Articles.
What I've learned in over 20 years, in theory and in practice, building products by design.
How my 2016 guitar pedal learned to understand what I say
A pedal full of menus, an AI and two weeks of testing. The technical part took two days. The rest was making the tool work for people who play.
The visual is what's left of the decision
What shows up on screen is the residue of decisions made earlier. From the Bauhaus in 1919 to IBM in 1956, that's what set design apart from decoration.
Customers don't hire an app
Jobs to be Done applied to three products I helped build, Remessa Online, Xerpay and Bipa, and what changes when a team measures progress instead of screens.
Emotion is the part of the job the brief forgets
JTBD has three dimensions. The emotional one decides whether a product is used with pleasure or merely tolerated, and it's the one most often left out of the brief.
The head of design who still opens Figma
Being hands-on gives a head of design shared vocabulary, faster diagnosis and technical credibility. It can also turn into a bottleneck and micromanagement. Where's the balance?
