I am a product leader. My first book is about Answer Engine Optimization, the practitioner’s name for getting your content cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews, to name a few. On paper, that might sound like I’m doing a weird pivot. While working on updates for spencergoldade.ca and monkeyslunch.com, I was digging […]
I use Claude Code for hours every day. Over the past two weeks I’ve run 176 sessions, made 265 commits, and hit an 88% achievement rate across tasks. A strange thing to admit when I’d still consider myself anti-AI in many respects. You see, I started to take the ol’ “If you can’t beat ’em, […]
“We’ll use AI responsibly.” Have you heard a statement like this from leadership or a colleague? Maybe you haven’t even experienced those hollow words and were dismissed or ignored when trying to raise this topic. Worse, maybe you work for an AI company and know sufficient guardrails aren’t being built in? Last month, an AI-related […]
Good design is iterative. Yes, I made a blanket statement, and yes, I am standing by it. What do I mean? Iterative design builds better products through repeated cycles of prototyping, testing, and refining based on feedback. The success of a design is also contextual, based on the current end-users, their problems they need help […]
I started building these principles in 2018. That’s not a brag, it’s a confession. Because if it took six years to get them right, I clearly didn’t have them right the first time. Version 1 launched in October 2020. Twelve principles, each described in a single sentence. Things like “the system should invite diversity of […]
I’m challenging myself to ship 22 MVPs this March, one every weekday, fueled by my love for TTRPGs, design systems, and rapid prototyping. While I do allow myself to work on some of them for multiple days, at least two a week I am trying to start and finish in just one day. Week 1 […]
Design hand-off I used to do a lot of freelance/consulting work. I had a system down for negotiating contracts, aligning on final agreements, and ensuring clients understood what they were receiving and what to do with it next. I took several years off from that type of work, but lately I’ve been re-exploring it, starting […]
Recently, during a group product discussion, several folks asked me to elaborate on how I approach retrospectives and reflection. What they didn’t expect was that part of what has led to a pretty successful career is less about my professional nature than about how I approach reflection and self-improvement in general. No matter the walk […]
Lately, as I’ve been giving or forming new industry talks, continuing to coach folks, and interviewing at various orgs, I’ve been chatting with UX and Product Designers across the board: individual contributors, leads, heads of design. The whole gamut! There’s a pattern emerging. Common struggles I keep hearing: Product decisions made without user input (or […]
I have worked with several agencies, consulted independently for 20 years, and held full-time roles at numerous organizations, big and small, creating and executing business and product strategies that have led to success and meaningful growth. I frequently encounter the same pitfalls from leaders and teams trying to build or execute strategy, and I also […]