What does a design leader do? How different companies describe this role can vary a lot. It indicates anything from managing a design team and helping shape the product strategy to mentoring designers, directing the visual design, and often contributing individually. It can be more strategic, more operational, or more artistic. Or a little bit of everything. Usually, whatever is necessary to keep the boat afloat.

I was lucky to be in command of complex product redesigns several times in my career. I was well-drilled with clients in my agency days to qualify for more sophisticated efforts with ActiveCollab and Semaphore CI. My contributions spread across all levels: Recreating everything from the structure, behavior, and interaction to the visual design. Up from high-level structural work down to details and finish.

NBA league has become one of the most successful sports products ever, partly thanks to perfecting the advanced statistical metrics to absurd detail. Heavy use of computer statistics entered American professional sports in the early 2000s, first in baseball and later spread like a plague to other sports.

One of the core ideas of interaction design is to enable users to glide smoothly to their destination with as little friction as possible. To make people experience the software as an extension of their brain, and not something to continually wrestle with and domesticate.

Unlike popular belief, innovation is far from a miracle, a moment of brilliance, or a unique event in the life of the innovator. It’s the result of a long, immersive process and a deep interest in the matter. But more importantly, it’s a consequence of belonging in the environment that enables innovation. Eagerness and intellectual curiosity are important, but not as critical as sufficient material conditions. The absence of a safety net discourages the natural human urge to play, experiment and take risks.

We’re bombarded daily with tips on how to do more in less time. We hear how the most successful people have this secret thing that makes them super-productive. They tell us getting enough sleep, eating well, and cleverly organizing our time will make us better at our job. While a fresh mind undoubtedly improves our fitness for any activity, the essence of productivity lies far beyond the small adjustments to our daily routine. We’ll see how different context shapes the meaning of productivity, why we procrastinate, and finally point to the conditions required to unleash the genuine productive momentum and the will for creation.

Designers need a constant reminder about the fundamentals of good UI design. The goal of graphic design in user interfaces is to make content accessible, understandable and easier to consume.

People just starting out in digital design are commonly driven by a simple desire to make things pretty. In the beginning there’s almost no greater goal, we’re moving shapes, colors and words around, trying to make them look nice together. You could argue our reasoning is still naively selfish.

In engineering driven organizations design is slightly undervalued almost by nature. Even when it is recognized as important, I’ve witnessed many times how difficult it is to achieve excellence in design when company spirit is rooted in engineering.

Early in my career I was always in doubt with my process. I thought there was a procedure, a recipe how everyone should design. Because my improvisation, surely, wasn’t the most optimal way.