The difference between clarity and simplicity
There is a tendency in design to equate simplicity with reduction. Fewer elements. Less content. Minimal interfaces. Remove enough, the thinking goes, and understanding will follow.
Sometimes it does. Often, it does not.
Simplicity is a visual outcome, clarity is a cognitive one. They are not the same, and mixing them can make work look thoughtful, but it won't work that way.
The MVP mindset
The most challenging aspect of my teaching is not design. It is letting go. However, the hardest room to teach is not a classroom. It is a boardroom. In the Digital Product Design workshop I facilitate, there is always a moment, usually around hour three, when someone realizes that their favorite feature is not essential. That is nice. Users might enjoy this. But that, without it, the product still works.
the silence after "any questions?"
Every workshop has the same moment. The material is finished. The slides go dark. You ask if there are any questions, and the room does the thing rooms do. It looks somewhere else. At the table. At a laptop. At absolutely nothing, with the intense concentration of someone studying a very important nothing.
For years I assumed this meant the material had landed cleanly. No confusion, no questions, job done. I have since revised that theory considerably, mostly because I have also sat in that exact silence, on the other side, doing the exact same thing, once while the presenter was looking directly at me.
On choosing tools
Every few months, a new tool arrives that promises to change everything. A faster way to design. A smarter way to write. A more efficient way to think. The interface is always clean. The demo is always convincing. The promise is always the same: more output, less effort, less time.
Students notice immediately. So do teams. The question follows quickly.
On teaching UX in the age of AI tools
My students ask me a version of the same question every semester now."Should I learn this AI tool or will it be irrelevant in six months?" My answer is always the same: learn the thinking behind the tool. The tool will change. The thinking will not.
On the work you do not show
Most portfolios tell a story of arrival. The brief. The process. The final outcome. A clean arc from problem to solution, documented with care and presented with confidence. It looks like competence. It is supposed to.
But the work that actually shapes a designer happens largely off the page.