I keep encountering marketing, advertising, UI, and agency folks who are trying to break into product design, OR who have just realized that design systems will aid their workflow. One common misconception I encounter over and over again, though, is that many folks assume that what they’ve made in Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, or another program […]
I’ve spoken at length before about the differences between different fields of design or product roles. Some folks may say, “So what, I can learn what I don’t know?” And I would agree with you. If you recognize the differences, I am confident many people can learn where they’re lacking to bridge one field to […]
Last night, I was two drinks in when he said it. “DEI? I hate DEI. Diversity, equity, inclusion?! It’s a scam!” Said it like he was reciting something memorized by heart and taught to react with. Because he was. Somebody sold him that line, and he paid for it with the only currencies that matter […]
You want to help. You think you’re teaching, modelling, holding the bar to a particular quality, and protecting your team from mistakes. You mean well, want to help your people, and see your team and mission succeed. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. In fact, all of that is great! But it can […]
I’ve been chatting with a lot of folks across industries lately who are afraid of losing their jobs or have already lost them. Meanwhile, I’ve also had interesting chats with folks new to their industry, with zero training, who are using tools like AI to fill the entire gap in their knowledge and expertise. It […]
I was recently asked exactly that by someone, and I thought I would share my answer broadly because I think it’s a great question and one I’ve seen junior product and research folks struggle with. The truth is, there are several ways to ensure your research recommendations lead to real projects with impact. But I […]
“Lean” and “small” are different things, yet most people use the words interchangeably. If you aren’t familiar with it, “Lean,” as a framework and philosophy for business, was invented at Toyota, a company with hundreds of thousands of employees. It’s not a synonym for “scrappy,” although a lot of tech bros seem to think otherwise. […]
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 […]