrying experience?

The list is endless…

What does this have to do with design?

Next time you’re struggling to come up with a question to find out more about something — be it a design problem, a new product pitched by a budding founder, or even another bizarre (to you) product you’ve found online — think of this chicken-carrying bag. You will have plenty.

Alternative titles for this post:

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road in a Bag?
This £5.17 Item Revolutionised My EDC
For Sale: Chicken Bag, Never Worn (OK, one more question, is the chicken wearing the bag?)
5 Chicken Accessory Trends for 2025

Nobody wants to use any software

2024-08-16T00:00:00Z

Jane makes some great points about how software just isn’t the solution to the problem we think it is, in ‘Nobody wants to use any software’, and how software can make everything worse for people. After all “Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘I want some software.’”

I can make the software as usable as possible, but I also need to remember that it’s not in the software where we’ll fix the problems that cause the software to exist in the first place. This little meditation reminds me that we don’t need to overegg what we make with a million features, and it’s our job to dig in to the real problems (feature request lists are one type of computer-related screaming for me), but we can still hold on to the fact that the software, even if it solves a real problem, likely solves a manufactured problem that might have been caused by the existence of some other software or process, all of which is getting in the way of petting a dog or eating 4 mozzarella sticks in a row off the appetizer tray.

I found this article on Eric’s newsletter ‘SC 2.4.4’, go follow it, please.

The time for designers to learn to code is now

2024-07-12T00:00:00Z

I often use the analogy that when we design for print, what are we doing over and over again? Doing proof prints. Why then when designing websites (or apps) are we not getting in to the browser as quickly as possible, rather than creating interactive pictures of websites in Figma?

This is where you can stand out as a designer by learning to code. I’m not talking about writing production code with developers here. Hell, maybe in the future, but I’m talking getting a good understanding of How Things Work™ and using that knowledge to blast your web and app design skills into the stratosphere.

Andy’s post is an excellent guide and list of resources, it’s also one of the best summaries of why you should at least understand how the things you build for work, and some very good reasons to learn to code as a designer, it’s an ancient argument but in 2024 it might just make you stand out enough when some of our work can be spat out in 30 seconds by AI.

With design tools further commoditising and sanitising expected creative output, the time for designers to be able to stand out is very much here. I think for some, learning to code is a good route for that.

Please give this a try if you’re a new (or not so new) designer.

Sharing online as an activity

2024-06-21T00:00:00Z

Christopher’s thoughts on sharing, and engaging online are really close to my own feelings. Doing this type of stuff is definitely an activity or a task for me, especially when it’s work related. I also feel like I need to break down this type of task into something, small, repeatable, and something that doesn’t need too much mental effort from me. Like my bookmarks.

Engaging online, for me, is an activity. It’s not a default. I can’t be in that space all the time because the longer I am in it, the more it twists and manipulates how I see, how I think, how I feel.

I am also very much happy to avoid chasing large audiences or wealth by sharing online my work online:

I make things because I enjoy making them. I share them when I have a sense that those things are exactly the sort that would inspire me had I not made them myself. This is not the way to build a large audience, to achieve fame, or to amass wealth. But it is the way to be seen (a very different thing from being validated) that also creates a way for someone else.

How I collect & create bookmarks

2024-06-15T00:00:00Z

I have been collecting bookmarks for quite a while, as you read this there are 1085 of them, which shocks me, they really build up fast. What I haven’t done yet is explain how I collect them and how they end up on this site.

Ethos

Describing my ethos properly is probably another post by itself, but if I find something delightful, engaging, interesting, beautiful or useful it will probably make it into my list.

One rule that I do have is that I can only add something to the list once, which can be a bit limiting if somebody does a great redesign of their website.

Sources

I have a few places that I find my bookmarks, the best one being the many RSS feeds that I am subscribed to. My favourites are:

I often browse a few websites that I have saved as Safari bookmarks. Some of my favourites are:

I also find a few of my bookmarks by scrolling Mastodon, and sometimes my lovely coworkers will share something in Slack that I find interesting too.

Sometimes I even just stumble upon things by myself, if you can believe it.

Method

I usually spend a Sunday morning browsing through all my feeds, websites and accounts to find new links to bookmark, it’s a bit like reading the Sunday newspaper. I use my trusty iPad to do this.

Once I find a link to bookmark I will store it in Drafts to work on later. I will also keep note of the place I found the link, so that I can credit them.

When I next find time and I’m working at my desk I will sort through my links in Drafts and begin adding them into my extra-special-custom-made CMS.

The first step is to open the Raycast extension I built, it allows me to enter all the bookmark details and save them to a database as a draft, to be edited or published later.

My custom Raycast extension that I use to create bookmarks.

A few notes on the extension:

I can grab the current Safari tab URL and title by tapping a keyboard shortcut, which saves on copy-pasting.
If I check ‘url as title’ the extension will crunch the URL into a nicer format: https://www.example.com becomes example.com.
It will save the form as a draft if I need to do something else in the background.

Later I can open the other Raycast command which I use to manage the bookmarks, and publish them. In the screenshot below you see that it displays all the saved content with handy indicators for unpublished bookmarks. From here I can tap a keyboard shortcut to publish or delete the drafts as needed.

My custom Raycast extension that I use to managea draft bookmarks.

Once published the new bookmarks will appear on the bookmarks page the next day – I publish my website every morning, automatically.

Back-end

The bookmarks system backend is a simple app written using Hono, which is a more modern equivalent to Express (which is how the first version was built). It makes it easy to write a CRUD style API to list, create, edit, and delete bookmarks. The API is hosted on cloudflare as a serverless worker.

For a database the bookmarks system uses cloudflare D1, which is a nice wrapper around SQLite.

Front-end

As I’ve shown above I add, publish, and edit bookmarks using Raycast.

This website is built with Eleventy, my favourite way to build a website. Eleventy makes it easy to grab the bookmarks data, adding a JavaScript file to the data folder that exports an object is all that is needed.

Once the data is fetched I then display the bookmarks using a Nunjucks template for the markup.

No client side JavaScript is exported, just plain HTML.

That’s pretty much it. That’s my DIY approach to collecting links a putting them on this website. You can browse all the bookmarks at /bookmarks, you can also find the RSS, and JSON feed to subscribe to them on that page too.

My favourite albums of 2023

2023-12-08T00:00:00Z

I don’t have a Spotify wrapped to share this year. So, in no particular order, my favourite albums of the year:

boygenius – the record

I have followed the work of this supergroups members for a little while. When they come together they create something incredible. This album is dark, honest, and witty.

Wednesday – Rat Saw God

I couldn’t quite describe the sound of Wednesday, I think the description on Apple Music sums them up nicely:

Blending the great fuzzy guitars of shoegaze with a faint Southern twang and lyrics fixated on the traumas of small-town life…

This album is noisy and chaotic, with a great narrative.

Buy on Bandcamp

The Beths – Expert in a Dying Field

I have listened to The Beths since their first album, they have gone from strength to strength, producing some of the best power pop out there. Also, their tour blog ‘Breakfast and Travel Updates’ is one of my favourite feeds to follow.

Buy on Bandcamp

Jess Williamson – Time Ain’t Accidental

I am not a fan of country music, especially all of that toxic macho, “I drive trucks, and love my country” bullshit. This album from Jess is different. I first heard of her when she teamed up with Waxahatchee to form Plains (another album I love, from last year). This album is poetic, modern, and romantic, expertly shaking off all those stereotypes of country music.

Buy on Bandcamp

The Murder Capital – Gigi’s Recovery

Gigi’s Recovery is grander and darker than The Murder Capital’s first album. ‘Return My Head’ is a a real thumper that I’d love to see live one day.

Buy on Bandcamp

That’s it, see you next year.

The fundamental shift

2023-06-13T00:00:00Z

Like David I think it’s going to be a long time before the interfaces I sometimes daydream about will get close to reality, for me the Vision Pro is the first view into the future, which surprised me.

That shift is fundamental. The interface for Vision Pro felt like it was reading my thoughts rather than responding to my inputs. Its infinite, pixel perfect canvas also felt inherently different. I wasn’t constrained by my physical setup, instead my setup was whatever I thought would be most productive for me.

The design implications for these interfaces is really interesting. As the lines between physical and digital blur, designers and developers will be getting access to more powerful tools to build interfaces and experiences. We are moving beyond controlling what happens on a flat surface, instead we will be able to control a sophisticated view of the world around people. That feels like a big responsibility.

Reading your README

2023-03-23T00:00:00Z

One of my pet peeves is cloning a project to start work and finding that the setup instructions don’t exist, aren’t complete, or don’t work. It’s already difficult to get everything running, and these extra issues just add to the frustration. Alex has a great idea:

In my ideal situation, a developer being able to have a local copy of code up and running should only be limited by the speed of their internet connection. The best way to ensure this is the case is to regularly delete your dev environment and clone a fresh copy down. This gives you a great opportunity to ask some questions:

How long does it take for you to get set up?

Is the documentation correct and easily accessible?

Is it clear who can be contacted if there are questions?

What is the process for contributing?

How can someone report an issue?

I’m going to try this soon, it’s really easy to forget to update documentation, so setting aside some time to test your own instructions is a great approach.

Yes, printers are complicated

2023-03-05T00:00:00Z

I was nodding along to Nicholas’ response to an article about Gen Z and technology, and how it’s apparently ridiculous that they cannot use a printer. None of that should be a surprise:

I have been around cars all my life, and up until I was twenty years old, I probably got inside a car every day of the year. Do I know how to change oil on a car? Absolutely not. Should I know? Probably, but I never felt judged or mocked for not knowing.

And this is what is bothering me in this article. It mentions that “Gen Z” is feeling tech shame, and is being too shy to ask for help. The article should focus on older generations being terrible coworkers and not being able to understand what new employees need to learn or not.

As a designer it’s a constant frustration that some interfaces never improve, and that ‘tech illiteracy’ is used as an excuse to keep building bad hardware and software, it would be great if everything worked the way everyone expected it to, but it doesn’t. So we should also trust people to teach their colleagues things when they need help.

A future of design work with AI

2023-03-04T00:00:00Z

Like a almost everyone I work with I’m thinking a lot about how all this new fangled AI stuff will change my work. Matthew offers the most level-headed metaphor I’ve found so far:

Just as fly-by-wire systems have made pilots more efficient (not redundant), AI and automation will make designers more effective.

Imagine a design-by-wire system. The job of the designer is to indicate what they want the desired outcome to be. Like a pilot pushing the throttle to make the airplane accelerate, a designer could assemble a wireframe or configure a screen to enable a user to accomplish a task.

This is a refreshing break from the other hot takes that flip between unconditional praise and a terrifying dystopia.

Good Case Studies

2021-07-25T00:00:00Z

I’m currently thinking about writing case studies for my work, I didn’t know where to start, so I did what I do when starting any project, some research; I needed to define what I think makes a good case study.

Here are my thoughts so far.

Structure

I am a fan of detailed case-studies. It’s important that the case study details the project step-by-step, not only the final output but the actions taken along the way.

Firstly, introduce the project, include: Who the client is. Why they approached you. What problem they were facing. This adds historical context to the work and why it was needed in the first place.

Next give an overview of the phases of the project for example: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. Include what they meant to you for this project.

The rest of the case study should document all the steps taken from the beginning to the end, each step should tell the reader: what you did, how you did it, why you did it, and the what you and others learned by doing it. Below is a non-exhaustive list of steps I like to see, seeing at least 5 of them is a good sign:

Competitive research
User research
User testing
Workshops & important meetings
Sketches
Moodboards
Wireframes
Prototypes
Design system components

You may find it helpful to split the work into different features, meaning you produce several mini case-studies instead.

Images

Images are an important part of any case-study, in my opinion not as important as the story, but still a big part if created with care.

Polish and attention to detail is good, but not the most important thing, successful imagery needs to enhance the text it interrupts, as long as imagery is relevant and easy to understand the polish can come second.

Any imagery should aid the content itself it’s a good idea to keep relevant images and text together. Try not to dominate the text with giant images that overtake everything else, especially if they are decorative 1.

I like to see photographs of things happening, especially if you can show the team working together on a problem.

When it comes to showing off the final product I prefer to see fewer images that are interesting or innovative, rather than lots of images of another run-of-the-mill login screen. Which interactions are you most proud of, and why?

Design

When designing how a case-study looks, less is more, any design decisions made should elevate the content, avoid distracting decoration. That doesn’t mean the design should be boring, a well designed case-study should still engage the reader.

Try to avoid treating every image same, context is important, for example comparing images is easier when they are side-by-side. Loosening the grid can add character and a sense of creative ‘chaos’ to a collection of early stage sketches 2.

The typography should have a personality that does not shout over the top of the content, but is capable of singing to an audience when needed. The hierarchy should define sections, pauses and guide the reader effortlessly.

Colour should try not to distract from the content or draw the eye away from important images, a carefully chosen colour palette can be helpful in telling the story, but defaulting to neutral themes is sensible.

Wrapping up

Once you get to the end summarise what the most important learnings and failures were for you and the team. Remember that design work is never ‘done’, talk about what the next steps are going to be in the future.

Finally, please, please, link to the work in the wild, if it exists.

Things to remember

Don’t be afraid to show work-in-progress, failed ideas, and other work that you may not consider to be 100% successful or worthy of sharing publicly. I find that being honest can show me more about a designer than pixel-perfect imagery, after all nobody is perfect, and projects rarely go 100% to plan in the real world. Somebody who can open up is willing to demonstrate how they handle the twists and turns that projects can take.

It’s OK to talk about the things you wish you did during the project, or might try next time, this tells me that you learn by mistakes, and constantly learning.

It’s OK to take some credit for things that you did not create as a sole contributor, teamwork is important.

Don’t skip over ‘invisible work’, after all thinking is work.

Remember that this is my opinion of what a good case-study looks like. If you’re using this post as guide to get a job please investigate what the company you’re applying for prefers to see.

Resources

Here are examples of what I think are good case studies:

My definition of a good MVP

2021-05-15T00:00:00Z

An MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is an excellent way to build and launch fast. Once launched you can quickly get feedback from customers and iterate. However I find that sometimes teams lose focus and fixate on the minimal at the cost of viability, or vice-versa. This is my definition of a good MVP:

A good MVP is lovable
A good MVP provides unique value
A good MVP takes risks
A good MVP steals good ideas

Make it lovable

The days of ‘move fast and break things’ is over, customers and communities expect better now. Slapping an interface over a database is minimal, but it will likely cause all sorts of user experience problems. Problems put your viability at risk. Even if you spend an extra week on usability improvements you can lower that risk. MV&LP.

Demonstrate the USP

Highlight and test the things that make you stand out, not the mundane must-haves, the USP (Unique Selling Point). If your MVP only matches the features of your peers and competitors, they will continue to dominate, they are more mature and bigger than you are. Take advantage of your small size, add useful features no one else has, by the time they can react you’ll have iterated and improved.

Take risks

An MVP is the perfect opportunity to take risks. Sprinkle in some more interesting or off-the-wall ideas. As long as the foundation is viable, and you have a USP you can also test the waters with ideas you aren’t sure about. In MVP iteration is cheap you’ve got nothing to lose, embrace failing fast, you might find that next big thing.

Steal good ideas

It’s unlikely that you’re building something completely unique. If your peers or competitors do something well, take inspiration and cherry-pick the best parts of different offerings.

It’s also important to avoid focusing on the solved problems in an MVP. For example account creation is a feature almost every product needs. Use common patterns customers recognise. Build quickly, and spend the time you saved reinventing the wheel to build your unique and risky ideas. Get boring features working and viable, optimise later.

Using a notebook as a task manager

2021-05-02T00:00:00Z

I’m sometimes asked which app I use to manage my time, to-dos or plans. My answer is none, for the most part. I use a notebook, a real paper notebook.

Every morning I sit down at my desk, and turn my notebook to a fresh page. I’ll then spend 10 minutes copying out calendar events for the day, converting emails and my drafts inbox into tasks. Depending on the project I’ll login to whichever project management tool we’re using and copy those tasks too. In short I roughly follow the Bullet Journal methodology, combined with the core concepts of GTD (Getting Things Done) 1. At the risk of hyperbole, adopting both of those will change your productivity forever.

Throughout the day I will check off events and tasks as I complete them, and jot down notes and updates as I go.

All that is possible in a half-decent productivity app, like Things, but there’s a few reasons why I prefer a notebook.

Downsides

Firstly, before the good stuff. There are downsides to a notebook. Firstly, paper is wasteful. Despite being recyclable it needs to be produced, packaged, and shipped before I buy it. I can try to reduce the carbon footprint by buying from a local manufacturer that prioritises reducing waste, but paper will never be as environmentally friendly as an app.

Much like a digital alternative a notebook can be lost or destroyed accidentally, it’s harder to back-up.

Unlike an app a notebook is difficult to search. I can make every effort to keep track of content with an index page, but I will not be able to recall a page using a single word or name. I tend to make my notebook the start of an idea rather than it’s final resting place, Notion is my preferred digital archive.

A notebook is not dynamic, it cannot be programmed to do things automatically, and I cannot access it when I forget to pick it up.

Zero-syntax rules

Task management and productivity apps will impose a default syntax or structure to get you started, some are more opinionated that others 2. While they are easy enough to configure the way you want, there is a learning curve. It can be difficult to introduce a new syntax or concept, plug-ins exist but those need to be found, installed, or even written from scratch.

With a notebook I can invent, bend, or break a syntax as fast as I can write. Which means I can get that idea out of my head before it fades away.

Mixed media

The flexibility of a notebook allows me to mix my task list with sketches, appointment cards, tickets, post-it notes, and other ephemera. A few pages can become a scratchpad, scrapbook, or a mood-board naturally over the course of a day, and even more detailed with time.

Digital alternatives tend to be minimal, dedicated to doing one thing well, which isn’t a complaint but sometimes an all-in-one solution is needed.

Writing improves my memory

I mentioned above that I copy information out of my digital tools into my notebook. This seems like a waste of time, but writing something down helps me to remember it 3. Writing down an event–like a meeting–helps me to combine the event itself with the things I need to do to prepare for it. For example, I find it easier to organise myself when I have a to-do to read a document before a meeting when the two things are listed next to one another.

Zero technology

I love and hate technology, it has formed a big part of my life so far, and it will do for the rest of it. But, it is nice to have a tool that does not have a screen, requires no internet connection, and is truly portable.

I can doodle in a notebook while sitting outside, or flying at 30,000ft and not have to think about keeping the internet connected. In a meeting the constant sound of typing can be seen as obnoxious, which is unlikely the case with a pen.

The emotional connection

There is a certain honesty and randomness to paper, which gives me a stronger emotional connection to it. Using a pen means mistakes must be crossed out—forming a rudimentary versioning system. I sometimes smudge things with my hands. My daughter will occasionally scribble on a page, much to my dismay. A sudden change of pen or legibility means I have hastily taken a note with little regard for my normal process.

Occasionally I will pick up an old notebook from the shelf and flick through it. It’s interesting to see a journey taking place, and to remind myself of my old ideas and projects. Each book is a snapshot of me and my work at a certain point in time.

The Window

2021-01-10T00:00:00Z

The day my daughter stood up by herself for the first time.

The day I said my wedding vows.

Laughs over a round of drinks.

Days in the sun.

Days making the best of it.

My Dad near the end looking frail.

The latest iOS update brought widgets to our home screens, a trophy that Android has held above the heads of the others for years.

When I tapped ‘Download and Install’ and waited for that white bar to fill up, I wasn’t expecting to discover The Window.

The Window is the new Photos widget. It’s a two by two square, that nudges aside four icons on your home-screen. It carefully plucks photos out of your library and frames them—I’m not sure how, but it has a knack for exposing memories. Memories of absolute joy, and memories you’d rather forget sometimes. It’s one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had while using a digital device, it feels like the ‘magic’ that Apple proudly announces each of its devices somehow contain. It’s the first time in a while that a slab of silicon, glass and aluminium has stretched a huge smile across my face, or brought me close to tears.

What I can see out The Window doesn’t always stir the emotions that I want or need, especially on the days I need the opposite. That won’t stop me walking by, every day to see what’s through it.

Please remember this feeling

2020-10-23T00:00:00Z

This tweet from Kyle (Thanks Nick), struck chord with me:

Feels like a lot of extroverts are hitting a wall with the pandemic recently. And I get it. It sucks when the whole world organizes every interaction in a way that emotionally drains you and won’t let you recharge. Please remember this feeling. Signed, An Introvert.

Rather than asking extroverts to “remember this feeling”, I’ll be trying my best to be as supportive as I can to my extroverted friends, family, and co-workers. It feels spiteful to kick extroverts while they are down. But, as an introvert, It has been exciting to see the world that feels tailored for extroverts is starting to change, and a better more introvert-inclusive world is rising. While extroverts are hitting a wall during the pandemic, I feel like I’ve soared straight over it.

Selfishly, I’ve been loving lockdown. I’d strongly prefer to work remotely from now on – I’m definitely not looking for work, but it’s something that would be a deal-breaker when comparing jobs. I’m super grateful to work for a company that has quickly adapted and committed to remote working.

The lockdown has reduced my anxiety, I’m nowhere near as emotionally or mentally drained by the end of the day. I’m less tired, less grumpy. I’ve been saving lots of money on transport and takeaway lunches, I get to spend much more time with my family which is amazing. I work in a space that I have designed for myself, and people are much more understanding of others personal situations and needs than before.

Sure, the amount I’ve been exercising has taken a big dive. I’ve had to embrace the fact that my daughter will interrupt calls, and it’s meant rearranging our living space. I miss having the occasional pint with friends at work, and a free lunch on Friday. But I can work on all of that, if it means I get to keep the rest.

Writing daily & weekly project updates

2020-10-16T00:00:00Z

I’ve been trying something lately to try and improve how I keep track of the document the progress on projects, without a huge time investment. So I’ve been writing notes about my day, everyday, and compiling them into a weekly summary.

Here’s an example:

**Thoughtbot Website: 12th October 2020**

We spent most of this week improving the CTA performance on the home page CTAs,
and other small visual tweaks:

- Experimented with CTA background colours: [Figma](#)

- Improved the CTA heading line wrapping on smaller devices: [Figma](#)

- Experimented with different CTA layouts: [Figma](#)

...

Formatting the notes

Whenever I do something, for example update a screen on a prototype, or open a PR. I make a note:

Updated home screen CTA for feedback: [InVision](#)

The link at the end is important, that is the evidence of the task, and an important resource for people looking back on the project – creating a case study is much easier when you have a big list of historical artefacts. So, I try to link to things I know won’t disappear. I commonly link to; Git commits, Figma art-boards, DropBox files, even Slack threads.

That’s it. By the end of the day I’ll have 4-5 of these bullets, which I’ll then post in Slack as an ‘end of day update’. Which is a positive ritual to finish up a day.

The daily loop

Before standup I will start a new document; I’ll immediately paste yesterdays notes under the ‘yesterday’ heading, done, that means I don’t have to think about yesterday at all, and gives me a nice summary to read from in the standup.

After standup I write the tasks that I’m committing to today, as bullets, under the ‘Today’ heading.

I’ll then post these standup notes in Slack. This creates a history in Slack of daily progress – which is useful for new team members and the client.

The ‘today’ section of my standup notes then becomes a draft version of that days ‘end of day update’, now all I need to do is add links to these things as I do them.

Weekly standup

At the end of the week I’ll likely have a collection of:

4-5 standup notes
4-5 end of day notes

This might amount to around 20 bullet points with links, each of which have taken 30 seconds or less to write.

At the end of the week I will then combine all the ‘end of day updates’ into one long list, curate it, and write a short summary. That gets pasted into the notes section of our internal project management tool, then I archive that week. It’s a nice little task to round off a week of work.

As the project continues the progress and deliverables get incrementally documented, but it all starts with simple bullets points.

Why bother?

Making these notes helps everyone, in the least it helps me to remember things, and adds structure to my day.

Taking notes gives my clients a helpful history of the project progress, which is important on remote projects. Task management apps like Trello don’t make it super easy to get an overview of progress, and not everything I do in a day is trackable with a ‘job to be done’ or user story.

I’ve had experiences in the past in which an unresponsive client will suddenly appear asking what I’ve been doing that day or week. First off that’s a big red flag and should be addressed, but with this system that evidence is easy to provide.

In the London studio recently we had a discussion about what ‘continuous delivery’ looks like, these notes help to visualise and enforce that idea. This system exposes those tasks that would otherwise go unnoticed, as a product designer I do not spend a lot of time deploying code to a server, so it’s good to document the work I do that would otherwise disappear after a while.

Taking notes helps the project manager to stay up-to-date on the project progress without having to bother the team.

Taking notes helps our team write case studies and other marketing material. I’ve tried writing case studies based solely on memory and a single Sketch file, it’s hard!

Taking notes helps the sales team by giving them more information about what we did for our clients. An important part of sales is giving the clients examples of how we have helped others in a similar situation or industry.

The hard part

The hardest part of this for me was getting into the habit of generating those bullet points. After a while it stuck.

I try to have a short break between my tasks, before I take that break I write a bullet, tying note taking to an event helped. An app called Streaks also helped me with the habit, I set it to nudge me a few times a day to write notes, that got annoying quick, I didn’t need as many prompts and turned off the reminders.

I can’t offer much advice for forming habits, that’s likely something that personal to each person. This way of working would fit into a GTD workflow, and ties in with bullet journaling, or the pomodoro technique, if you follow those patterns, you’ve likely got a head start on the habit. There are ways of automating this, for example, Basecamp has an ‘Automatic Check-ins’ feature that prompts you every evening to add notes about your day.

Personally I make all my notes in Drafts and set my todos in a bullet journal. There are many tools out there to help you do both of those things but, this isn’t about tools, there are few things that cannot be done with the default note taking app, on any device. The action itself is the most important part.

RSS is calm

2020-10-05T00:00:00Z

I’ve been thinking a bit about how I consume from the web, to improve my digital health. Here’s some things I’ve done recently:

Delete all work stuff from my phone (Slack, Email etc).
Clean up my social follows, and use Twitterrific ‘muffles’ more.
Use Drafts to record ideas and reminders quickly to avoid context switching and distractions.
Got back into RSS, subscribing to blogs and sites that I like, but lost track of.
Move all my email newsletter subscriptions to Feedbin.

Those last two have been very helpful. RSS has been around forever, it’s usually used for things like blog posts, but it also powers podcasting (another of my favourite internet ecosystems). Laura Kalbag has plenty of advice for getting started, so does Matt Webb.

For me, RSS is a great way to control what I consume, I can curate a feed of things I genuinely enjoy reading. There’s no pressure to read things immediately, no comments, no trackers or ads — nobody controls RSS. Most importantly good a RSS reader will format all the content into a minimal, consistent format, it’s all very calm…

I find RSS especially useful for following high-quality content creators that rarely post, something that’s difficult to keep track of otherwise. I tend not to subscribe to creators that post many times in a single day, as it clutters my feed quickly, which is overwhelming. I work around that by subscribing to email newsletters via RSS, good daily content creators will offer a weekly newsletter that offers a summary rather than a deluge. Feedbin allows you to signup using a special email address, which is a great feature.

When I stumble on a good article I try and find their RSS feed so that I read more of their work in future, lack of discovery is both a positive and negative part of RSS, it’s also disappointing to find a content creator doesn’t offer a feed at all. After that you can forget about everything until that content creator posts again. The same goes for an interesting looking email newsletter.

So now I find myself browsing less, and I get fewer emails, but I’m not missing out, my favourite content is ready for me to read whenever I feel like it. It’s a nice activity for a quick Coffee break.

I subscribe to Feedbin for $5 a month, and I read it using NetNewsWire, a lightweight, open-source app for Mac and iOS.

You can see a list of the content creators I subscribe to on the blogroll page, it pulls data directly from the Feedbin API, so it will always be up-to-date.

Bringing the fun back to our screens

2020-09-29T00:00:00Z

I used to spend a lot of time customising how my Home Screen, dock and desktop looked. The obsession was at its height around 2009-2011. I had a jailbroken iPod Touch, then iPhone. CandyBar by Panic had a permanent place on the dock of my iMac. I spent hours upon hours searching for applying and combining themes for Winterboard, at one point I even ported the minimal scroll bars from iOS to Snow Leopard, which meant trawling through thousands of tiny images locked inside the deepest parts of the OS.

The community was full of people with the same obsession as me, swapping and sharing their own setups. It was lots of fun, and a great example of what the internet should be. A small niche community creating stuff and generally being cool to one another, some highlights include:

Unfortunately, and slowly the scene started to slow down. Mac OS X theming became next to impossible after new security features arrived. iOS 7 killed skeuomorphism, jailbreaking became harder and meant staying behind on old version to wait out the next breakthrough. And, honestly I lost interest. It was a lot of fun, and something I think back on warmly. I still tinker with my setup in more practical ways, mostly my development environment.

I started reminiscing about all this after seeing how the introduction of widgets in iOS 14 has spawned a whole new generation of people having fun with their home screens. Louie Mantia also started tweeting screenshots of the ‘old days’. It’s been a lovely trip down memory lane, and great to see.

IKEA Bekant Standing Desk: Personal Review

2020-09-21T00:00:00Z

Since the lockdown, all of us at thoughtbot have been working from home. I took the opportunity to upgrade my home setup. The biggest change was a new desk.

I’ve wanted a sit-stand desk for a long time, this gave the perfect oppurtunity to try one. I settled on the IKEA Bekant, it’s a good price, has the features I want and is nice looking.

Posture

I can micro-adjust it a tad higher than comfortable for slouching, meaning I have to stand or sit straight. At first this gave me backache, presumably because I was using different muscles for a proper posture, That went away after around a week.

Fatigue & Focus

I don’t feel as fatigued at the end of my day, compared with solely sitting. I now always stand for calls, I find that I concentrate and engage more when I do. I try to do 50:50 sitting/standing throughout the day.

Size & Shape

I bought the smaller version of the Bekant (120x80cm), the desktop is deeper than my old one but a shorter length. The depth is good for me as my forearms are long, keeping my elbows at my side and rested on a keyboard leaves plenty of space for the screen behind, plus an open notebook – which was a struggle with my old desk. The area is good for me, but I have very little on my desk – a Screen, my MacBook, Keyboard, Plants. There is a longer version available.

Cable Management

The cable management is easy the desk has a elasticated netting to hold cables. I bought a long extension cable (6 gang) and tucked it underneath. Then plugged the desk itself and everything else into that, meaning there’s a single cable coming from the desk – which is great, both aesthetically and with a toddler nearby. The storage is cramped holding the extension lead, MacBook power block, desk power block, screen plug, lamp plug and the extra cable slack in it, it’s full, if you’ve got a lot to plug in, You’ll need something else to manage extra cables.

Other observations

The key is useful with a toddler around!
The desk edge is rounded, it doesn’t dig in to your arms.
The legs are minimal adding to the space underneath the desk.
The 10-year guarantee seems generous to me.

Overall, I’m happy with it. I would struggle to go back to a normal desk now.