Your Craptitude and My Aptitude

I’ve almost lost count of how many times I’ve been laid off. (eight times in 23 years) Isn’t that some kind of record?

Coaching: The Delicate Balance Of Pushing and Encouraging

If giving advice is an art-form, taking advice is performance art.

You Don’t Need Research, You Need Therapy

If I had a nickel for every time a research respondent walked away feeling like they’d been to therapy…I’d be rich.

IDEO’s Ethos

It’s cool to survive workplace trauma now?

Sustained Powerlessness

I’m starting to think that being a ux design researcher is sometimes like being a tattle tale. You’re reporting up the chain that something is broken, or doesn’t work the way users would expect it to, or how they’d like it to and guess what? Mommy and Daddy don’t care. There’s a certain comfort level […]

All Hail The Little Guy

Talked to a buddy of mine the other day who owns and runs a digital media agency, and they just hit their eight year anniversary in May of 2020, coming up on nine years this May. I asked him how the pandemic was affecting business. He admitted that they were struggling, but keeping their heads […]

Takes One To Know One

You know the phrase, “you can’t bullshit a bullshitter?” I’ve always understood this, being a self-proclaimed bullshitter. The only person who can really tell if I am lying is my mother, and even though she thinks she knows, she doesn’t always.  In the world of business, I contend that in leadership and bosshood, there is […]

YCTTJASI*- part II

Another friend of mine told me about her quitting her part time job in West Oakland, back in the day. This was when she was in her twenties, ahead-of-her-time progressive, and worked in a well-lit, educational, safe and friendly Sex Shoppe in the late 1990s/early 2000s. This shop sold sex toys, porn videos, how-to advice […]

Drinking from the Firehose

The euphemism is thrown around a lot during someone’s first week/month/quarter at a new workplace. When a veteran at the startup asks a newbie, “How’s it going? You picking up what we putting down? Or as Anna Weiner’s crew in Uncanny Valley says, “You down for the cause?” A typical newbie response, if they’re savvy […]

The Worst Kinds of Customers

The other day I interviewed a friend of mine who is a personal trainer, just for this blog. She agreed because I promised her anonymity, and because I always want to know the seedy, dirty, gross parts of any job. She happily complied, drawing on fifteen years of experience both working at name brand gyms […]