Notes from the practice.
Essays on design systems, tools, AI, and the craft of shipping. Opinions I hold because of work I have done, not trends I have read about.
The product design process, stage by stage
What the product design process actually requires: real context of use, named edge cases, a system before the screens, and honesty about what is not proven yet.
Read the essay →The WCAG design guidelines checklist: contrast, states, and structure
A practical WCAG checklist for designers: which guidelines belong in foundations, which belong in states, and which only show up in the markup.
Mobile app UI design principles, learned from a screen nobody can look at twice
Mobile app UI design principles drawn from a driving app built to be read in half a second: one signal per moment, color as message, honest motion.
Building a design system that works in both light and dark
A design system that works in light and dark needs one set of named roles and two sets of values, rather than a second system built from scratch.
UX microcopy examples: the words that make an interface trustworthy
Real UX microcopy examples from clinical and accessibility-first products: named error states, plain-text pricing, and labels that never pretend to be buttons.
What zero to one product design actually requires
What zero to one product design actually requires: inventing a whole visual language with no screen to copy, drawn from a one month build for a safety app.
Designing for edge cases: the states a happy path never shows
What counts as an edge case in product design, why the common ones matter more than the rare ones, and how to design for them on purpose instead of by accident.
The design system checklist: every foundation, component, and state
A complete design system checklist: the foundations, states, components, and governance a system needs, in the order they actually get decided.
Designing for older users: what SeniorConnect taught me
What building SeniorConnect USA, a platform for readers over 50, taught me about type, contrast, tap targets, and writing that respects the reader.
Design system guardrails for AI generated assets
How do you keep AI output on brand and on system? Three layers of guardrails: the system itself, automated checks, and human governance.
Designing for trust in AI interfaces
How do you design AI features people trust? Provenance, plain uncertainty, one action correction, and a human path for high stakes moments.
The designer as system architect: a working AI front end workflow
How should designers work with AI code generation? A five step loop, system first, that starts and ends with the design system instead of the screen.
Synthetic users: where AI research personas break, and where they earn a place
Can AI personas replace user testing? No as evidence, yes as preparation. A placement rule for where synthetic users help and where real interviews matter.
Using LLMs in qualitative research synthesis without losing the user
Can AI do thematic analysis of user interviews? Yes, with conditions. A two pass method that keeps a verbatim quote behind every theme.
UX design trends in 2026 that survive contact with real work
An opinionated read on the UI and UX design trends of 2026: which ones hold up once real users and real constraints arrive, and which ones quietly cost you.
What belongs in a design system before you build a single component
How to build a design system in the right order: the foundations, decisions, and states that have to exist before the first button, and what to skip early.
How to design forms people actually finish
Form design best practices from clinical software: fewer fields, inline validation that respects the person, and error states designed before the happy path.
Apple's design kit is on Figma. Build your own system.
Apple ships official Figma kits for every platform. Treat one as a reference and build your own system on top.
How to design for accessibility without slowing the team down
Accessibility slows teams only when it is bolted on late. Built into the foundations and the workflow, it adds almost no time and saves the retrofit.
Dark mode done right: contrast, depth and legibility
Good dark mode is not an inverted light theme. It is re-decided contrast, depth carried by surface lightness, and text tuned so it reads instead of glows.
AI belongs in the process, not the pixels
Where AI genuinely accelerates design work, where it quietly erodes trust, and the line I hold between the two.
Config 2026: code just became a design material
Figma's biggest release in years puts code layers, motion, and shaders on the canvas. What it changes, and what it does not.
The handoff is dissolving. Good.
Agentic coding tools are erasing the wall between design intent and shipped interface, and changing what teams should focus on instead.
Own the system, not the screens
The career leverage that separates senior designers from merely prolific ones, and how to build it deliberately.
Your prototype is an argument, not an artifact
Most prototypes are built to look finished. The useful ones are built to settle a specific disagreement, and then get thrown away.
Accessibility is a rendering budget
Treating accessibility as a constraint you spend rather than a checklist you pass, and why the strictest reader sets the ceiling for everyone.
Design systems die of politeness
Most design systems do not fail on craft. They fail on governance, one accommodating exception at a time. A case for the disciplined no.
The hallway is the real viewport
Designing for the moment of use rather than the moment of demo. What point-of-care software teaches about every product built for people in motion.
Conversion is a legibility problem
Why the highest-value growth work is usually clarity rather than persuasion. A designer's case for structuring the page as an argument.
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