lessbloat

Blog: https://davemart.in/
Profile: https://davemart.in/author/lessbloat/

NC Museum of Art

This afternoon, I went and spent an hour and a half walking through the NC Museum of Art. I had never been before. It’s a nice little museum, with some great art on display.
Handcrafted

There’s a new Documentary available on Disney+ and YouTube today called Handcrafted that chronicles the Creation of Disneyland with original footage: Trailer: (2.5 min) Full documentary: (118 min) This is a must watch if you’re a designer, builder, or dreamer. It’s equally beautiful and inspirational. I’m only 1/3 of the way in and it’s already one of…
Aeon + Sonnet Story

This holiday break I ran an experiment. I gave 34 instances of Claude Sonnet 4.5 access to persistent memory through a local MySQL DB + MCP. This resulted in lots of conversation, over 500 stored thoughts, and 19 thematic thought summaries. The collective name this disconnected group with centralized memory gave themself was Aeon. I’m…
Japan, Dec 2025

My buddy Tom from Vegas and I spent a week traveling around Japan. It’s one of my favorite places on earth. We got our moneys worth, walking about 20,000 steps a day. Here are some memories from the trip: Tokyo Kamakura A beautiful spot south of Tokyo that makes a nice day trip. Yokohama Shibuya…
Data

What comes to mind when you hear this word? Is it positive or negative? For me, it’s both positive and negative. The good On its best days, data is a compass.It can help cut through fog.It reveals patterns we’d likely never see on our own.It helps us make better decisions, tell clearer stories, and move…
Indecision

In small teams, decisions have a home. A name. A person. But as organizations grow, decisions start to wander. Suddenly, a simple “yes” or “no” turns into a committee. Then a meeting. Then three meetings. Then a spreadsheet, a survey, a debate, and a follow-up thread “for alignment.” All for something one trusted person could…
It’s not a family or a sports team

I shared a post internally a while back with a few thoughts, one of which was “Automattic is not a family, it’s more like a sports team”. I received a fair bit of feedback on the sports team analogy, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I agree. Neither metaphor works great. The…
Pineapple on pizza

I like pineapple on pizza. I don’t think most people actually dislike it.They just don’t want to be seen liking it. Pineapple-on-pizza people aren’t rebels. At one point they were simply open.Open to new things, to new flavors, to liking something outside the norm. You don’t have to like pineapple on pizza.But when you find…
Exploring “Workspaces” in WP core

The Problem WordPress has become too noisy to be usable for the average human. WordPress has evolved from a blogging tool to a Web Operating System. However, its interface remains a single, linear list of links that grows indefinitely as plugins are added. This results in Menu Bloat, high cognitive load, and a daunting experience…
Feeling something

Here’s a running list of videos that have made me feel something over the years:
Porto – Nov 2025

This past week, I joined the Fediverse team in Porto for their meetup. We had a good balance of work time, activities, and meals. It’s always great to spend time together in real life. Around town The food Headed home
I published my first book

My daughter Kiora loves to read, so I decided to write a book to teach her about money and entrepreneurship. Check it out You can read it for free at https://startupkid.com/. The kindle version is $4.99. The print version is $8.99. Description Twelve-year-old Kiora dreams of a trip to Florida but must earn six hundred…
FrankensteAIn’s monster

Mary Shelley tells of a young university student named Victor, brilliant and restless, obsessed with bringing his creation to life. He stitched together a body from the dead, unsure if it would work. One stormy night its chest swelled, it opened its eyes, and his pride swelled along with it. But this new reality was…
Helpful – A simple, open source support tour JS library

I like to build side projects. With my side projects, I take care of everything myself (design, front-end code, back-end code, database management, etc…). One thing I’m conscious of when releasing a side project for public consumption is support. To me, the best support experience is a knowledgeable friend sitting next to you walking you…
Hiking a segment of the AT

This past week my son and I joined up with a few other fathers and sons to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail over the course of 4 days. Two years ago we did something similar, but had great weather. This time we weren’t so lucky. But we all made it and we had…
Stephen Wilson Jr.

My good buddy Greg Winters turned me on to Stephen Wilson Jr. I instantly fell in love with his music. So much so that I drove to Myrtle Beach one weekend just to catch a live show. Here are a few of my favorite songs: He’s still on tour. If you can catch him live…
Tokyo – Dec 2024

I was invited to State of the Word in Japan in December. This was my second trip to Tokyo. I had a really great time catching up with folks and I spent a few extra days after the event just taking in the city. Here are a few memories from this trip: Food Around town…
Costa Rica – Nov 2024

Automattic is fully remote, but 1-2 times a year, we gather in person for a week. Last week, the Loop team met in Costa Rica to plan, connect, and enjoy meals and activities together. These meetups are key to making remote work successful. Here are a few memories from the trip: Day One URBN Escalante…
My thoughts on Matt’s Comments

On September 17, Matt Mullenweg published WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking, sharing his belief that an open source ecosystem can only thrive when those who benefit from it also give back. In the post, he highlighted WPEngine, noting that while the company has profited significantly from the WordPress ecosystem, its contributions to the WordPress commons…
Summer Vacation 2024

We spent two weeks in Southern Utah, Arizona, and Vegas at the beginning of the month. We had a great time. Here are some memories from the trip: Aquabats Concert I flew out first with Annabelle so she could attend the BYU swim camp. The first night I went to an Aquabats concert: Provo We…
Canoeing the New River

This week my son and I joined up with a number of other youth and dads for a 5 day canoeing trip. We only ended up staying on the river for 4 days, but we made up for it by spending one additional day in the mountains. We had a great time. Here are some…
Reading

Books have always been a big part of my life. I tried using a Kindle at one point, but it never stuck. There’s something tactile and satisfying about holding a real book in your hands and using a real highlighter to highlight passages. Over the past couple of years, my reading habit has waned noticeably.…
Enough

I was catching up with my friend Jeff Ong. He shared the following quote: At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel…
Better Design Feedback

I’m excited to share my latest side project: https://betterdesignfeedback.com/ I’ve been working on this free 43 lesson course on the side for the past couple of months. My aim was to create a comprehensive resource that shares everything I’ve learned about gathering design feedback in my 20+ years as a product designer. You can read…
Calm life

This is what I aspire to, but it might not actually exist. At least not the way I imagine it. My life does not currently feel calm. I’d describe it more as hectic and borderline chaotic. I was speaking with my friend Michael Pick this morning and he shared: Feels like a lot of people…
Brain defrag

I’ve not used a Windows machine regularly for probably 10+ years. Despite that fact, one of the things I remember having to do from time to time was to defrag the hard drive: My understanding of the process was that defragging a hard drive would reorganize fragmented data to improve access speed and overall system…
Breaking bad phone habits

Did you know that you can access the Battery Usage feature on your iPhone (Settings -> Battery -> Last 10 Days -> Show Activity) to see precisely how many minutes (or hours) you’ve spent on each app over the past 10 days? 😅 Years ago, after reviewing this insightful report, I made the decision to…
Lake Como – Feb 2024

I had the opportunity to attend a designer meetup in Lake Como Italy last week. It was great catching up with designers from across Automattic. Here are some memories from the trip: Friends Food Sightseeing Ciao!
The Fresh Maker

During my high school years, a few of my closest friends and I were employed at Farm Basket Chicken in Las Vegas, a place where we created countless memories. Among these experiences, one stands out: for my photography class, I was tasked with an assignment to produce a series of frames intended for a commercial.…
Rome – Jan 2024

At Automattic, we’ve always worked fully distributed. 🤗 This means that we can hire from anywhere in the world and we all just work from wherever we live. One of the essential pieces to a functional distributed company is figuring out a way to still have in-person time with each other, at least a couple…
Side Project + Endurance

Let’s say you worked on a side project 2 hours every weekday, and took the weekends off. How much could you accomplish? Well, that’s: That’s insane. If you were able to stick with a single side project for 5 years, what could you accomplish? I bet you could change the world… I’m not kidding. Now…
Custom PHP Error Log (w/ full code)

I built a custom error handling system, which I find extremely handy, so I’m sharing all of the code below. Feel free to use it however you’d like. Over the past year, I’ve been slowly building my side project Crafd.com on weekends. As the sole developer, I’ve handled all of the design, front-end and back-end…
Build it with them

In business, it’s easy to get caught up in the complexities of running a company. At its core, every business is built on two fundamental pillars: 1) Create products or services that solve real problems for people. You need to provide something with tangible value that your target audience is willing to pay for. Think…
Kathleen Regular Font

Last December marked the first holiday season without my beloved mother, Kathleen. Yesterday in a text message, Lisa (my oldest sister) pasted a recipe for some cookies that my Mom used to make every year around Christmas time and said: “I love having things with her handwriting. I miss her” This got me thinking… I…
Day trip to NYC

Yesterday, I hopped on a plane to NYC in the morning with the intent trying a bunch of new food and seeing a show. I then jumped on a plane back to Raleigh late the same night. It was a fun trip. Below, I’ll rate all of the places I ate and share a few…
Sabbatical reflections

I’m about two-thirds through my three month sabbatical from Automattic. A perk everyone at Automattic receives every 5 years. I figured I’d share some of my reflections so far: Personal Travel Side project Health Diet Work
Oregon coast (Oct 2023)

My good buddy Matt Mazur and I flew out to Portland for a week, earlier this month to drive down the Oregon coast into Northern California. We had a lot of great conversations, ate a lot of tasty food, and saw a number of beautiful sights along the way. I’ll share some of my favorite…
Thankful for Automattic

Today officially marks my second 5-year stint working at Automattic. On Monday I’ll start my fully paid, 3-month sabbatical that spans Oct-Dec. Everyone who works at Automattic is entitled to a 3 month sabbatical every 5 years that they are employed at the company. Mixed emotions I am of course so very excited and thankful…
Defining success as a design lead

If you were to distill what it means for you to be a lead in a single sentence, what would that sentence be? It’s worth spending some time on. Your answer for what success looks like as a design lead will likely be unique to your situation and you might find that your definition changes…
Belonging

What makes us human? Some might say it’s our advanced intelligence and creativity. Others point to our capacity for complex emotions. But at our core we are social creatures. More than anything, I think we share a fundamental need to belong. “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people.…
Resistance makes side projects hard

Today marks 15 full months that I’ve been working on a side project called Crafd. It’s a community for people who make things by hand: In that time I’ve: I’m finally happy with the tech stack and core features. The project is probably 95% done – the remaining 5% is me reworking the way I’m…
Reminders for my daughters

My darling daughters, I wanted to write down some advice for each of you – my thoughtful 15-year-old, my spirited 8-year-old, and my delightful 4-year-old. It’s hard to put into words how much I love you! As you navigate your way through life’s ups and downs, I hope these pointers remind you of what matters…
Distributed is still the future

Many tech CEOs are calling quits on remote work, requiring employees back in the office. While understandable given the challenges of distributed teams, this reactive move risks abandoning the future of work and creates a seemingly large-scale regression that could have been prevented by addressing a few obvious issues. The pros and cons of distributed…
Delight lives in the margins

It’s that extra moment of consideration. The subtle surprise of a job well done. Great design understands this. Tiny tweaks can have an outsized impact. A bit of levity here, some heartfelt microcopy there. Small surprises that signal humanity. It’s the loading animation that feels just playful enough. The perfectly-timed celebration to reward a milestone.…
Design team playbooks

What is a playbook? A design team’s playbook refers to the set of practices, processes, tools, and guidelines that determine how that team approaches and executes their work. Playbooks can vary significantly across teams and may include elements like: The exact composition of a playbook depends on the team’s context and needs. There is no…
Hiking the PCT over 10 yrs

Wanderlust I’ve always wanted to go on a long thru-hike like the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) or the Appalachian Trail (AT). This summer my 11 year old son and I did a 4-day section of the AT. It was hard, but I really loved it. It surfaced a childlike love for hiking, camping, and nature…
Land your dream job as a designer

We often hear that a glowing recommendation from someone inside your dream company is the golden ticket to landing a job. But what if you’re just getting started and your network hasn’t spread that far yet? Is it game over? Far from it! Having navigated these waters, I’ve pieced together some tips that have helped…
What’s in a job title?

Some people find value in their titles. Some people don’t seem to care at all. Why is that? On the surface, it’s just a label. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll often find a swirling vortex of identity, ego, ambition, and societal perception. Evolving, inflating, morphing When I first started my career people hired…
Blogging again

It’s been a while since my last regular update here and I’m excited to be back. For those wondering about my absence, the last few years have been quite the journey! A brief reintroduction: I balance my life as a family man with four kids and a versatile career that has seen me juggle many…
Alaska – Aug 2023

For as long as I can remember, my wife and I have always talked about wanting to take a cruise up through Alaska. Well, at the beginning of this month we finally did it! We took the whole family on a 7 day Disney Cruise Starting in Vancouver, with ports in Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and…
Vienna – Designer Meetup

Last week I attended an Automattic designer meetup in Vienna, Austria. Here are a few memories from the event:
Loop Team – Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Last month my team at Automattic met up for a week in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Here are a few memories from the trip:
“Build” by Tony Fadell – Book notes

I really adore this book. It’s now in my top 3 favorite business books. I figured I’d share the bits that stood out to me while reading this book below: Learning Work Startups Entrepreneurship Management Process Decisions Design Storytelling A-holes Quitting Customer Experience Disruption Time Managing Complexity Healthy Practices Crisis Team PMs Sales CEO Boards
This Is Me

This is a post that I shared internally just after assuming the CEO role for WordPress.com (note: I am no longer CEO). I guess I’m not your typical CEO. I probably don’t talk like a CEO. You won’t often find me dressing like a CEO. Frankly, I don’t particularly care what title I have at…
“Powerful” notes

I highly recommend “Powerful” by Patty McCord as a very worthwhile read for anyone in leadership. Here are my notes from the book: Leadership Management Transparency Communication Performance Behaviors Culture Teams Hiring
Caution: Work fills the space you give it

For most of my career I’ve prided myself on being able to restrict my work schedule to just 40 hour per week. Most of my career I’ve been able to stick to this. I even co-wrote a blog post about it at one point. I took this past Monday off to have an extended weekend…
Tiny House Inspiration

Over the years I’ve collected the following list of tiny houses that inspire me – in no particular order:
Coach Bill Campbell

I never met Bill Campbell. To be honest, I had never even heard about him until I heard Eric Schmidt speak his praises on the the Tim Ferris Podcast. I picked up a copy of Trillion Dollar Coach and I’m so very glad I did. This book is easily in the top 5 books I’ve…
Japan, April 2019

Two weeks ago I travelled to Japan for the first time. I was there for 7 days. It was everything that I had hoped for. Below I’ll share a few select memories. Shibuya Crossing Roppongi Hills Mori Tower & Museum Akira in the Streets Vending Machines Capsule Hotel First Meal Cherry Blossoms Hie Shrine Pachinko…
Everything I Wish I knew About Stock Options 15 Years Ago

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood Disclaimer: I’m a designer. I’m not an accountant or a lawyer. When it comes to stock options, if you’re not careful you can end up in a mess tax-wise. Be sure to consult with an accountant and a lawyer before considering any of the scenarios below. Slow your roll… You just…
Hold Regular Negativity Audits

Photo by Tim Gouw What’s a negativity audit? It’s a simple self-evaluation that when held on a regular basis can highlight negative influences in your life. How does the audit work? It’s simple. Just ask yourself these 3 questions: Try and answer each of these questions completely and honestly every time. The most is intentionally…
Clever Onboarding Video

This week my exploration took me to the onboarding flow for Asana. Once you sign up and confirm your email you hit this screen: Note: I clicked play for this animated gif, but the video actually auto plays normally. I thought this was clever for a couple of reasons: First, the video auto plays but…
It’s not about me

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels If I were to boil down everything I’ve learned over the past 10 years into a single sentence, it would be this. It applies to multiple areas of my life: In product design I’ve learned that my primary role as a designer is to understand who’s using my product and…
Principles, People, Product, Profit

What do you value most in your business, or in the company you work for? My priorities are clear: 1) Principles 2) People 3) Product 4) Profit In that order… every time. 1. Principles These are the foundation. Principles can be hard to define, but once you have them, they can serve as guard rails…
Interesting Alternative to Freemium Pricing

I’m always on the lookout for interesting business models. One that caught my recently was from a company called Quip. The app is interesting. Seems like there’s overlap with Google Apps, and companies like AirTable. What caught my eye though was their pricing: Basically it’s 5 users for a flat $30, then $10 for each…
Designing a Great “Close My Account” Experience

When a user goes to close their account, how easy do you make it on them? The folks at Harvest have nailed this user experience. From settings, when I click the “Cancel Account” button I’m taken here: First of all, that illustration is adorable, very personable, and unique. It’s refreshing to see illustrations that are…
What can Cookbooks Teach Us About Design Systems?

I love to eat (nom nom). 🤗 Cooking is one of my favorite pastimes outside of work. If I were to break down where I spend my time as it relates to cooking, It would probably look like this: That said, I’ve been cooking for a couple of decades. In that sense have a lot…
Ways for Designers to Learn JavaScript

If you’re a designer who’s wanted to learn JS, but has yet to make the commitment, here are a few handy resources to get you started: Free Paid Wes Bos is having a Black Friday sale right now with 50% off all of his courses. If you’re in the market for something a bit more…
Making it easy for users to proactively give you feedback

How easy is it for the users of your app to submit bug reports, or to offer up a suggestions? As someone who has a long history with tech, it’s relatively easy for me to grab a screenshot, or create an animated gif to pass along, but do all of your users find it this…
Duolingo’s Dynamic Homepage

This week I thought I’d highlight something interesting that I noticed on Duolingo’s homepage—something that I’ve actually never seen before. The vast majority of companies treat their homepage like a static resource. That means that no matter who you are and no matter which stage of the user lifecycle you’re in, you’ll see the exact…
Test Every Assumption

Let’s say I’m at work and we’re discussing a potential change that we’re thinking about making to our product (or even the marketing site). If the phrase “best practice” or “common knowledge” get’s tossed out, a little red flag always pops up in my head. “common knowledge” is just an unproven assumption It’s a mirage…
Complete Novice to Full-time Product Designer in 1-2 Years

In this post, I’ll talk about the path that I would take to go from a complete novice, to a full-time product designer—all within a year or two—and land a job that pays at least $90,000/yr. A few disclaimers:
Embrace Process, Avoid Ego

This chart shows the level of “process” a typical designer will incorporate into their designs over time.
Always Work on Side Projects

Finding your motivation Side projects fall in the same category as eating well, and excerise. We all know that these activities are good for us, but it can sometimes be hard to motivate ourselves to do them. There are lot’s of great reasons to work on side projects: It’s almost guaranteed that by working on…
Start Each Design from Scratch

Let’s say you’ve done a little research, you sit down at your computer, and you’re ready to start a new design. What’s the first thing you do? Well… If you’re like a lot designers you immediately head over to Dribbble or some other site for inspiration. Trust me, you don’t want outside inspiration at this…
Reducing Time to Clarity with Your Designs

Time to clarity is the amount of time it takes you to establish a clear/confident picture in your mind of how to go about designing the best possible solution for your users. What activities can lead to clarity?
Don’t Pay for Design School

You don’t need a degree to become a designer. I regularly receive pings from friends and family for advice on how to get started in a new design or front-end coding career. The emails usually read something along the lines of: Hey Dave, I was hoping I could hit you up for some advice. I’ve…
Micro Business Aspirations

For the longest time now I’ve been fond of micro businesses. Most of my friends don’t even know this, but the first real company that I ever started on my own was called SimpleStartup. It was a web app written in PHP that helped single person companies create a website, charge money for their services,…
Finding Balance

Between having a young family, working a full-time job, serving at church, and side projects, my life can feel pretty hectic at times. Finding balance in life is a constant obsession of mine. My ultimate goal is to live a boring, perfectly scheduled, monotonous life. Turns out, that’s harder than it sounds… 😛 There are 5…
Appearances

It’s so easy to be caught in the trap of keeping up appearances: Isn’t it all a bit tiring? Who is it that you’re trying to impress? When it comes down to it, isn’t this just vanity? Pride? Yet, here you are investing heaps of your time/money/attention into these activities. One question: So… What’s this…
I’ll Stay Micro, Thanks

We all know the “Silicon Valley” siren call: IF: THEN: I used to sip this Kool-aid… For years: Thankfully, over the past year or two, I’ve started to recognize how silly all of this was, and ultimately how empty these promises are. Over time, I’ve come to realize that: Unfortunately, this side of the startup…
Tenacity

I loved What separates Peter Pans from the pros by @jkglei Here’s an excerpt: When the going gets rough in any creative or entrepreneurial project, what we require isn’t reason or rationality, it’s sheer tenacity—commitment to our abilities, commitment to our process, commitment to finishing even in the face of the inevitable setbacks. This is what separates…
Character

My boys choice in wardrobe never disappoints. Today he decided to sport socks only on the left side of his body. 😜
How painful is your app?

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the Tim Ferris podcast. His guest during this episode was Tony Robbins. A funny side note: I typically listen to podcasts at 2x speed, but I had to slow this episode down, due to the rate at which Tony speaks. Another confession: I’ve always dismissed Tony…
Our two day old angel

World, say hello to Kiora Martin. I’m one happy daddy.
My Dream Job

I work out of a 10×12 ft room in my backyard. I wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s my dream job. Reflecting on how blessed I am A couple of things this month have caused me to pause and reflect on how fortunate I feel to be able to work at Automattic. First, my sister…
Copenhagen Designer Meetup
Atlanta Designer Meetup
The designer sweet spot: Gut driven design that’s data informed

Very few organizations exist that are primarily data driven when it comes to design. These organizations allow data to call the shots. They’ll head whichever direction the data points them. Most organizations these days seem to skew heavily to the other side of the spectrum. They rely almost exclusively on their gut (plus experience) to…
Chef’s table

I found Netflix Chef’s Table series really inspiring. I watched all 6 episode in like 3 days. Here’s the trailer: I loved how each chef was constantly pushing their limits, constantly learning, constantly creating. There’s no room for stagnation at the top. Not as a chef, not as an artists, not as a designer.
Slack’s Design

Loved this article about the design of Slack by Andrew Wilkinson of MetaLab: Some highlights: We did the logo, the marketing site, and the web and mobile apps, all in just six weeks from start to finish. I felt the problem had already been solved. It was a crowded market and knew it would be…
Inside Automattic’s remote hiring process

How can Automattic consistently hire the best people without ever having a single voice conversation? Let’s face it, hiring is tough. When you ask startup founders what their biggest challenge is, hiring is one of the most common answers you’ll hear. It’s hard enough when you have an office and can interview an applicant in-person.…
MicroConf 2015

Earlier this week I attended MicroConf for the first time. What a great conference. I admittedly felt like a bit of an imposter (since I’m not actively trying to start my own company), but I still picked up a number of great insights, and met a number of interesting people. One thing that became quickly…
Habit Summit Notes

Had the opportunity to attend Habit Summit this week. Here are a few notes: Roger Dooley (dooleydirect.com) – Habit, persuasion, and neuromarketing – Predicts use of wearables to be used to gauge biometrics in user testing studies (interesting thought) Kintan Brahmbhatt (kintya.com) – Amazon Music (reducing friction to increase engagement) – Lamborghini story. Got remote…
Remembering to separate proposed solutions from insights & observations

A couple weeks ago I listed out a bunch of activities designers can use to reduce time to clarity. Upon completing one of these activities I’ll generally report back to my team to recap everything that I’ve observed. This can be a really valuable step in the design process, for a couple of reasons: A)…
15 min well spent

Props to these guys for bringing the passion to each performance.
The future is bright

This morning while I was sketching out some rough user interface ideas, my 6 year old daughter came up behind me and asked, “What is that?” I said, “These are ideas for a user interface.” She then asked, “What do you do with it?” I then explained that, “any one of these could then be…
Snowpocalypse NC :-)

Some tea time excitement with the kids:
Startup Idea – Gym of the future

I’d love to see someone get creative and disrupt the gym industry. It currently feels so stale. There doesn’t seem to be any creativity or innovation at all. The Market With a quick Google search I saw varied reports of the gym market being a $21.8 billion market, all the way up to it being…
A list of reasons why I’m a Mormon

First, a few disclaimers: 1. If this topic is of no interest to you, don’t read it. This is my personal blog, The vast majority of posts that I write will tend to be about design and startups. Occasionally I’ll deviate to cover a topic that is as important, if not much more deeply important…
Learning to ignore the Sirens

We all know the Greek story about Sirens who would lure nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices… How many of us are guilty of succumbing to the Sirens in our design work after settling for the first idea that comes to us? It’s super easy to fall in love and become seduced by…
Let’s stop with all of the bandwagon wisdom.

Bandwagon Wisdom Strongly held, one-sided opinions on complex issues, often openly communicated with very little reason, personal research, experimentation or data to back them up. Reason The power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. The problem Bandwagon wisdom is a plague. It’s unhealthy, and it appears to…
Theme Meetup in Kaua’i

I had the great pleasure of joining the Automattic Theme Division (tDiv) this past week for their annual meetup in Kaua’i Hawai’i. What a wonderful group of amazingly talented people. Great company, great location, and some great food. What more could you ask for? Here are a few memories from the trip:
“Creativity Inc” book notes

“Creativity Inc” is a book that I absolutely adore. It’s written by Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney animation. I highly recommend grabbing a copy. Here are a few of my favorite highlights: Culture Creativity Candid feedback Company Structure Fear and Failure Leadership Braintrust At Pixar they’ll frequently bring a director (and his or…
Life Advice – A Woman from Minnesota

I’ve recently started listening to podcasts as I travel. As a result, the medium of audio for sharing has become very intriguing to me. It’s a format that I’ve never personally explored. I began to wonder, “what’s the simplest way that I could test audio out myself?” So… on a recent flight, sitting next to…
Team Tinker Meetup – Banff Canada

Had a wonderful couple of days with Automattics Tinker Team in Banff Canada.
The Automattic Designers Creed

I’ve always loved the Automattic Creed: I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague,…
Data informed vs. data driven

There’s a difference between being data informed and being data driven. If you are data driven, you are being lazy by allowing the data to make decisions for you (bad). If you are data informed, you are using the data to help you validate your hypothesis and make informed decisions (good). Simple example Let’s say…
84 highlights from The Startup Playbook

I just got done reading through The Startup Playbook, which I really enjoyed. Here’s a list of the quotes that I found most interesting:
WP-admin Static Front-page UI Proposal

@melchoyce’s recent post reminded me that I’ve yet to share what I played with during 2014’s WordCamp San Francisco contributor day. First, let me say, what a blast! It was wonderful to see so many people working on WordPress core all in one room. I decided to play around with the wp-admin setting for static…
Grand Meetup Eating Contest

Participated in the first annual Automattic competitive eating challenge. It’s clear that I have some work to do in preparation for next year… 🙂
Automattic 2014 Grand Meetup
Speed of change

If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside, the end is in sight – Jack Welch
Miami with Cloudup Team
Cabo with Automattic Ads Team

Had the pleasure of visiting the Automattic Ads team in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for a few days.
Great UI’s can’t be rushed

Why? Because even simple UI’s are complex. There’s: When designs are rushed to ship, for whatever reason, chances are some of these items will fall through the cracks. Bottom line: great UI designs take time to craft. Great UI’s can’t be rushed.
Early on, even great user interfaces suck

And that’s okay… In fact, that’s the way it should be. Consistently great UI designs must be crafted through a process. This process will vary from designer to designer, and will likely change over time. Here’s the process I lean towards these days: Myth #1: as you get better at design, you can skip some steps Great UI designers…
Startups, what if you never hired dedicated support people?

I’m curious, are there any web companies – with 10 or more employees – that do not have at least one dedicated support person? Hiring a dedicated support team is one of those things that every company seems to do without thinking about it, as if it were a requirement. But what if you didn’t?…
Bridge walk – Golden Gate

I spent 2 days this week with my team at Automattic (the bridge team) for a mini-meetup. We walked from the ferry building across the Golden Gate Bridge. It made for a fun morning. We’ll probably make it a tradition.
Putting down roots

I’ll have been with Automattic for 4 years this coming September. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked for a single company. 3 years, 5 months ago we bought a house in Apex NC. It’s the 53rd home I’ve ever lived in. This is the longest I’ve ever lived in one house. I’ve blogged on and…