An interview with Voyage ATL.

Recently, I had the opportunity to share my journey, where I discussed how my background in storytelling and design has evolved into a thriving UX consulting business. I delve into the strategies that have helped me grow my business, navigate challenges, and stay competitive in a fast-paced industry. If you’re interested in UX, digital transformation, or creative entrepreneurship, I invite you to read more about my insights and experiences.

A chat on MG Group’s podcast.

I recently had the opportunity to appear on MG Group's "Burn The Ships" podcast and chat about my approach to product design and my view that politics and entrepreneurship share many of the same struggles when tackling "big ideas."

Loving l’il sticky notes isn’t required to design a great product. But it doesn’t hurt.

A few days ago, the co-founder of a staffing startup called and asked me what, on the surface, seems like a simple enough question: “How do you do that affinity mapping thing you do?”

Oh, sure. Is that all?

Empowering CX professionals to design their lives & careers with experience-design tools & techniques.

Sharpen's co-founder JD Jordan was invited to speak at CX Forums Atlanta about how he and his wife have used design-thinking to redesign their careers, their lives, and their family. Check out three clips of JD's presentation.

It’s scheduling your priorities.

Most of us struggle every day (or in even smaller units of time) to figure out the most important thing we need to do. We take inventories of what people expect from us, of what we’ve promised to do for others, of what’s fastest to complete, or of what feels like needs tackling right away. Then we prioritize our schedules around these needs.

But how do we prioritize a whole year‽

Inside our design sprint process.

Need design help to take your project to the next level? Well, you’re in luck. Sharpen’s Unicorn Invasion gives you a team of veteran creatives who’ll join your squad for a one-week design sprint and level-up your project with a mixture of business analysis and user research all the way to information architecture and high-fidelity visual design.

A better way to work—creatively and humanely.

Like our colleagues in the software development community, we are uncovering better ways of designing innovative solutions by doing it and helping others do it.

A defense of making gratitudes part of your daily status meetings.

What’s one thing you’re grateful for, today?

We answer this gratitude question every day during our daily standup. And this mindful habit has profoundly impacted our individual mental health and how we interact with one another.

Three steps to keep your sh*t together while getting sh*t done in your PJs.

We didn’t know we’d be working from home this long! So, as weeks turn into months, it’s time to put some best practices into effect to preserve our productivity and our sanity. Working from home wisely isn’t difficult. It just requires discipline and introspection.

Here are a few tips to help you optimize your WFH experience…

Remote accessibility is good for users and for businesses in good times and in a pandemic.

Given the seismic shift Coronavirus and Covid-19 have forced on the way we live and work, I’d like to suggest a new law (in addition to Murphy’s law, Newton’s laws, Hick–Hyman's law, etc). One that deals with the current crisis but which also speaks to long-unsolved user pain points: Covid’s law.

Four techniques and one tip to help you transform your business into one that’s more productive, profitable, and rewarding.

Things are weird. We’re working from home, companies are clutching budgets close to their chests, and we don’t have weekend plans. Sounds like a good time for business people and creatives of all stripes to consider a healthy retrospective and recommit ourselves to being innovative.

Embracing risk in times of crisis can transform uncertainty into innovation and growth for you and your business.

I don’t think this is being said enough: This crisis will end. All crises do. So, let’s reframe the current health and economic crises. And how we get to the other side. Because no one ever climbed a mountain in one step and no one will navigate this crisis by doing just one thing.

This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

Watching the chaos Covid-19 wreaks on the economy, our public social and healthcare infrastructures, and my house (the kids have been home for SIX DAYS, OMG!), it’s hard not to think about the greatest analogous disruption of American and global life.

How I learned to stop creating discovery artifacts and to love research deliverables.

Most design books and conference talks take an internal-team, product-focused approach to talking about design research. An artifact-centric approach. “We have so much time and so much money and so many people and all the leadership committed to design thinking and customer experience. Let’s do all the things! Yay!”

That’s bullsh*t.

Starting with WHY is the bomb but ending with WHOM is even bombier.

Simon Sinek's Golden Circle is a powerful tool for innovation and building trust. But it falls short of completing the circuit between the person who does and the person it's done for.

Why do 80% of firms say they deliver “superior experience yes” when only 8% of users agree?

Even after all these years and everything we’ve learned about design-led business and design-led products, prospective clients still ask, why does design thinking and the design process matter. This is what I tell ‘em…

Practical advice—not vague bullshit—about pursuing your dreams and stuff.

Going after your dreams isn’t that hard. Not in principle, anyway. Which begs the question why more of us don’t do it when there’s something deep within us itching to get out and (eventually) pay the bills.