Posts tagged with “Design”

In January 2025, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence was fired after a disastrous app redesign wiped nearly $500 million from the company's market value. But calling it just a "redesign" misses the deeper story of how a beloved audio company lost its way. Through conversations with multiple former employees who worked directly on the project, I discovered that what happened at Sonos wasn't simply a botched app update—it was the culmination of strategic missteps, organizational dysfunction, and forgotten values that had been building for years.

I was sitting on a barstool next to my wife in a packed restaurant in Little Italy. We were the lone Kansas City Chiefs supporters in a nest full of hipster Philadelphia Eagles fans. After Jon Batiste finished his fantastic rendition of the national anthem, and the teams took the field for kickoff, I noticed something. The scorebug—the broadcast industry’s term for the lower-third or chyron graphic at the bottom of the screen—was different, and in a good way. (Continued)

My wife and I are big movie lovers. Every year, between January and March, we race to see all the Oscar-nominated films. We watched _A Complete Unknown_ last night and _The Brutalist_ a couple of weeks ago. The latter far outshines the former as a movie, but both share a common theme: the creative obsession. …

Remember the Subservient Chicken? That quirky Burger King website where you could type commands to make a guy in a chicken suit do stuff? Two decades later, we're still typing commands into boxes—but now we're talking to AI. As designers grapple with a web increasingly built for machines rather than humans, we're facing a familiar challenge: how to create delightful experiences within new technical constraints. From Flash microsites to AI-readable interfaces, web design is evolving once again.

James Poniewozik, writing for The New York Times: > Whether they work in sand or spores, heavy-handed metaphor is the true material of choice for all these opening titles. The series are different in genres and tone. But all of them seem to have collectively decided that the best way to convey the sense of epic event TV is with an overture of shape-shifting, literal-minded screen-saver art. His point is that a recent trend in "prestige TV" main titles is to use particle effects…

I’ve had Matthew Butterick’s _Practical Typography_ website/ebook bookmarked since I discovered it over ten years ago. It’s making the rounds again, and I think it’s a good reminder that we are all “professional writers” as he describes…

Scary words for the UX profession: “Digital systems, not people, will do much of the craft of (screen-level) interaction design.” But here’s the truth—this isn’t the first time we’ve faced a shift like this. Just as we adapted from print to digital, and from CD-ROMs to the web, designers will evolve again. The tools may change, but the purpose of design remains constant. And that’s what makes our craft enduring.

Jaguar’s rebrand is bold but polarizing, trading heritage for hype. In the race for EV dominance, a flashy logo and film won’t cut it—it’s the product that defines the brand. Let’s break down what this redesign gets right, and what it misses.

Building an AI-powered brand strategy app taught me valuable lessons about product development, market validation, and the challenges of launching a product. Here's what I learned from my journey with Griffin AI—from ideation to eventual shutdown.

Brand strategy isn't just about logos and color palettes—it's about finding the sweet spot between what your audience wants and what makes your brand unique. When you nail this intersection, you create something truly magical: an emotional connection that transforms casual customers into devoted fans. Let me show you how it works.