Spotify I opened the United app yesterday to check my gate number. What should have taken 3 seconds took 90. I tapped through “My Trips,” scrolled past credit card offers, dismissed two promotional pop-ups, navigated to “Trip Details,” expanded “Flight Information,” and finally found my gate—buried four layers deep in an interface that seemed...
Continue readingThe Machine Is Here: How Amazon Ring Became the Doorbell Version of ‘Person of Interest’
Spotify In 2011, a CBS show called Person of Interest premiered with a premise that seemed like pure science fiction: An AI system called “The Machine” monitors every surveillance camera, phone call, and electronic communication in America to predict crimes before they happen. The show’s creator, Jonathan Nolan, wasn’t writing fantasy. He was writing...
Continue readingI Just Received My Jury Duty Notice: A UX Nightmare in 12 Steps
Spotify The envelope arrived yesterday. Official. Imposing. The kind that makes your stomach drop before you even open it. JURY SUMMONS. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO APPEAR. I’m holding a user experience so catastrophically broken that if it were a product, it would have been shut down decades ago. But because it’s wrapped in the...
Continue readingThe Line You Can’t See Is Costing You Seconds: Why AR Glasses Are Racing’s Next Revolution
Spotify I’m watching Mikaela Shiffrin carve through a slalom gate at 40 mph, her skis tracing an invisible arc that looks effortless but represents thousands of hours learning where—exactly where—to initiate each turn. In another window, Max Verstappen attacks Eau Rouge at Spa, his F1 car hugging a line measured in centimeters, perfected through...
Continue readingWe Killed UX By Making It Matter Too Much
Spotify The UX industry is having a breakdown, and we did it to ourselves. For fifteen years, we fought to get a “seat at the table.” We evangelized design thinking. We published case studies proving ROI. We convinced executives that UX wasn’t just making things pretty—it was strategic, essential, transformative. We won awards for...
Continue readingWhy Buying Ski Passes and Renting Gear Is Still Stuck in 1987 (And How to Fix It)
Spotify 4/35 You’ve spent $800 on flights. Another $400 on lodging. You’re pumped to hit the slopes for your three-day ski trip. Then you arrive at the mountain and reality hits: you’re about to waste 90 minutes of your first ski day standing in lines to buy a lift ticket and rent equipment that...
Continue readingRebuilding a Category Leader Through Systemic UX
Spotify Peloton didn’t just sell bikes. It sold identity. It sold belonging.It sold progress.It sold “I am the type of person who shows up.” But category leadership is fragile. Hardware demand cooled. Competitors multiplied. Motivation shifted from pandemic isolation to hybrid life. Peloton went from cultural momentum to operational recalibration. This is not a...
Continue readingWhy Your App’s Onboarding Is Losing 80% of Users (And How to Fix It)
Spotify You spent two years building your product. Users download it, open it once, and never come back. The problem isn’t your product—it’s the first three minutes. Onboarding is where products go to die. Study after study shows that 70-80% of users abandon apps after a single session, and the culprit is almost always...
Continue readingThe Invisible Art of Making Users Feel Smart
Spotify There’s a design principle that separates good products from beloved ones, and most users never consciously notice it: great UX makes people feel intelligent, capable, and in control. Bad UX makes them feel stupid. Think about the last time you struggled with a product. Maybe you couldn’t find the setting you needed, got...
Continue readingHow UX Can Pick a Product and Transform It
Spotify User experience design possesses a unique power: the ability to take an existing product—even a struggling one—and fundamentally improve it without changing what it does. While marketing can reposition a product and engineering can add features, UX design can make people actually want to use something they previously abandoned or ignored. This transformation...
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