Technological collapse, custom forms, notifications
Store Design continues to be available. Tell literally everyone. I was chatting with a client recently about how the new analytics software is bad, and how...
Store Design is out now
This is our 400th letter. Our first one went out to 18 people, 7 of which remain. Regardless of whether you’ve been here for 1 week or all 400, we’re...
Alignment, Store Design, alignment
If you preordered Store Design, we’ll be reaching out to confirm your shipping address shortly. Copies should start shipping out this week. Don’t sleep! This...
Form validation, screeners, badge design
Printing of Store Design is now finished. Next up, the printer ships all the books to me, and then we ship to preorders, friends & family, and then everybody...
Human work, Store Design update, interface quality
Welcome back, everybody. Deep rest was useful for us; we’re fired up and ready to start a great new year. We’ve got so much cool stuff in the hopper that we...
Year-ahead planning, tools, semantics
This is our final letter of the year before we go on break for the holidays. Thanks again for your support, now & always. Store Design’s proofs have been...
Winter design, process & structure, care
What store design activities make the most sense to run over the winter? A few come to mind: Card sorting. Remember all of that drum-beating that I’ve been...
Design documentation, collection page heat maps, filter priority
Quiet week. This week, for paid members We held our monthly office hours, where we debated what sides to serve and nothing else. Our weekly paid lesson is...
Self-care, generalizable principles, order confirmation
Store Design has been sent to the printer. Still on track for a January delivery. Rest is necessary, of course. In what specific ways have you rested this...
Durable thinking, nav reworks, normative context
Draft will be closed this coming Friday in honor of my dog’s birthday. In this moment, I invite you to reply with the specific ways in which you will be...
Type sizes, building slower, a major American holiday of some note
Final edits on Store Design have come back. Now I get to final-final edit it and send it off to the printer. Still on track for arrival in the next few...
Toxic masculinity, full-bleed image galleries, PDP design
This article on the feminization of design and attendant restructuring of “web design” into “front-end development” is an absolutely essential read. If...
Vocabulary inflation, holiday sales, mobile-first design
In the department of “things that should happen but won’t,” we have Jakob Nielsen talking about ‘vocabulary inflation’ with respect to design. “UX” is...
Customer education, stakeholder strategy, text editing on mobile
Edits have wrapped up on Store Design. Now we move into final typeset, preflight, and then printing. This week, for paid members Our weekly lesson talks...
Single page checkout, SMS compliance, ethical research
Our editors have kicked off our final editing pass on Store Design, and our work should be off to the printer within the next six weeks. Gosh, isn’t that...
Discounting, case studies, design winter
Our sponsor for this newsletter is Buttondown! Did you know this very email you're reading was sent with Buttondown? Folks like you send millions of emails...
Evergreen design, account creation, sidenotes
Our sponsor for this newsletter is Sam McNerney! Designing a survey and worried you’re not doing it right? Get a 🔥$45 Survey Roast🔥. What's a Roast? A custom...
Sticky gallery, IA, designed data
Our sponsor for this newsletter is Punchline Copy! "Oh God, we need copy for Black Friday!" I GOT YOU, FAM. Punchline Copy has just three (3) Buy My Days...
How design is received, design authority & leveraged power, tracking changes
In therapy lately, I have been processing some feelings about how design is received among the economic buyers of my industry. In short, because design is a...
An update on Store Design, hover triangles, supported design
I finished line edits for Store Design last week. This happens on a printed document, and so the next steps are: Type up all of the changes Final conceptual...
The tension between evidence & agenda
One of the most interesting things about my job has been the tension between evidence & agenda. Does anyone speak of this? It feels like maybe no. We are now...
Why people misunderstand design, getting the easy things wrong, writing in public
The last time I chatted with Kurt, he remarked out loud ahead of time that store design is one of the most widely misunderstood profitable practices in...
New consulting slot, recruitment adaptation, swatch display
For the first time in 10 months, a consulting slot is open for outsize revenue generation. We’ve also recently posted two new case studies that show what...
Long-form product descriptions, color differences, the problem with accordions
This week, for paid members Our design of the week shows one of the smartest upsells we’ve seen in a minute. How does it play out on desktop versus mobile?...
Mega menus, strategic research, usability testing
Utterly riveting news: I’ll be doing a presentation on quantitative design research with SegMetrics tomorrow, August 02, at 1p CDT. You can sign up at the...
Unit economics, invisible interactions, reconstructive memory
I keep reading things that proclaim the death of design and the resurgence of other terms that describe design. What people fail to understand is that design...
More tools, the future of design, some questions
What if tech has plateaued, out of sheer ubiquity? What if that’s okay? What does “okay” look like? What if there is no “next best thing?” What if AI really...
Put me on your ding dang podcast, and also other things
As we wrap up our editing of Store Design and move into the consultancy’s busy season, it’s time to talk more publicly about what we’re doing in the current...
Delivery date, PDP descriptions, heuristic evaluation
I recently spent a few weeks holding structural space for a client whose team members have been incorrectly seized by the ego-driven toxic masculinity that...
Google is bad, research frameworks, site speed now
As Google’s attack on the practice of value-based design continues apace, my colleagues & I have been given to a deeper reflection on what tools will...
Strategic focus, hierarchy, value-based stories
What causes someone to embrace value-based design? Do people change their minds as they work in tech? I’m curious to hear your stories – just hit reply. This...
Sell other things, the $300M button, tonal copy
We’re currently working with a client that knows its problems well and takes steps to solve them. I love this. It is so much nicer to work with clients who...
Design’s axioms, GA4 reports, iterative feedback
I recently read a piece in UX Collective about “the one true way to design”. This week, I want to provide some thoughts on it, and how to read the variable...
Design is a form of power, clarity vs. fidelity, buy box contents
As I’m finishing up the first draft of Store Design’s manuscript, I’m curious: what topics around value-based store design do you want us to include? This...
Mobile nav for luxury brands, “product,” status & culture
I’ve been compiling & typesetting the text for Store Design lately, as our first step before a full edit pass. It’s been really nice to get the text all in...
Normative context, craft, button placement
Remember that little link I sent along last week saying that we now have a consulting slot open? I am now so busy with prospective calls that this, this is...
Studio Draft, reflecting, modals
One bespoke consulting slot is available, for kickoff in late May. If you wish to increase your business’s revenue, we invite you to reach out. Quiet week...
Draft Teardown: last chance for cheaper prices
Howdy! Just wanted to let you know that we’ll be bumping the price of teardowns in 8 hours, at 5p CDT. If you’ve been on the fence, you might want to grab...
Teardown price increase, collection pages, similar products
Within ten minutes of my showing up at Microconf’s first event a fortnight ago, someone looked me in the eye and straight-up commanded me to charge more for...
Machine learning, who to trust, additive writing
At MicroConf this past week, someone remarked to me that I tend to write books as a way of marking the ends of eras – implying that Store Design’s release...
Store Design: preorders end TODAY
Hello! Just a humble reminder that preorders for Store Design wrap up in 8 hours, at 5p CDT. We’d be honored if you joined us.
Store Design preorders end Friday
As mentioned, we went dark for the past couple of weeks. Here is why: in March of 2020, I bought an infinitely rebookable flight to Japan, because the Bad...
Spread the word about Store Design, protecting value-based design careers, onboarding
I’m thrilled to report that Store Design now has enough preorders to cover printing costs. Thanks to everyone who has preordered thus far, and a special...
Preorder Store Design
I saw a chart the other day that gave me pause. In it, you have three slices of the total American ecommerce pie: the top 14 publicly-held retailers, Amazon,...
Design winter, category pages, trust signals
After one week of Store Design preorders, a few things have become clear: People want the book. (Thank heavens, right?) The book is for practitioners, not...
LAUNCH: Store Design, the easiest way to learn how to profitably act now
For those who don’t want to hunt for the link, Store Design preorders are now open. You have two options: take a look and join us now, or read the rest of...
Design methods, onboarding, personalization
Designers are all obsessed with process. I am, too. I think the following is true: Unlike the scientific method or any sort of legal method, there is no one...
Store Design preorders, optical constraints, digital gardening
Preorders for my next book, Store Design, go live in precisely one fortnight, on Tuesday, March 07. By that point, the first draft will be done enough that I...
More thoughts on Google Optimize, behavior recordings, hover states
On the one hand, Google Optimize shutting down is a big deal. It’s absolutely going to change the pricing structures of the experimentation industry, mostly...
Some notes on the conclusion of Google Optimize, a thing that we all saw coming
Google are not a trustworthy company. For two decades, they have built products that boldly enter industries, used its advertising business to prop up...