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  • It’s all interconnected

    It’s all interconnected
    2026/02/19
    If you work in conversion optimization, user experience design, or design leadership, you probably think of these as separate disciplines. Different skill sets, different tools, different conversations.But treating them as separate is precisely what limits your impact.These three areas are deeply interconnected, and they build on top of one another in ways that make each more effective. If you're only working in one of these areas without considering the others, you're solving the wrong problems, or at best, only solving part of the right problem.I know this because my work spans all three, which makes me sound like I'm either a confused generalist or cobbling together random consulting gigs.People often ask what I actually do, because it doesn't fit neatly into a single box. When I list the three areas, I can see the confusion on their faces. I sometimes feel like that conspiracy theorist from the meme, standing in front of a pin board covered in red string, ranting about how it's all connected.But it is all connected. And if you work in any of these fields, you should be taking this holistic, interconnected approach as well.Let me walk you through how this actually works in practice, and why you should be thinking this way too.It starts with conversionUltimately, the goal of almost every project I take on is to improve a company's conversion rate through their website or app. Sometimes that means acquiring new customers, sometimes it means retaining existing ones, but the end goal is always the same: make the company more profitable through digital channels.In straightforward cases, I can achieve that with traditional conversion optimization techniques:A/B testingInterface design improvementsRefined copy and messagingThese are the tools you'd expect from anyone doing CRO work, and often they're enough to move the needle.But more often than I'd like to admit, those surface-level fixes aren't sufficient. The conversion problem runs deeper than a poorly worded call-to-action or a confusing checkout flow. When that happens, I need to look at the entire user experience, which means examining usability issues, carrying out proper user research, mapping out all the other touchpoints where customers interact with the brand, and understanding the full journey they're on.That's where the user experience design and strategy work comes into play.When UX goes beyond the screenHowever, sometimes even comprehensive user experience work isn't enough, because the real problems exist beyond the screen entirely.I once worked with a company that sold frozen ready meals to elderly customers. They wanted me to improve their website conversion rates, which seemed like a straightforward brief. We carried out user research and discovered that the elderly audience was nervous about multiple aspects of the experience, none of which had anything to do with the website design itself:Entering credit card details online because of fraud and scamsA strange delivery driver they didn't know turning up at their houseUnloading heavy trays of frozen products into their freezersNow, in most companies, a user experience designer would hit a wall at this point. You can't redesign a website to make someone feel safer about delivery drivers or less anxious about lifting heavy boxes. The best you could do would be to make the existing service as palatable as possible through clever messaging and reassurance copy.But in a company with a strong culture of design leadership, a UX designer can be instrumental in shaping solutions to these kinds of problems. Solutions that go way beyond polishing existing products to fundamentally reshaping the service itself.This is where the design leadership coaching aspect of my work becomes essential.Design leadership changes what's possibleIn that frozen meal company, we didn't just optimize the website. We fundamentally changed the offering based on what we learned from users:Customers got the same delivery driver every time, and when that wasn't possible, they'd be notified in advance and shown a photo of their driverAll drivers were police-checked so customers could feel confident about safetyThe driver didn't just dump the products and leave but actually unpacked everything into the customer's freezerCustomers could even reorder directly from their driver if they didn't want to use the website and enter card details onlineThe user experience shaped the product, and by extension, delivered the improved conversion rate the client originally asked for.You can see how these three areas that appear unrelated are actually deeply entwined. This interconnected approach is much more representative of what real user experience design should be about, rather than just pushing pixels around a screen.What this means for your workIf you're working in conversion optimization: Start asking deeper questions about the user experience.If you're doing UX work: Understand how it connects to business outcomes and ...
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    6 分
  • Why I'm Not Worried About My AI Dependency

    Why I'm Not Worried About My AI Dependency
    2026/02/12
    I have been thinking a lot about AI lately, and specifically about whether we should be worried about our over-reliance on it. Because if I am being completely honest with myself, I use AI for absolutely everything now. Every email that comes in gets pasted into Claude for analysis. Every project brief gets discussed with it. Every piece of writing gets shaped by it. When Claude goes down, my entire workflow grinds to a halt.So should I be worried about this dependency? Should you?After spending the last few weeks working through this question, I have landed somewhere that might be useful to share. Because I think the conversation about AI is happening right now in organizations everywhere, and the dividing line between those who embrace it and those who resist it matters more than most people realize.The dependency questionWhen I first noticed how reliant I had become on AI, my immediate reaction was concern. I started thinking about all the things that could go wrong. What if Claude disappeared tomorrow? What if I was outsourcing too much of my thinking? What if I was losing critical skills?But then I started looking at all the other dependencies in my working life:If the internet goes down, work stopsIf the power goes off, my life stops.If AWS servers fail (which seems to happen every other week), half the tools I rely on become uselessIf Figma stops working, design work haltsJust one more dependencyWe have built our entire professional lives on top of dependencies we barely think about anymore. AI is just one more in that stack.The question is not really whether we should be dependent on it, because that ship has already sailed for most of us. The question is what kind of dependency we are building.The thinking questionThe more interesting concern for me is whether AI makes us stop thinking. I have heard this worry from a lot of people, and I understand where it comes from. Because when you watch someone paste a problem into ChatGPT and blindly implement whatever comes back, it does look like they have outsourced their brain.But I think this misunderstands what most of us are actually doing with AI.Three layers of thinkingThere are different levels of thinking that happen in any given day:Strategic thinking about project direction, what problems need solving, what approach makes senseAnalytical thinking about whether an idea is sound, whether evidence supports a conclusion, whether a design solves the actual problemMundane thinking about how to word an email, how to structure a document, how to format a proposalAI as a thinking partnerWhat I have found is that AI handles that bottom layer beautifully. When a client sends me a long rambling email with five different questions buried in three paragraphs of context, I no longer spend mental energy untangling it. I paste it into Claude and say, "Summarize the key questions here." Then I think about my answers. I tell Claude what I think about each point. Sometimes I ask for its perspective on one or two where I am genuinely uncertain, not because I cannot think through it myself, but because having a sounding board helps me think better.When I worked in an agency, I had colleagues for this. I would turn to Marcus or Chris and say, "What do you think about this?" I do not have that anymore. AI fills that gap. It does not replace my thinking. It helps me think more clearly by taking away the low-level cognitive load and giving me something to bounce ideas against.The value questionWhere this gets really interesting is in what it lets me deliver to clients.The landing page playbook exampleI worked on a project recently where a client wanted to improve the conversion rate of their landing pages. They had a budget that, in the past, would have stretched to maybe three or four sample landing pages and a conversation about why I built them that way. That would have been useful, but limited. They would have had some examples to work from, but not much guidance on how to replicate the approach themselves.With AI, I was able to create an entire playbook. Detailed guidelines for every component. Design principles explained with examples. A system they could use again and again. I delivered probably four times the value in about a third of the time it would have taken me before. The strategic thinking was all mine. The understanding of what makes landing pages convert came from 30 years of doing this work. But the documentation, the articulation, the packaging of that knowledge into something comprehensive and usable came from working with AI.Why clients still need expertiseMost of my clients will not do this work themselves, even with AI:They do not know what questions to askThey do not have the pattern recognition that comes from seeing hundreds of projectsThey cannot evaluate whether the output is actually good or just sounds convincingThey haven’t the time to review and iterate upon the output to improve things.That is what they are paying me for. AI does ...
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    7 分
  • Stuck in a Website Fixing Loop? Try This.

    Stuck in a Website Fixing Loop? Try This.
    2026/02/05
    I had a conversation recently with a web team at a college who were stuck in a painfully familiar trap. They had a sprawling, chaotic website that had grown like an untended garden over the years. They knew it was letting users down. They had plenty of ideas for how to make it better. And yet, every time they tried to improve things, they hit a wall.Sound familiar? I suspect it might.The team had been there for years, and they had developed what I call "institutional scar tissue." Every suggestion was met with an internal voice saying "we tried that once and it didn't work" or "I don't have the power to change that." They had been worn down by years of small defeats until the only option that felt possible was incremental improvement to what already existed.And incremental improvement, when applied to something fundamentally broken, is a bit like repainting a house with a crumbling foundation. Sure, it looks nicer from the street, but you're still one bad storm away from serious structural failure.The trap of fixing what existsWhen you try to fix an existing website, you inherit all the reasons it became broken in the first place. Every stakeholder who fought for their pet page is still there. Every "but we've always had that section" is still lurking. Every technical limitation that forced an awkward compromise is still constraining your options.Worse, you're starting from a position of defense. You have to justify why something should be removed or changed. The burden of proof is on you to explain why the current state is wrong, rather than on stakeholders to explain why their content deserves to exist.This is exhausting work. And it rarely produces genuinely transformative results.Wait, haven't I said the opposite?Now, if you've been reading my stuff for a while, you might be thinking "hang on, Paul. Haven't you spent years telling people not to do periodic website redesigns?" And you'd be right. I have. I've written at length about how the boom-bust cycle of website redesigns is damaging. How you end up with a shiny new site that slowly decays until someone throws a tantrum and the whole thing gets rebuilt from scratch.Incremental improvement is almost always the better path. Small, continuous changes based on real user data. No big-bang launches. No throwing out the baby with the bathwater.So why am I now suggesting we do exactly what I've warned against?Because sometimes the rot runs too deep. When you're dealing with thousands of pages of redundant, outdated, and trivial content, when every attempt at incremental change gets blocked by institutional politics, when the team has been so beaten down that they can't imagine anything better, you need a different approach. Not a traditional redesign where you migrate all the old problems into a new template. Something more radical.You need to imagine what you would build if you were starting from nothing.Start from nothingThe approach I suggested to this team was counterintuitive: stop trying to fix the website. Instead, imagine you're building from scratch.If you were launching this college's online presence tomorrow with no existing site, what would you build? What are the actual tasks people need to accomplish? What questions do they have at each stage of their journey? Strip away all the accumulated cruft and think about what a prospective student genuinely needs.For a college focused on student recruitment, it might be shockingly simple. Someone needs to find a course, understand if they can afford it, and apply. That's perhaps 200 pages of genuinely useful content. Not the thousands that currently exist.Frame it as a thought experimentDon't announce that you're redesigning the website. That triggers immediate defensiveness. Every stakeholder starts worrying about their territory. Before you've finished your sentence, half the room is already composing their objection.Instead, frame the whole exercise as a thought experiment. "We're not proposing anything. We're just imagining what perfect could look like. What would we build if we had no constraints? If we were starting fresh tomorrow?"This framing is disarming. People stop defending and start dreaming. They can engage with the vision without feeling threatened, because it's explicitly hypothetical. No one's being asked to commit to anything yet. It's like asking someone what they'd do if they won the lottery. They'll tell you all sorts of things they'd never admit to wanting otherwise.Make it a collective visionBut, don't do this thought experiment alone.Bring in a few trusted people from other departments early in the process. Ask them what excites them about what better could look like. Let them shape the vision alongside you.When you do this, something important shifts. It stops being "the web team's idea" and becomes a collective vision. Those collaborators become invested. They'll defend it in meetings you're not in. They'll sell it to their own teams. And if one of those collaborators ...
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    9 分
  • Why Moving Buttons Won't Fix Your Conversion Rate

    Why Moving Buttons Won't Fix Your Conversion Rate
    2026/01/29
    I had a client come to me recently with a familiar problem. Their landing pages were converting at less than 1%, and the industry standard for their sector sits somewhere between 2% and 5%. Not great.Their first instinct was to find someone who could sweep in, move some buttons around, tweak a few headlines, and magically fix everything. I've seen this expectation so many times now that I've lost count. And I understand the appeal. A quick fix sounds wonderful when your numbers look that bad.But if you want serious improvements to your conversion rate, shuffling UI elements around will only scratch the surface. It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while ignoring the rather sizeable hole in the hull.---Free Webinar: Stop Lurking. Start Getting Known.On February 4th, I'm running a free 75-minute webinar on building your LinkedIn reputation without turning it into a second job. You'll get a simple weekly system, practical templates, and a way to stay visible that doesn't rely on willpower. Sign up here.---The Three Layers of Conversion OptimizationI think of effective conversion work as having three distinct layers, and UI changes sit right at the bottom.Layer 1: User InterfaceYes, the order and presentation of information matters. Yes, you can make improvements here. But this level has the smallest overall impact on conversion. It's where most agencies focus because it's visible and easy to point to, but it rarely moves the needle in a meaningful way.Layer 2: ContentThis is where things start to get more substantial. You simply cannot improve conversion without addressing the content on your pages.When I mention this to clients, I often hear, "But we don't produce the content. That's the content team." And therein lies the problem. Content teams are usually subject matter experts, not web writers. They understand their products inside out, but they don't necessarily understand how people scan web pages. They tend to focus on what the company wants to say rather than what the audience actually wants to know.Good conversion-focused content needs to:Address your users' pain points and the goals they want to achieveExplain the benefits you provide and how your features deliver themHandle objections before they become reasons to leaveBuild trust through social proof, case studies, awards, and certificationsWithout these elements, no amount of button-moving will save you.Layer 3: Organizational IssuesThis is the deepest and often most impactful layer, and it's also the hardest to fix because it goes beyond the website entirely.Organizational constraints regularly damage conversion rates in ways that are invisible from the outside.Legal requirements might force your copy to read like a compliance document.Your forms might have twelve fields because someone in sales wants to "validate" every inquiry.Your product offering might genuinely be wrong for your audience.Or your advertising might be driving bottom-of-funnel users to top-of-funnel pages (or vice versa).These are problems that no UI optimization can solve. They require conversations with stakeholders, changes to internal processes, and sometimes difficult decisions about how the business operates.You Can't Just Set and ForgetEven after you've addressed all three layers, you cannot just design your landing pages and walk away. Effective conversion optimization requires an ongoing program of continuous A/B testing and user research.And yet, I regularly encounter clients who want all of this but refuse to let me anywhere near their customers. Surveys? Too intrusive. User interviews? What if we upset someone? It's a bit like asking a doctor to diagnose you while refusing to let them take your temperature. If you want to understand what your users need, you have to actually talk to them. There's no way around it.And yes, I know what you're thinking. Can't we just A/B test our way to better results? A/B testing matters, but it can only tell you what works and what doesn't. It gives you no insight into why. And it certainly doesn't give you inspiration for what's worth trying in the first place. You need to talk to actual humans to get that.The vast majority of meaningful improvements come from continual testing and iteration, not from some expert arriving, waving a magic wand, and disappearing into the sunset. When clients come to me wanting a quick fix, what they actually need is a long-term commitment to understanding their users and optimizing systematically.So if you're struggling with conversion, by all means start with the UI. But don't stop there. Look at your content. Look at your organization. And commit to the ongoing work of understanding what your users actually need.Because moving buttons around might feel productive, but it's rarely where the real improvements are hiding.
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    5 分
  • Generative Imagery: Stop Settling for Stock

    Generative Imagery: Stop Settling for Stock
    2026/01/22
    If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you'll have noticed I tend to focus on the big-picture stuff: organizational change, building design culture, getting stakeholder buy-in. This week I'm doing something different and getting into the weeds on generative imagery, a tool that's become part of my daily workflow. I'm genuinely curious whether you prefer the strategic content, the practical how-to pieces, or a mix of both. Hit reply and let me know.Generative imagery is quickly becoming an essential tool in the modern designer's toolkit. Whether you're a UI designer crafting interfaces, a UX designer building prototypes, or a marketer creating campaign visuals, the ability to generate exactly the image you need (rather than settling for whatever stock libraries happen to have) is genuinely useful.The Ethical DimensionThere's an ethical dimension here that makes me uncomfortable. Using generative imagery does, in theory, take work away from illustrators and photographers. I don't love that. But I also recognize that this is a pattern we've seen throughout history. Technology has consistently made certain professions more niche rather than making them disappear entirely. Blacksmiths still exist. Vinyl records still sell. And I suspect custom photography and illustration will follow the same path, becoming more specialized rather than vanishing completely.Besides, if we're being realistic, most of us weren't commissioning custom photography for every project anyway. We were pulling images from stock libraries, and I can't say I'll miss spending 45 minutes searching for a photo that almost works but has the person looking in the wrong direction.So with that acknowledged, let's get into the practical side of things.When to Avoid Generative ImageryBefore diving into how to use these tools well, it's worth noting when you shouldn't use them at all. Generative imagery has no place when you need to represent real people or real events. If you're showing your actual team, documenting a real conference, or depicting genuine customer stories, you need real photography. Anything else would be misleading, and your audience will likely spot it anyway.Why It Beats Stock LibrariesFor everything else, though, generative imagery offers some serious advantages over traditional stock. You can get exactly the pose you want, in exactly the style you need, matching your specific color palette. No more "this photo would be perfect if only the person was looking left instead of right" compromises.This matters more than you might think. Research suggests that users form initial impressions of a website in roughly 50 milliseconds. That's not enough time to read anything. Those snap judgments are based almost entirely on imagery, layout, color, and typography. The right image doesn't just look nice; it shapes how users feel about your entire site before they've processed a single word.Imagery also gives you a powerful tool for directing attention. A well-chosen image can guide users toward your key content or call to action in ways that feel natural rather than pushy.The right image composition can draw attention to critical calls to action.Copyright and Commercial UseBefore you start generating images for client work, you need to understand the legal landscape. And yes, it's a bit murky.The short version: most major AI image generators allow commercial use of the images you create, but the terms vary. Midjourney allows commercial use for paid subscribers. Adobe Firefly positions itself as "commercially safe" because it was trained on licensed content and Adobe Stock images. Google's Nano Banana Pro (accessible through Gemini) also permits commercial use.The murkier issue is around training data. Several ongoing lawsuits are challenging whether AI companies had the right to train their models on copyrighted images in the first place. These cases haven't been resolved yet, and depending on how they play out, the landscape could shift.For now, my practical advice is this: use reputable tools with clear commercial terms, avoid generating images that deliberately mimic a specific artist's recognizable style, and keep an eye on how the legal situation develops. For most standard commercial work (website imagery, marketing materials, UI mockups), you should be fine.Choosing the Right Tool: Style vs. InstructionsWhen selecting which AI model to use, you're essentially balancing two considerations: stylistic output and instructional accuracy.Stylistic OutputEvery model has its own aesthetic fingerprint. No matter how specific your prompts are, Midjourney images have a certain look, and Nano Banana images have a different one. You need to find a model whose default aesthetic works for your project.Instructional AccuracyThe other consideration is how well the model follows detailed instructions. If you need a specific composition (person on the left, looking right, holding a coffee cup, with a window behind them), some models ...
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    10 分
  • Be a contributor, not a lurker

    Be a contributor, not a lurker
    2026/01/15

    If you are having a rough time in the industry right now, you are not alone.

    I keep hearing the same two stories.

    People applying for job after job and hearing nothing back.

    Freelancers and agency owners finding that work is not arriving the way it used to.

    It is tempting to blame the economy, AI, or whatever headline is currently doing the rounds. Sometimes those things are genuinely part of the story.

    However, one factor we can control is whether people outside our immediate team know who we are, what we are good at, and what we care about.

    Be a contributor, not a lurker

    Most opportunities come through people.

    Clients often hire because somebody they trust says, “Talk to them.” Hiring managers do the same thing, tending to hire via friends of friends.

    Even if you are not looking for a new job or chasing new clients, your reputation still matters. It shapes your credibility in the role you are in right now.

    If colleagues can see that you are respected outside your organization, and they see you sharing your expertise in public (even quietly), it tends to raise your internal credibility too.

    That does not mean you need to become an internet personality. It means you want to be findable and referable.

    The easiest place to start is simply showing up

    When people hear “build your personal brand,” they often picture loud self-promotion, forced networking, and a never-ending content treadmill.

    No wonder it makes so many people feel uncomfortable.

    A lot of the resistance comes from perfectly reasonable places:

    • Self-promotion feels awkward.
    • Networking can feel fake.
    • Impostor syndrome whispers that you have nothing to offer.

    Fortunately, there is a gentler route. You can build a reputation by being useful, consistently.

    That can look like:

    • Posting thoughtful experiences and ideas on social networks, and then sticking around to engage with the responses.
    • Helping organize a local meetup.
    • Chipping in regularly in Slack groups, forums, or Discord communities.
    • Being active on LinkedIn by commenting thoughtfully on other people’s posts, and occasionally having a quiet chat in DMs.

    The point is not volume. The point is being present.

    “But I do not have anything worth saying”

    If you have ever thought that, welcome to the club.

    A simple reframe helps.

    Instead of trying to share “best practice,” share experience.

    You can write things like:

    • “In a client meeting this week, we ran into this problem. Here is how we handled it.”
    • “We tried this approach and it did not work. Here is what we would do differently next time.”
    • “A stakeholder pushed back on research. This argument helped.”

    Nobody can reasonably attack you for reporting what happened and what you learned. You are not claiming to be the all-knowing oracle of UX. You are just being a person doing the work.

    In fact, the stuff you struggle with can be just as useful as the stuff you have mastered. People are often far kinder than your brain predicts, especially when you share what you learned the hard way.

    You can mine your day job for content (without making it weird)

    A lot of what I share online comes straight out of conversations.

    Like most people, I record many meetings. Then I grab the transcript and ask an AI tool to identify a few themes that might make useful posts.

    It is surprising how often a “boring meeting” contains an insight that would help somebody else.

    If you do this, be sensible about confidentiality. Strip out client details. Keep it focused on the pattern, not the organization.

    Contributing helps you think

    There is another benefit that gets overlooked.

    When you share an idea, even one that is half-formed, you are forced to clarify what you mean, find the edges of your thinking, and learn faster because you are teaching.

    Writing is basically thinking with friction. It is annoying, but it works.

    Do not let AI turn you into a spectator

    AI makes it easy to get answers.

    That is useful, but there is a risk. If all we do is consume, we slowly lose the community spirit that made the early web so valuable.

    So if you want a simple goal for 2026, try being a little less of a spectator and a little more of a participant.
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    5 分
  • What I'm seeing for UX as we move into 2026

    What I'm seeing for UX as we move into 2026
    2026/01/08
    Every year around this time, I start seeing the prediction pieces roll in. "The year of X!" they declare. "Y will change everything!" And every year, I find myself wincing a little, because most of these predictions age about as well as milk left on a radiator.So rather than trying to predict the future (I learned my lesson after confidently declaring QR codes were dead in 2019), I want to talk about what I'm seeing among the UX professionals I work with, and what I think it means for 2026.The uncomfortable realityLet me start with the bit nobody wants to hear. UX is on the corporate chopping block again. If you've been in this industry long enough, you'll recognize the pattern. We saw it after the dot-com bust. We saw hints of it during various economic downturns. And we're seeing it now.Some folks think rebranding will save us. We tried that before, remember? We went from "usability" to "UX" and it bought us some time. But slapping a new label on the tin doesn't change what's inside.The interesting thing is that the World Economic Forum still lists UX as a growth area. So what's going on? I think we're seeing a split forming between two very different types of UX work: the shallow, template-driven kind that AI can increasingly handle, and the messy, human-centered kind that requires judgment, taste, and the ability to navigate complex organizational dynamics.The shallow end is drainingTemplates and processes won't cut it anymore. If your approach to UX is downloading frameworks and following checklists without much critical thinking, 2026 is going to feel uncomfortable. Because AI can do that now. And it does it faster.The UX professionals who thrive will be the ones with uniquely human skills. Critical thinking. Taste (yes, that subjective, hard-to-define thing your design school professor tried to explain). The ability to navigate messy organizational dynamics without making enemies. These soft skills are becoming more valuable than knowing your way around Figma.I've watched people who can facilitate a difficult stakeholder workshop bring more value to a project than someone with impeccable wireframing skills. Because the wireframes don't matter if nobody in the organization trusts them.AI is growing up (finally)The frantic "add AI for AI's sake" phase is mercifully winding down. I've lost count of how many product features I saw last year that felt like someone had desperately searched for a place to stick a chatbot, found nowhere sensible, and stuck it there anyway.Now we're moving into what I'd call the implementation phase. Organizations are finally asking "What problem does this actually solve?" rather than "How can we say we have AI?" This is genuinely good news for UX people. Because that question, that focus on real user needs, is exactly where we add value.This is our chance to demonstrate what we bring to the table. Not by fighting AI, but by being the people who understand how to apply it thoughtfully.What you might consider doing about all thisI've been thinking about what separates the UX people who feel energized right now from the ones who feel anxious. A few patterns keep emerging.Get comfortable with messUX work has always been messy, but I think some of us (myself included, at times) got a bit too attached to neat processes. Context matters more than frameworks. A template is a starting point, not a destination. If you find yourself downloading more frameworks than talking to actual users, it might be worth recalibrating.I've come to think of UX methods as a toolkit rather than a linear process. Instead of pushing every project through the same sequence of steps, you assess what the situation actually needs and reach for the right tool. Sometimes that's a full discovery phase. Sometimes it's a quick guerrilla test. The skill is knowing which to use when, not memorizing a fixed sequence.The people who seem to thrive actually enjoy that messiness. They see ambiguity as interesting rather than threatening.Wear more hatsThe boundaries between UX and other disciplines are blurring fast. I've been encouraging people to pick up knowledge in adjacent areas: systems thinking, data modeling, business strategy, even marketing. Not to become experts in everything (impossible), but to speak enough of the language to collaborate effectively.AI actually makes this more achievable than ever. You don't need to be an experienced developer to build a quick demo anymore. If you have a basic understanding of how development works, AI can help you create functional prototypes that would have required a developer's time before. The same applies to data analysis, content strategy, even basic marketing automation. A little knowledge, combined with the right AI tools, goes a surprisingly long way.Take control of your AI storyI wrote about this recently on Smashing Magazine, but it bears repeating. Take control of how AI shapes your job. Don't wait for someone else to do it for you, because they will, and ...
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    8 分
  • Your Christmas Shakedown!

    Your Christmas Shakedown!
    2025/12/11

    Well, here we are. The UX Strategy and Leadership course has wrapped up, and I am officially putting down my digital pen until January 8th.

    I know. Try not to weep. 😭

    Before I disappear into a haze of mince pies and questionable Christmas jumpers, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Genuinely. You read what I write, you tolerate my rambling, and some of you have been doing this for years. That means more to me than I usually let on.

    I hope your Christmas is wonderful. I hope you get some proper time off. And I really hope the next few days of "urgent" requests, last-minute deadlines, and "can we just squeeze this in before the holidays?" meetings don't completely crush your soul before you get there.

    You deserve a break. Go take one.

    Now, About That Gift...

    Traditionally, this is the part where I'd offer you some sort of Christmas freebie. A template, a checklist, maybe a festive PDF with snowflakes on it.

    But I'm not going to do that.

    Instead, I have a favor to ask. I know, I know. The audacity!

    You've followed my work, read my articles, listened to my podcast, and taken my advice on UX and conversion optimization. Hopefully it has helped. Well, now the bill has come due! After all, I have never asked for anything in return. Well, except for buying my books, attending my workshops, and hiring me for projects. BUT, other than that I have never asked for anything! 😜

    If you have appreciated what I've shared over the years, I'm hoping you might support something that matters deeply to my wife, Catherine, and me.

    Why This Charity Is Personal to Us

    My wife and I both work with a small UK charity called Hope of Bethesda, which supports a school doing education work in rural Tamil Nadu, India. A few years ago, we traveled out to visit the school ourselves.

    It's amazing what they're doing with nearly nothing. They are giving quality education in one of the poorest parts of India. Education that helps everybody, but especially the girls.

    Girls often don't get the same level of education as boys in rural India, and without that education they often end up getting married very young and facing a life of domestic work.

    But this community-led school changes all of that, allowing girls to go on to further education and successful careers.

    What Your Donation Makes Possible

    The school has grown to around 400 students who travel from miles around because it provides the best education available in the region.

    Donations support:

    • Education from early childhood through college. Many students are supported from age 4 through 19+. Right now, 10 girls are in college.
    • Safe accommodation during term time. For many girls, this provides not just education but a stable place to live so they can attend and thrive.
    • Holistic support. Academic learning, extracurricular activities, and well-being support that other schools don't provide.

    And it goes beyond immediate education. A child born to a mother who can read (which is not as common as you might think in rural India) is 50% more likely to live beyond age five. Education doesn't just change one life. It changes entire communities for generations.

    Why I'm Asking You

    Hope of Bethesda is tiny. There's no fundraising team, no advertising budget, no government support, and no major donors. The charity is completely reliant on individual supporters like you.

    Your donation isn't a drop in the ocean. For a charity this size, one person's giving genuinely makes all the difference.

    Look, you've been generous with your time and attention over the years, reading what I write and listening to what I say. If my work has helped you in any way, and if you have room in your Christmas giving, I'd be grateful if you'd consider supporting Hope of Bethesda.

    Give What Feels Right

    There's no minimum. Give what feels right to you.

    Whether that's £10 or £100, your support will help provide education, safety, and opportunity to girls who would otherwise have none of these things.

    Donate Now Via Stripe

    or learn more about Hope of Bethesda

    Thank You

    Thank you for even considering this.

    Your willingness to support something that matters to my family means more than I can say. Whether you're able to give this Christmas or not, I'm grateful for your continued support of my work and for being part of this community.

    Have a wonderful Christmas. Rest up. Eat too much. And I'll see you on January 8th, ready to dive back in.
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