How to design with empathy, clarity, and intelligent use of AI — without losing the humanity that makes great products great. I got to reread some of my favorite design books to write this post, but honestly? It sucked when I realized how little any of them reflected the current reality of the industry. The ideas were beautiful and clean — Norman, IDEO, Brown — but they didn’t match the messy, political, high-stakes AI-influenced world where design decisions now live. Inspire

The Bracelet That Led to a Design Blog One of my earliest memories of design started at the Scholastic Book Fair. I was six, wandering between stacks of neon posters and scented erasers, when a bright blue jewelry-making book caught my eye. Its cover showed a bracelet so intricate and glittering it felt like magic. Armed with beads from the local art store and a roll of thin copper wire, I sat at the dinner table, determined to recreate that bracelet—multi-strand, raindrop be