Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

Norman Vincent Peele

… but I keep hitting London.

Mort Sahl, in regards to I Aim at the Stars

I’ve been sitting on a “Design and Culpability” piece since starting to write two years ago. There’s a fire here and brimstone there, and I’m unfortunately only motivated to flesh it out when something’s on fire. Fortunately for you, dear reader, the world’s aflame.

When I started at Zello over ten years ago, I remember some of the first “trending” channels I found were named “LOUCW,” who I later learned were the “League of United Christian Warriors.” This reoccured to me in April 2020, when I decided to delve into moderation on our Friends & Family platform. What I found was grim, it prompted a lengthy internal discussion regarding freedom of speech^[1] and a private company’s role in censorship.

I carry my opinions like a mallet^[2] on the best of days, and Summer 2020 was a litany of bad days. I argued that by enabling harm, we were responsible for its mitigation. By creating a tool that could be used maliciously, we were culpable for the harm its users wrought.

I’ve softened since, and realized that while I apply that standard to myself, I don’t to others. However, I will hold myself and others equally to a standard of goodness. As opposed to “I’m responsible for everything done with the tools I build,” I ask “What uses of my tool lead to the world I want to see?”

With that in mind, if I make a hammer, I’m not responsible for what’s done with it. However, I can encourage that it’s used as I envision. If a loud, angry man comes into my hammer store, pauses, and kindly asks to buy a hammer, I have reason to suspect he’ll misuse it. I sure as shit shouldn’t sell it to him.

At what point does speech predicate harm? At the point that it’s considered hate speech, sure. A group of III% Militia^[3] members discussing their next act of domestic terror is harm, and a group of Threepers discussing their personal racial hierarchies is close enough if not already hate speech. A few Proud Boys in an empty room, or talking about their dinner plans? Should I care about smoke, the fire, or both?

I wrote an internal proposal for how we should handle moderation processes and tools at the company, and hounded it at the followup discussion at our monthly all-hands meetings until we did something.^[4] This didn’t make me many friends at the time, and while my colleagues have softened a hair, I still tread carefully.

These days, I hesitate before speaking up about an impactful issue. As useful as has been my woeful lack of tact, I’m afraid of poisoning the well for others who could achieve the same outcomes without alienating their peers. However, I still worry that without my blunt pigheadedness, the conversation may not start.

While ICE is kidnapping children and murdering and disappearing innocents, not just my company but the broader tech industry is being asked: “what will you allow?”

I’ve watched this question be mired down by policy and precedent. “How do we consistently enforce these changes on such a massive platform?” and “Hate symbols in one language and locale don’t necessarily map to another; how can we responsibly apply these standards consistently?” In ICE’s case, “how can we prevent use by one law enforcement agency but not others?”

I propose simply that we don’t — those being harmed don’t give a rat’s ass about our policy and precedent; they care about the boot on their fucking neck. Rather than litigating a proposed policy, we must back up and ask ourselves: “what’s acceptable use for our lives’ work?” and “do I want Dilley on my conscience?”

We’re not necessarily culpable, but we have an opportunity to reduce^[5] harm, and what matters is the lived effect. This leads to another point — October 2019 saw Github employees quit over their acquirer, Microsoft’s, DHS contracts. Yes, object to your employer’s^[6] blood money. However, were the same users enjoying free accounts, I wonder what the outcry would’ve resembled. Whether on a free or paid tier, Discord’s 2000 banned communities made — and continue to make — heavy use of the platform. Had IBM freely given away its punchcards, outcomes would’ve been equally if not more heinous.

With that rancid comparison, we return to my point. Responsible or not, we can each make our small corner of the world a little better. Let’s not overthink it.

You speak to your father as if he needs care rather than caring for himself.

A highly and uncomfortably(?) perceptive guest at Thanksgiving.

Tom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease within a few months of my moving to Pittsburgh. As grim of a degenerative disease as it may be, it was a relief to name the decline we’d witnessed over the preceding years, and then set expectations for its escalation. Cognitive decline accompanies his Parkinson’s, stemming from chronic hearing loss^[1] and its resulting isolation.

Watching a parent’s cognitive and physical decline is a prolonged grief. The more you’re around them, the more steadily^[2] you see pieces of them slough away. Sometime’s they’re pebbles, and other times a rockslide. Then, the less you’re around, the more dramatically you see the difference.

The holidays offer the best of both. Whether you’re around regularly,^[3] you get a yearly checkpoint to compare to previous years.

Tom was a prolific and passionate home cook. One of the first signs of his decline was difficulty staging complex meals — at first he’d forget to prepare early enough for a series of involved dishes, then he’d occasionally forget to prepare food, then he’d wildly overestimate the amount of food to buy for a meal and for whom, and most recently he’d forget and then misremember foundational steps of once back-of-hand recipes. Where they concern shared meals, they’re now managed for him. Fortunately a reduced appetite accompanies his symptoms.

Excepting traumatic events, this kind of decline is a slow and steady loss, full of second-guessing and self-doubt. I haven’t ridden in his car since 2022, but he still drives. Am I wrong to not push the matter? He’s not oblivious, but can he remember when he last recently tried to force the issue, or the same conversation a couple of days beforehand?

In a period where I visited weekly, he’d forget that I’m a vegetarian, and feel personally hurt when I wouldn’t just try the tenderloin he’d cooked for four despite lacking another omnivore in his two-person household. Granted, he could never remember that two of my thirty-year-older siblings never ate fish, and well pre-decline would reliably offend them by insisting they loved seafood with dinner already prepared.

Such is self-doubt’s nagging, wheedling voice: is this him, or is this the mixed-up, puzzling yarn ball of disease and decline?

Forgetting one’s dietary preferences is benign, but you can easily imagine the same escalation overtop untreated anxiety, manifesting in “when will you be home?” and “why aren’t you here?” on the wrong day of the week, or “what are you doing, you’ll be late!” two hours before a twenty-minute drive.

This all amounts to the yearly reminder of how much less he can do, how diminished his presence is, and the degree to which we all poorly manage our own stress in compensating for the shift. We bring our own contributions to the void left by his, jostling elbows and seeking perfection when really we miss what we had and can’t bring ourselves to overtly mourn. These are the holidays.

Wednesday night, Darien and I drove to Georgetown to spend the following two days with my uncle, my parents, Simon, and Ariana. I made scratch apple and cherrie pies,^[4] and a scratch seitan roast.^[5] Darien made stuffing and two different cranberry sauces. Simon contributed a sweet potato dish and dry-fried green beans, while Ariana made a sourdough loaf. Tom made mashed potatoes, and we bought a ham, turkey, and its gravy from a local barbecue restaurant. Raphael contributed an incredible 2005 Bordeaux^[6] while Lora provided a delicious buckwheat-pecan tart and an almond-cranberry tart. My dad’s diminished contributions don’t leave us materially wanting — instead, we’re left with nostalgia.

We drove back Friday evening, and after spending a luxurious Saturday without touching a burner,^[7] I got to work on a seitan braise. I wasn’t completely satisfied with what I’d made for Thanksgiving, and with a cold front rolling in — temperatures dropped to the low forties after eating outdoors in Thursday — I was looking for warm, winter comfort food. Whereas Thursday’s was a dense mushroom seitan roast boiled in saltwater, this roast was a looser dough hydrated with a mushroom kombu broth, soy sauce, vegemite,^[8] and red wine mixture. The seitan had thinly diced mushrooms, garlic, and mirepoix kneaded into the dough, and then small pieces of frozen refined coconut oil, creating pockets in the dough and yielding a varied, looser texture. Finally, the dough was wrapped and trussed, rested for three hours, coated in coarsely-ground black pepper and salt, seared, and then simmered for two hours in the same hydrating liquid alongside chopped carrots, onions, shallots, fingerling potatoes, and a diced rutabaga and parsnip. It was killer, and the apartment smelled amazing.

I first and last made this kind of meal while I still ate meat, after moving to Belgium eight years ago. The cold winter was shocking, and I craved cozy aromatics and leftovers. Tom would make beef braises when I was young, and I remember comfortable winter evenings — the few in Texas that were cold — as these aromatics filled the house, and we’d sit down to a dinner or braised vegetables and meat.

I was struck today with the distance from the living man to the remembered man, but this isn’t new. I was shocked to feel the dissonance of mourning him privately, while being often frustrated by him when we’re together. The holiday was at points a stressful mix of family, their contributions, and their mutually-escalating reactions. Privately, after the holiday, I could mourn the lost pieces — rather, this lost version — of my father despite spending much of the week with him.

Mourning a living parent feels shameful, and it feels like a betrayal to love their memory while harboring complex feelings regarding their current state. I often feel like this pre-death grief is to the exclusion of enjoying what I can, but when I try to enjoy it, I’m met with frustration at best. Now I’ve surprised myself with the intensity of my emotions when recreating something he’d do when I was a child.

I know there’s no right or wrong way to grieve, but damn.

I remember learning in interviews that they had around 400 designers. I couldn’t decide whether that was a wildly large or small team. “2 billion” has a too many zeroes.^[2]

Full disclosure: I got to the onsite and didn’t progress. I’ve started interviewing once with them since, but cut it off myself in Summer 2020. I hope I wouldn’t entertain them these days.

In 2020, my company’s consumer product was visibly used by some pretty deplorable people. The scale of our scandal paled beside Facebook, but despite the intense discomfort and scrutiny, I was proud to be an employee of a small company where discussion was vibrant and individual employees had a voice, as opposed to be a drop in Facebook’s bucket.

That brings us to the last few weeks. The writing’s been on the wall, but that makes it no more pleasant to read. In planning our move^[3] I’ve dwelt on which goals I’m letting go. The Bay’s always been among them: somewhere to live — at least for a bit — and somewhere to make my design practice meaningful and real. Austin’s a joke of a design market,^[4] and the gulf from our talent pool to the Bay’s, let alone in FAANG, is wild.

I’d wanted to work for Apple since a recruiter contacted me 2011. I had a small visual design website and in taking small freelance jobs, made a point to not make it too obvious online that I was a teenager. We reengaged two years later, and in Summary 2013, I interned on the iWork team shortly before iWork for iOS and iWork for iCloud (Beta) launched in October with the new iOS 7 design.

I’d held onto a desire to return, but recent events changed my perspective. ICEBlock was removed from the App Store^[5] around Oct. 2. Eyes Up was removed less than a week later.^[6]

It’d be great if we can return to the U.S. in some years and pursue our earlier goals. We’ve leaving because, in large part, we feel both that’s no longer viable and the short term is increasingly unsafe. Leaving feels like a recognition that the things we’d wanted are no longer possible, but whether or not we leave, we know they’re no longer possible.

I hope that my friends at these companies are safe, and affect what positive change they can while taking care of their own. I’m privileged to be able to try washing my hands of this, and were I employed in FAANG, I can’t say with certainty what I would do. I know that now, on the other side of that question, I’m both lucky and saddened that I no longer need to find out.

So let’s not, at least while in this headspace. Instead I’ve indulged in four weekly tennis matches and practices, until last night where I landed myself in the ER with a 103° fever and bacterial pneumonia. Oops. Sorry, Wil, the tickle in your chest wasn’t ragweed. It’s been a week.

Anyway, Darien and my better judgment are encouraging me to take it easy, and I’m catching up on my photographic backlog. The last photos I posted on Instagram are Simon’s proposal to Ariana. Before that, some of our wedding, and then Iceland. Iceland was September 2022.

For a while, I had a misguided idea that showing signs of life on Instagram would help me find local photo exhibitions.^[2] IRL networking yielded better outcomes, but I kept posting. I enjoy exhibitions, but need to try something else — I’d always sell a few prints, but never enough to make it worthwhile. So Instagram posting dried up, and my friends would never even know that I’d lived a year and a half in Pittsburgh. The same amount of time I’d lived in Belgium, which is extensively documented on the ‘Gram.

So I’ve finished editing my last two sets of Pittsburgh photos — Pittsburgh 4, 5 — and my post-wedding pre-honeymoon time in Austin, Austin 9. There’s some relief to put the Pittsburgh scenes behind me. My last photos from that period are November 2023, despite us moving in April. I don’t think I took my camera out once. Looking back, it’s a blurry, anxious fog.

I’m creating art again, but mostly on occasion and less passively. I had a hell of a time in Chicago a few weeks back for Jenna and Abhi’s bachelor and bachelorette parties. Took both cameras and walked left with a couple hundred great photos of the wedding party, that^[3] I’ve already edited. The wedding party and guests received the full 201 to choose from, and I only need to cull the album before publishing here. It’s a great reminder of how much better we’re doing now than in PGH, even when now planning to leave the country. Also, coming from TX, Chicago’s a breath of incredibly fresh air.

I thought I was going to an event at Apple Park this coming weekend, but my doc’s advised me to not go far until I’m fully cleared. Maybe this’ll force a slower, or at least less-avoidant pace. I don’t want less tennis, but it’s been a hell of a convenient way to not twiddle my thumbs in the face of anxiety and impotence. On the plus side, more art, and maybe better plans of what the fuck can we even do.

That, and there’s been a lot on the mind that doesn’t resolve easily. Our inner workings don’t give a damn about the Gregorian calendar.

Since getting back from our honeymoon, I’ve finished twelve books, enjoyed four-or-so TV series, watched a movie, travelled to Lake Tahoe for my nephew’s wedding, learned a few new recipes, played tennis four times weekly, designed a pitch for Walmart US, shipped two major Zello features, and started a new tennis season. I finished a case study I’d sat on since May.

Also spent a lot of time angsting. In my head. As one does.

“Finished” twelve books, not “read.” Audiobooks are great for long workdays and the commute, and for not sitting while present enough to read. Don’t get me wrong — I love to sit — but usually when disassociating into Instagram and Reddit, not when focusing on a book. I listened through The Murderbot Diaries after watching the Apple TV+ series, read^[1] Isles of the Emberdark, listened through The Broken Earth Trilogy,^[2] and most recently listened to Anji Kills a King^[3] before moving onto Katabasis.

Zello’s yearly boat party was cancelled following our uncharacteristic summer rain, but Sam was visiting from Santa Clara, and I made pizzas for the design team. This was Andrew’s first time meeting Sam in person, and our Product Advocate manager joined us for dinner at my apartment. Thank you, Neven, for the tradition.

It’s weird to learn terrible things about deceased family. You’d think that with many more people dead than are currently alive,^[4] this wouldn’t particularly matter. Andrew Jackson might’ve been an awful man, but my grandfather wasn’t just an absent grandparent, he was an awful man who I knew. That he’s recently deceased^[5] just newly frees those formerly close to him to disclose, and others to lionize him, while the rest of us can’t confront him. I often think about not wanting to die with regret, but damn, also with unresolved – or compulsorily resolved — conflict. In different ways we all want to do better than our parents and grandparents, but I’ve got a slam-dunk^[6] ahead of me.

I also can’t believe that he was unique, and then damn so many must live miserably.

Since getting back our honeymoon, I’ve perfected recipes for standard crepes, Galettes Bretonnes, and rye crepes. Mostly sweet fillings or egg-variations in the standard, lox or tuna melts in the buckwheat, and seitan reubens in the rye. It’d be hyperfixation had I not also started making garlicky cannellini beans at least twice weekly, and kale caesar regularly. I’m a man of variety.

Alex’s wedding was a time, and Tahoe was lovely. Given our distance from that family, we were happy to participate, but I felt a measurable relief in returning home to my people, and the next day having my weekly happy hour with Simon and our friends. My people are here, and while the family’s larger and often conflicted, for now our immediate family’s all together in Central Texas.

Wes, my older brother and Alex’s father, often has much to say about our dad. I’ve watched my older siblings’ relationships with him evolve over my lifetime, and I’m fortunate to have only known my father and not theirs. As I approach wanting to do better than my parents from not yet having a child, and I see my older siblings on the other side of parenthood, I can’t help but wonder if in striving to do better and differently, we invent novel ways of fucking up.^[7]

In my personal writing regarding Clyde, I dwell on what exactly we learn from our parents. We’re ourselves with thanks to and despite them, whether purposefully or not. I think it’ll be many years before I’ve unpacked Clyde’s effects on his family, and my own father’s on mine and my siblings, but I hope that while figuring that out, I can practice loving those around me such that they know they’re my world.

Quick on the heels of my first iOS app icon in MathTasks, Opt-6 Products moved on to Five Square. Players start with a five by five grid of cards, and win by consolidating those cards into a single position. Cards are consolidated by value or suite, and the game is first made more difficult by adding suites, then a bonus card that must be placed as the final move, and finally by requiring all cards be consolidated at the centermost position. It’s simple until a player finds themselves with a few irreconcilable stacks at the game’s end.

I was fourteen and entering high school at the end of the summer, and wouldn’t own an iPhone for another year. My family and I were on one of our yearly pilgrimages from Georgetown to Amarillo, and had stoped in Levelland^[1] to visit my mother’s Aunt Faye. I remember sitting at the dining table in her wood-paneled, shag-carpeted, amber-lit home,^[2] using her neighbor’s wi-fi to send card designs to Carter and George. She fortunately had a deck of cards that I used as references, seeing how to practically reduce detail to fit the cards’ 39px x 54px surface.

In addition to the card set, the game UI required (1) a selection state for cards, and (2) an emphasized state, highlighting the cards onto which the selected card could be moved. I remember being dissatisfied with them at the time, but they’re notable in that I remember trying to iterate my way to something acceptable.

Remember when you couldn’t set a wallpaper in iOS? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

By the time we’d left Amarillo a few days later, I’d finished the card table and deck assets and was moving onto finalize the app icon. We went through three separate rounds with a number of iterations apiece before arriving at our chosen variation. I’d later return here first with the iPad’s announcement in April 2010, and the shortly after with the iPhone 4‘s retina screen.

iPhone app

Settings

App Store

The three cards that gave deference to the redundant app name would later feature front-and-center in Five Square 2’s icon, and the five of hearts in Five Square 3’s.

Five Square 2 was later released in 2011, and Five Square 3 in 2020. Maybe we’ll see Five Square 4 within the decade.

At yesterday’s team lunch, a colleague asked how we remain hopeful in spite of the surrounding world, and quickly redirected her question to the rest of the table on remembering that this is why I’m leaving the country. We talked about choosing a cause and investing, and recognizing that while no one of us can impact the broader good, we can carve out an area for impact and watch ourselves do good work. The world is overwhelming, but choosing a cause and therefore encouraging yourself to focus is ultimately positive. There’s no good in ingesting every headline, but there is in making a local difference.

The conversation turned to harm reduction, and I stopped contributing. I can’t count the times that the conversation stops at harm reduction. The minimum may be all we can do, but the minimum is still good. Yet there’s no justice in the minimum, and I’ve begun to suspect that when we can do more than the minimum, our imaginations fail us. We can try to put out the fire but we can’t pull ourselves out of the ashes, and we struggle to extinguish the next. Our collective imaginations and vision of goodness is limited by how we addressed the last crisis.

The Progressive’s work is never done, and while that may mean that there’s always a greater good to strive for, it more realistically means that progressive victories are forever precarious. I hope that where we find ourselves now is a trough, and we soon find ourselves making better lives for our children.

Rest in peace.

Leelah Alcorn published her suicide note on December 28, 2014. I recently came across a journal entry I’d written shortly after,^[1] and in light of the 988 LGBTQ+ Suicide & Crisis Hotline’s closure^[2] I’ve been reflecting on the last decade’s false victories and resonating defeats. History’s a bloody pendulum swing.

Back in December 2014, I wrote:

Our hearts are so irrevocably and deeply broken. There’s nothing to say or do. You were born to a cruel, bigoted lot. Your only control in your life was in ending it. That’s perversely empowering and defeating: death’s lack of sensation is preferably to your living pain. Fuck our living oppressors, and mourn the corpses over whom they step.

It’s tough out there. While life’s so easily made worse, none of us know how to make it meaningfully or lastingly better.

I see a handful in K-12 education doing what they can to protect queer children, and I love them for it. I would’ve been a happier, healthier kid had I had that type of support, and I’m relieved to see so many teachers and administrators do their best to hold the line.

Please offer each other not just love and compassion, but also safety and protection. Check on your friends.

Much has changed since. A year ago Zello had a scattering of internally influential early adopters. This worried me, but I wasn’t sure where they’d take us. In my limited and pedestrian product thinking, I couldn’t imagine what use walkie-talkie users would have for AI-labelled, headlining, highly-marketed features.

In January the company made major strategic bets on AI as a productivity multiplier for frontline workers, at the same time using the increasingly popular rhetoric: “this is the future” and its implication, “don’t be left behind.” Like many others,^[1] we also had a push from leadership to increase internal AI use within the company, from development to Sales, Engineering, Design, and Product. As (then) Director of Design, I was directed both to find ways to use generative AI in my own work and my team’s.

On the receiving end of coercive, fear-mongering language like the above, I dig my heels in. Then on a push to eek further productivity from a hard-working team,^[2] I dig my heels in further. Finally, following an employee engagement survey where I certainly wrote more than I should’ve, I found myself treading water East of Madagascar after plummeting through the Earth’s core and out the other side.

Later that month I went out for drinks with our COO, who shared necessary market perspective, and allowed me some insight on our team’s planning talks. This helped me to see the value they envisioned, and while it matters less to the frontline workers I’ve invested in, I see the business opportunity.

Over the following months, generative AI use spread further through the company, its tendrils snaking in both where prominent and remote. Walking from my desk on one end of the office to the kitchen on the other, it’s common to see ChatGPT used for code references, content summarization, and copywriting. Some use it for research and brainstorming, and many of the early adopters use it in lieu of Google’s search engine.

My early objections aside,^[3] I worry about ChatGPT use for the basic tasks expected of our professions. A seasoned engineer can use Cursor to scaffold and even write extensive code — they know how, so they can proof the work — but when a junior follows that example, I worry they’ve lost a learning opportunity.^[4] I then worry about the seasoned engineer’s skills atrophying. These examples extend beyond the quantifiable in code output — I hope in a few years, folks will still write their own emails.^[5]

In my own use, I’ve had to weigh principle against my security and my team. Insisting on Luddism paints a target on my back, and may on my team’s as well. A principled refusal — even one built on both a concrete fear of climate impact and a respect for the tools’ stolen labor — would’ve not only hurt my options, but hurt my team by association, and risked unchecked and unguided use of generative AI tools overlapping with our work. Early in the year we clamped down on the use of image generators for unauthorized brand assets and illustrations, and so revealed the need to preempt further adoption.

Encouraged to find uses for myself and my team, I found tools like Kami to expedite our prototyping, and team members started using Cursor for work on our marketing website. I’ve used it to scaffold and even draft javascript that I didn’t want to take the time to write, and to refactor my own rough code. I built out Origami systems for use with Whisper and ChatGPT, allowing us to prototype with text to speech, translations, and a conversational partner. Working with a live voice communications tool, it’s just cool to prototype a conversation, as opposed to using prerecorded audio responses. When GPT-4o‘s image generation was released, I created a GPT to build off our illustration style to see if we could use it to further our visual design output.^[6] I’ve since then used the agent to generate large illustrated slides when pressed for time on our monthly product updates, and it does so impressively. I later started using it in my UX and documentation work. Were I to have five obvious solutions to a problem, I had tried using ChatGPT as a discussion partner to see if there were a sixth. This rarely yielded meaningful output. Lastly, I’ve started using ChatGPT to format longer bodies of content in ways my colleagues find palatable. Where I previously would have sent a Wikipedia article, or pull quotes from a research paper’s abstract, I’ve used ChatGPT to format content so that it’s more quickly consumed by colleagues. As folks grow accustomed to ChatGPT’s predictably structured output, I’ve found many colleagues preferring it to other reference materials.

As a visual designer, I’ve toyed with 4o’s image generation, and its novelty and coolness trumped my principles of a year ago. I’ve used it to apply emoji and Memoji aesthetics to my sketches, and then used those as inspiration for my own illustrations. I’ve used it to preview different palette, textural, and light treatments on my own near-finished illustrations before I take the trouble to laboriously iterate. Of course I’ve created Studio Ghibli illustrations from selfies, with the caveat, reminiscent of earlier strong-held principles, that I was doing this to see and test for myself, and not to share, therefore diluting Ghibli’s brand and IP. Vaguely echoing my sentiments a year ago, I refuse to use any generated imagery as-is, and I’m only limitedly comfortable using its output to inform my own creative work. Here its steady incentivizing and adoption wheedle their way in: I need to use it professionally, this is a way to do so, and I keep telling myself “left to my own devices, I wouldn’t.”

And then, I did. I’ve been using ChatGPT to challenge my written and spoken French, inputting my own writing and requesting grammatical and stylistic critique. This evolved to more targeted prompts when T-Mobile’s French data roaming has failed to load WordReference^[7] and BonPatron: “What’s a more natural way to say « qqch en français » and why?”

Looking back, what started as a gentle slope quickly became slippery and then sheer as I plummeted down. None of my objections from a year ago have lost ground, but professional encouragement^[8] moved me to humor what I’d found deplorable, and I increasingly gave into the cool factor. Recent past trends — Crypto, NFTs, etc etc — lacked appeal largely in that they were for consumers and true believers. Crypto bros tried applying their passion to everything without a meaningful problem to solve, and NFTs were for hucksters, new-money wannabe art buyers, and of us artists, class traitors. AI, while often a solution in search of a problem, has cool, novel, and fun elements that when allowing me to build something new is attractive.

Whatever fire I once had to push my politics in the workplace has lessened in this second Trump administration, and my desire to argue and fight is nil. I like my job and employer, and despite this growing disagreement, I would truly rather build communication tools for frontline workers than anything for comfortable individuals like me, enjoying high salaries at a standing desk in their air-conditioned office. That said and having taken a moment to pause, I dislike the person I’ve become in regards to my own gradual AI-adoption, and I need to step back and reevaluate. Zealotry is challenged by hundreds of tiny, seemingly inconsequential opportunities to bend, and I’ve found myself wrongly more excited by finding productive and acceptable uses than by enforcing my original stricter principles.

Darien started the month studying for the WSET Level Three while I prepared for Andrew to start the following week. Andrew started and Darien had her exam both on Tuesday June 10. The two weeks felt packed, but less with activity and more densely with work. I took Milo to boarding Thursday morning, and my colleagues threw a send-off happy hour on the thirteenth following our Friday Demo Day. My shoulders lightened.^[1]

Travel was easy. We flew from Austin-Bergstrom to Cincinnati^[2] and from there to Charles de Gaulle. Flights were easy and timely, though we sat in the midst of at least four screaming toddlers on the overseas flight. They harmonized well despite their relative inexperience, and by the end of the flight would’ve put your local barbershop quarter to shame. Customs at CDG was ridiculous, but after two hours we briefly emerged into the airport to then take the metro to Hôtel Taylor.

Luckily our room was ready early. We crashed for a good four hours, and emerged to walk down to the Seine. We stopped at a couple of brasseries along the way, failed to get a table at Chez Janou, ate a passable dinner a random place along the Seine,^[3] walked by Les Nautes to realize they were closed for a private event, and eventually retired to Stolly’s where we sat next to a newly-retired Houstonian^[4] and were regaled with tales of his recent misdeeds. He was formerly an oil-and-gas engineer, wearing IC Berlin glasses with no idea what he was appreciating. A dude grabbed my butt in that tight space, winked at me, and then congratulated me on my honeymoon. We got the metro back, and slept a full night.

This was my first time staying in the Tenth. It’s lovely. That next day we walked a good sixteen miles from our hotel to the Louvre, through the Tuileries, up the Champs Élysées to the Arc du Triomphe, to Place de la Concorde, then the Eiffel Tower, then Rue Cler,^[5] and then along the Seine. We angled towards Notre Dame, but decided to cut our walk short realizing the sixteen miles was pretty damn good and we could be tired if we wanted — it’s our honeymoon, and we reserve the right to do what we want. I don’t remember dinner.

Tuesday was a day trip to Champagne country. We rose early to catch the train to Épernay, arrived to a cancelled bus, and trekked the forty-five minutes up a hill and through gorgeous vineyards to Joannès Lioté et Fils, where Darien had arranged a lovely private tour and tasting with Jeremie. We walked back, got lunch, and then the bus back to a tasting at Beaumont des Crayères. We then caught the bus back, found a necessary brasserie to rest in until the return train, and returned to Paris some time in the mid to late evening.

We spent one more day exploring Paris — walking more in the Latin Quarter than I had before — and then on Thursday caught a train to Clermont-Ferrand where we rented a car, met Simon and Ariana for lunch, briefly shopped, and then drove to Auzon to spend four days with my family.

Disclaimer: spending time with family while on a honeymoon is weird. Had we not wanted to see my folks’ house in Auzon, Darien not been looking forward to this for years, and spend time with them in the countryside, we wouldn’t’ve. We did, and it was a great time.

Simon had discussed with us months prior, and asked if we could be around when he proposed to Ariana. This became a few days in Auzon where we had an incredibly time. Darien saw the beautiful village and region for the first time, and I saw what my folks had done and we hope to continue on the house. Darien met — and I reconnected with — friends I hadn’t seen in a decade. We both got a small preview of what life could be like if we chose to rest there for a couple of months, between leases, enjoying the green countryside and birdsong.

In no particular order, we visited the Auberge at Chassignolles, a friend’s garden in Riol,^[6] my childhood neighbor’s restaurant La Table du Charbon, the relatively new Café des Simples, and Orfenor. We had a lovely board game night and on another, grilled fish, halloumi, and peaches. We hiked in town, and then around town, and still have more to do. Simon, Ari, Darien, and I took four hours canoeing the Allier. Most importantly, Simon proposed to Ariana at Léotoing and she said “yes!”

Family time over, Darien and I spent a night in Clermont-Ferrand. Our grand meal was a lunch shortly after arrival, at Comptoir Central de Bazars, Harry Lester’s new restaurant. He ran the aforementioned Auberge when I was a child — I remember a party around a whole roast pig, and then playing soccer in the parking lot when I was fourteen — and then moved on to Le Saint Eutrope. I’d visited his bio wine bar once when seeking my last tourist visa, but hadn’t had the privilege of a full meal of his. We let him know in advance that we don’t eat meat, and he prepared a lovely Ray wing with accompanying asparagus, snap peas, and greens, which Darien paired with the local 2022 Festjar! rosé. It couldn’t have been better.

We then continued to Bordeaux this last Wednesday, where I’m now writing. We explored for a day much like in Paris though fortunately not sixteen miles. We met up with my old French professor and photographic inspiration Robin Benzrihem, whom Darien hadn’t yet met. Friday the 27th we toured a Chateau Pape Clément, and the next day we attended photographic exhibit at MAP Galerie. Sunday, we walked the Marché du Quai des Chartrons and took a day trip to Saint Emilion where we climbed the clocher. We’ve taken it easy as a heatwave rolled in, and today took the hottest part of the day in the air conditioning at Cité du Vin, regrouped in our cold and cavelike hotel, and now I’m at a bar writing before we get dinner. At some point we started listening to Elle Reeve’s Black Pill, and it’s been a refrain as we recharge in air conditioning at the hotel. The sun sets between ten and eleven, and I love the extended daylight. We found a delightful bar with good vegetarian options for dinner — tonight, aubergine schnitzel.

Wednesday, we return to Paris. Saturday, to the US. Monday, to work. I’m relaxed, recharged, and can’t wait for our move.

I was promoted to Design Director from team lead following our December 2021 brand update, taking on a marketing designer and junior product designer as direct reports, and managed them for a year and a half before growing the team.

Zello’s 2023 Product organization was built upon three pillars — Core,^[2] Growth, and Enterprise — and we decided to hire a Product Designer for each, which required I offload my remaining IC work, primarily design and development for zello.com. I hired a talented Design Engineer to own zello.com while adding other technical skills from high fidelity prototyping to video editing, and a Product Designer for Enterprise. My earlier designer worked in the Core team, and we brought over a high-potential Junior Product Designer from our Product Advocates for Growth.

The designer on Enterprise didn’t work out, and then his successor received an unbeatable offer from Spotify only a month after starting this last November. Shortly before his hire, I’d let my inherited product designer go. It was a rough half year. I went into 2025 expecting to replace one of the lost product designers, and cover the remaining gap myself until the team’s output has stabilized.

This size of team meant that I could reliably provide product design IC work for our Core and Enterprise teams — with any more reports, I would’ve been precluded of IC availability. We’d found that the Core team needed a deep degree of Zello product and platform knowledge, and that was difficult to hire for while not having a margin for labor hours. However, we added a fourth team tasked to reassess old and new product problems with new AI technologies, and once again we needed increased design resources.

We started the year seeking a new product designer, but with the passage of time it became increasingly intimidating to accomplish this while keeping apace with my own life goals. Darien and I had planned to leave Texas following the election and our wedding. Moving back from Pittsburgh was not permanent, and leaving Texas for a blue state was a given.^[3] Now, we doubt that by the time our eventual^[4] children are in school, that the remainder of the country will be meaningfully more hospitable than the Hell we call home. Of the few things the Heritage Society and I agree on: there’s no time like the present.

So we segued from hiring a senior IC to hiring an experienced manager, looking to this role less to increase IC bandwidth and more to perform my managerial responsibilities and broadening our team’s abilities. For example, a manager with research experience, or with hardware experience, would’ve excelled. We still needed an individual who could do the work themselves and to our benchmark, but certainly no full-time IC.

In early June and the end of my directorship, the team was Sam Valdez, a wildly talented marketing designer turned visual and brand designer, Riley Sheehan, Design Engineer focusing on design and development for zello.com, and Angela Cerrillo, a Product Designer focused within Zello’s Growth team. I was split between our Core and AI teams, with Enterprise occasionally needing attention, and working with Angela on larger projects for Growth.

Rewind to October 2021, and I’m discussing design career paths with my manager,^[5] and how we can build out both experienced IC and managerial tracks. We want to grow our team with minimal managerial overhead while optimizing for internal growth and expertise. I wanted managerial experience for myself, but felt strongly that with a relatively junior team at the time, my primary value was as an IC. After three and a half years, we’ve found ourselves now back in that position. I’m glad to have had the experience, and that I can now choose to apply it elsewhere in the future. Now, I look forward to learning from another’s example while reflecting on my own.

I’ve been fortunate at Zello to often do whatever I’ve wanted. They hired me as a student, and despite being an Austin-based company, retained me while I studied a semester in Lyon, continued to work with me when I moved to Belgium for two years, and then again as I moved to Pittsburgh for two years. I joined the company at such a stage that I could shape Design’s role at the company — our team owns the marketing website because I was both a designer and engineer, and we needed to bring the project in-house. The company I first started working with had contracted UI and visual designers, but never prototypers, researchers, and full-stack product designers. We’ve had the privilege of shaping our role via the value we deliver, and that’s only limited by our skillset.

Unfortunately this mindset became detrimental to myself and my team where following years of, arguably, over-indexing on my IC skills and working as a ”player-coach”^[6] manager meant that we had high output but lacking strategic leadership. Their leader was elbows-deep in the muck.^[7] Within the last six months and desiring to return from IC work to a leadership role, the IC demands on my time were such that I simply couldn’t do both. I had spent disproportionate time over the last year first addressing difficulties within my team, and then supplementing the lost IC bandwidth. At this point, I could rinse and repeat, or work towards our planned move and try something else.

”Something else” is the intersection of multiple goals. I return to a Staff Designer role, and hire a design manager. This maintains current design bandwidth while adding a manager to handle team internals and hiring, which previously took my time from backfilling our IC bandwidth. This allows us to again leave Austin.^[8]

Importantly to Zello, this introduces an experienced leader with both practiced and new ideas to both my design team and to our greater leadership. While I demonstrably enjoyed my IC work, I was increasingly concerned with our hiring strategy. Leadership increasingly stretched my IC bandwidth between multiple teams, and I worried that this would continue despite my growing inability to meet demand. Increasingly often until in full, we had to cut usability testing from new projects because we lacked labor hours. When advocating to hire specialized roles — at different times a visual designer, a motion graphics designer, or a researcher — those who celebrated my team’s diverse specializations asked “why can’t the visual designer run a usability study?”^[9] This was difficult to address while struggling to meet demand for design output, and now I can focus on those parts I know how to do, and learn from a more experienced manager’s example.

I enjoyed much of my former position. As Director, I could affect a greater degree of design continuity between organizations, and was more involved in broader product strategy than I will be as a focused Staff Designer. I had a freedom to jump between projects and focuses and the company scaled, and maintain a similar vantage to my early perspective in the company, despite the company’s output having grown dramatically. I could proactively make the design and product teams into teams that I, with my limited perspective, assumed other designers would want to work for. I tried to balance Zello’s engineering and product biases with design-driven ideation and user-centered concerns. While I can now apply these to my own projects and advocate for them in the larger organization, my impact is limited to my appeal, and I’m no evangelist. As time stretched, I realized that I both wanted for myself and the team to do more, and I did not know how to broaden our reach. We wanted research, but struggled to meet IC quotas. We wanted rapid experimentation, but struggled to meet production and implementation timelines. Having increasingly felt impotent in the face of theses catch-22s, I felt that this was no longer for me.

I’m relieved to sit back, to do what I do best, and to see how an experienced manager develops our design team, brings new practices to the company, and furthers the place and function of design within our leadership. In the meantime, I can focus on my goals while doing what I do best.

This last Memorial Day weekend I realized that when not filling my time, I have a difficult time enjoying relaxation. There’s a discomfort—if not anxiety—in being still.

In the interest of working on this, I’m starting a month-in-review routine.

April 24 through 27, Darien and I visited her brother Ryan in Tupelo, MS, where he and his wife Anna just bought their first house. Ryan’s a pediatric dentist and had to work the Friday after we arrived, and I kid you not, welcomed us with free teeth cleanings.^[1] A week later, we took May 2 through 4 in Pasadena for my niece’s wedding, and when Darien returned to Texas that Sunday, I flew to San Francisco for Config. I worked remotely from SF the full week—attending Config Tuesday through Thursday while bookending the week with social visits, good food, and long walks through my favorite city. Finally, May 10, I arrived home.

Three weeks in motion rolled directly into Ariana’s—my brother’s girlfriend’s—graduation dinner. She completed her Masters in Social Work and graduated that day.

The following week I spent hurriedly catching up at work, and purchased a new personal computer. My last personal device was a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro and died mid-2023, and I wasn’t going to the expense to replace it while saving for our wedding. We also finalized our Paris and Bordeaux hotels, leaving little left to reserve for our honeymoon.l

That weekend of the 17th we attended SOCO Women’s ChorusSprint concert, and then celebrated Ari’s graduation with her family in Houston and squeezed in a visit to Darien’s sister, Casey.

This following workweek was dense, but was highlighted by successfully hiring my replacement. I’m stepping into a staff design role as Darien and I plan our move to France, contingent on brining in new managerial talent to allow me to work from the E.U. I’m excited for this next chapter, and the buffer provided by hiring my replacement now.^[2] I think I’m done with management for now, and while I look forward to returning to a leadership trajectory in the future, I need a break and a return to foundations and craft.

Last weekend I killed at my first competitive USTA tennis match in a decade, and spent the rest of the weekend trying to relax. The exhaustion was there, but being able to enjoy relaxing, less so. I set the new laptop up for gaming—I hadn’t in years—and was shocked to find I was uncomfortable spending that time without an overtly productive output.

This week’s been calmer, and I’ve enjoyed lightweight gaming. We’ll see if that sticks. Ari passed her ASWB exam yesterday, and now looks forward to vacationing stress-free. We celebrate my dad’s 86th birthday tomorrow, and he and my mom travel to Auzon for the summer on June 4. Simon and Ari, now both on school schedules, following a week later. Darien and I depart on June 14 and among other destinations, will spend five days with them in Auzon between Paris and later Bordeaux.

I work the first two weeks of this coming month, and then I’m back to work in July. This is a reset, and I both look forward to it, and a healthier normal starting in July.

Others have spoken to Star Wars’ cultural anchors through the later twentieth century, and I don’t need to rehash. It’s an allegory of empire, opposition, colonialism, and faith. It famously aligns itself with the attitudes of the decade — the prequel trilogy’s most visible antagonists were an independence movement and an incompetent Senate.^[3] Today’s offerings are multifold, varying from pulling at adult fans’ nostalgia, creating new fans, and appealing to the non-fan’s desire for relevance.

I just watched Season 2 Episode 8: Who Are You?, and I’m tired. The fictional language created for these soon-colonized people is a mix of Quebecois and German — just enough to evoke a contradicting melange of “foreign,” “Robespierre,” and “blue collar” in the viewer. Their “the galaxy is watching” chant obliquely invites “The whole world is watching.” And while leaning into the poor-horse-beaten-to-death narrative that is the empire and resistance, thank you for making obvious who are the good guys. Surely, had police when cracking down on pro-Gaza protestors in Summer 2024 worn stormtrooper gear, it would’ve helped the general public understand who the Good Guys were. The story’s insistence that the Bad Guy hides their face behind a mask, or is an overt fascist, or worships someone visibly hellbent on genocide, prevents the less-imaginative among us from realizing that their neighborhood cop is as more likely than others to be a wife-beating armed fascist.

To head off the detractors, this isn’t a silly, gatekeeping “hurr only the true fans are anti-cop.” My point’s that when fiction makes it overwhelmingly and unrealistically clear who are their Good Guys, and then mixes it with relatability and popularity, it muddies viewer’s decision-making, media literacy, and may even prevent productive use of frustration. This juxtaposition of the relatable and the unbelievable is so far not only unproductive, but distracting.

There’s more to criticize, but that’s the crux of it. These stories and their convenient narratives lead to intellectual laziness. I want to enjoy dumb media, but the more it both leans into the modern and relevant while pandering to narratives of revolution, I worry that it unproductively scratches an itch and therefore prevents us from doing something about it — that we’re satisfied by arguing with someone in our head.^[4]

We had planned to update our 2011 release of Five Square with expanded gameplay settings and clearer How to Play instructions; however, Apple’s Game Center announcement in 2010 prompted us to reassess Five Square’s visual treatment. Additionally, in the time since our first release, the iPad had been announced and we wanted to ship a Universal app to take advantage of that opportunity.

I designed play screens (the card table), settings and performance screens, and a new icon that were in line with Apple’s new visual language, as well as iterating over gameplay directions, settings, and statistics to track user improvement game-over-game.

iPad app

iPhone app

Settings

App Store

Five Square was removed from the App Store some time around 2020, and having been built against a no-longer-supported iOS SDK, it’s no longer available as a downloadable purchase. However, a demo of the game is available above, originally built by Carter and George for the marketing website.

We had planned to revisit Five Square with drag-and-drop, but that update wouldn’t be seen until its 2021 renewal.

Consumers’ environmental or ethical concerns do not always translate into their purchasing behaviour… The attitude-behaviour gap has not been totally understood. Consumers’ purchasing decisions are irrational and not always well connected with their values.

Vehmas et al. (2018)

I was flummoxed earlier this week on hearing a couple of friends jokingly but seriously say that Chick Fil A’s food is worthwhile enough to ignore the company’s politics. They didn’t say it so directly — instead more offhandedly, sarcastically, humor in “I’m so weak for fried chicken” and subversion in not just compromising values but in being a queer couple doing so.

They’re younger, my brother’s cohort, on the older end of Gen Z, in that same range embracing Shein and to a lesser degree, Temu, but I often see this same mindset amongst Millenials. Aponte et al. (2024) confirm this dissonance: “Forever 21, Zara, and H&M… [target] consumers from Generation Y… and Generation Z… The high consumption of fast fashion by these two demographic cohorts has triggered extensive resource use, resulting in significant environmental costs and substantial impacts on the climate.”

These individual friends are less entrenched in disposability and consumerism, but reflect a similar nihilism for which organizers lack a playbook.

I talk with others about how we can politically motivate younger crowds while feeling a similar if less-acted-upon nihilism ourselves. In a second Trump term, the opposition has categorically failed and our elected officials are criminally ineffective. What’s the point?

I feel the nihilism creep in when considering the impact of personal choice. I shouldn’t shop at Amazon, but the impact of my individual choice is nil. Why not when it doesn’t matter?^[1]

I’ve seen limited success with BDS in combatting nihilism. Scale and visible impact justifies individual action where otherwise individual action is a pebble in a sea.

Today in discussing Chick Fil A, I realized that the impact of my individual action has little to do with my behavior, and maybe that’s a way to sidestep the “what does it matter?” In my case, as a self-respecting bi man, why the fuck would I give them a dime?

I’d like to see Chick Fil A not survive the next recession and I sure would love to see my peers and the youth live in ideological consistency. I sure would love to see my queer and queer-supporting friends decide that shitty fast food really isn’t worth the insult. In the meantime, my self-respect is enough of a reason to abstain.

I’m unsure how this scales, but I’m workshopping ideas. My individual impact by avoiding Amazon is nil, but regardless, Amazon isn’t entitled to my patronage. My community deserves better than the death of local business, and more than employment only via an Amazon distribution center.[^2‘] We’re entitled to more than this grim path of least resistance.

Blessed are those who weep.

Luke 6:21

Darien, Simon, Ariana, and I attended St. Andrews’ today where none other than James Talarico delivered the Easter sermon. Jim’s on medical leave, and Talarico’s a local celebrity.^[1]

When we’re lucky enough to all attend together, we discuss the service through the following afternoon. This time, Darien and I had plenty to discuss on the drive from church, and then on reconvening, Simon opened conversation with the exact points we’d just discussed.

I’m increasingly frightened by our culture’s idolization of nonviolence. Talarico’s sermon regularly touched on Jesus as the nonviolent radical, and the early church’s^[2] resistance against Rome. From “Palm Sunday was not a parade. It was a protest” to “God didn’t invent the Cross — the Romans did.”

Another Talarico quote helps to segue: “We want to ride a warhorse, but Jesus rides a donkey.” In blindly revering Jesus’ nonviolence, we fail to recognize a broader picture in which nonviolence was one of many tools within a decentralized independence movement.^[3]

Talarico contrasted his idea of Christianity with Trump’s obsessing with winning, and arrived at his tongue-in-cheek sermon title. “Christian nationalists reject what they call ‘loser theology’… [they]^[4] said that ‘we cannot afford to be divine losers. We need to win. I want to reward my friends, and crush my enemies’.”

To this crowd of of tired progressives, “divine losers” holds rhetorical appeal similar to “when they go low, we go high.” Look how much good that did us, nine years later.

Nonviolence is a tool by which to draw attention to oppressive violence, but is so often used both to gatekeep forms of protest and to establish an act’s acceptability. We want our acts of protest to be nonviolent, so we plan demonstrations in which we are only violence’s recipients.

Where our oppressors act shamelessly, disregarding the world watching, they employ violence with abandon regardless of our pacifism. Proudly holding to nonviolence while a boot’s on our neck only gets us crushed.

Talarico’s sermon had a number of nice points, but I walked realizing that white^[5] progressives can comfort themselves knowing that “Jesus lost, too.” We all need the space to console ourselves and regroup, but as we distraughtly ask “what can we do now?” we can’t afford to focus on the unimpactful. The moral high ground doesn’t save lives.

I joked that maybe white people just shouldn’t talk about nonviolence. However, when advocated for by the oppressed and dispossessed, we should listen.

That said, there was validation in his message that I needed to hear. “If your heart is breaking right now, it means you still have a heart.”

Listen to the sermon.

Hover over a highlighted part of the interface to learn more.

Zach and I began by appraising our ideal GTD solution. We wanted novelty, but without monopolizing the user’s focus. At a time when desktop and mobile UIs were increasingly visually rich and illustrative, we took plenty of liberty in visual design. But, its core was a simple task list. It didn’t need to occupy the user’s screen and demand larger-scale management. It didn’t need to scale from simple list items to complex multidimensional and interdependent tasks.

It needed a main view with tasks, groups of tasks, and mutually-exclusive groups of groups. Furthermore, we planned a detail view allowing for a task description, start and end dates, attached files, and further information.

I designed an app icon and interface icons for the Preferences window.

From left to right: general, categories, and appearance.

As a self-taught newcomer to product design and development, I often worked backwards from the product that I wished existed, designing what I desired others build. Like a lot of ideas then — it was fun, and left incomplete.

I’ve been writing case studies chronologically, and am nearing completion on the earliest I intend to highlight: a project that I started in 2011, and earlier, an app icon from 2008. I was a teenager and kid respectively, and had dabbled in web development and visual design in the three to four years before that. Nostalgia’s on the mind.

My eighth grade school year was Winter 2008 through Spring 2009, and I was homeschooled for a year.^[1] I’d created a few websites and wanted to design icons and build apps, and while I had done what I could with the time available outside of school, homeschool was truly my unsupervised-child-online experience. After a rough two years beforehand at a small private school, it was a relief when my mother asked me if I didn’t want to go back for the third year. And while I’m unsure my parents^[2] knew what they were doing, it was a necessary respite to transition from an insular seven-kid-pecking-order to a 5A highschool. ^[3]

That year, I met Alex Rogahn — maybe via Twitter, DeviantArt^[4], or MacThemes — it doesn’t particularly matter. He was maybe a couple of years younger than me, and like me presented an awkward kid with oodles of time to learn skills: web development and Photoshop. Specifically, we were both creating sets of 32 pixel stock icons for OS X, inspired by Jonas Rask‘s Danish Royalty Free Icons.

The work was terrible, and I deleted it and my entire DeviantArt profile a few years later when I started receiving commercial interest and I didn’t want much online documenting my young age and earlier work.^[5] I’m checking with a few archivist friends, but it’s a low likelihood it still exists anywhere. That said, it was also highly educational. Alex and I shared PSDs back and forth and regularly video-chatted^[6] to discuss methods and application.

This is all preamble and context and waxing amounting to that today, when checking in on folks I remember having worked with in some capacity, I learned that in November 2018 — over six years ago — Alex committed suicide.^[7]

At the time, I had finished my undergraduate and was living in Belgium. Alex and I had already not spoken in years. I’d made a new Facebook account to distance from the Cambridge Analytica fallout discourse, added only those recently relevant to me or with whom I proactively kept up, and I missed Alex.

I remember that in addition to visual design and web development, he was a musician. I remember keeping in touch as we first aged into high school, and being surprised to hear him talking about his girlfriend moving in. I remember him talking about Asberger’s, anxiety, and depression. I remember him talking about hid coping, his vices, and I remember my eventual pulling away as the compensation became dangerous.

And of course we significantly fell out of touch over the years, though I thought I’d checked in on him more recently than over six years ago. He was a good friend at a unique year of my childhood, and were it possible, I’d thank him for that.

In the mix of graphic design we also spoke like people and I was unknowningly privileged and relieved to find a fellow kid who felt out of place. While I was a normatively misfit kid, he had more going on, but I — I can’t presume we and can no longer ask — felt a sense of recognition from him. Peerage and friendship.

As I later came into my politics and realized I wasn’t straight, I surrounded myself with mutually-validating friends. My local generation took much for granted regarding mental health. Of course the queer teens, the neurodivergent teens, the depressed teens, the kids suffering abuse at home, all engaged in these trappings: substance abuse, self harm, suicidal ideation. We also had each other, our drama, and our camaraderie.

There are so few of these people that I still know, and I hope that they’re all okay.

I made those! Actually, 53. This recipe fortunately yields a practical six instead.

Since first enjoying Liège waffles on my first visit to Leuven in 2017, I’ve wanted to find a version I could recreate at home. It wasn’t until moving to Pittsburgh five years later that I finally took the time to do so.^[1]

Googling, I found a couple dozen recipes that all looked picturesque, but I had no way of judging their quality, and I was put off by photos of these waffles wearing fresh fruit and dustings of powdered sugar.^[2] Fortunately I’d met a a retired Belgian expat in town who’d opened Treat, serving the closest waffles I’d found in the States. He told me to specifically keep an eye out for (1) recipes without milk—you can’t get the same texture— and (2), an overnight rise.

I eventually found Adam Wayda’s recipe, his advanced recipe, and his experiments in which he regularly milled his own flour. This goes too hard for me, but one’s got to respect the hustle.

The following recipe contains only slight modifications to his, based significantly more on convenience than improvement. This is modified now for my current Texan kitchen, which often runs warmer and more humid than other parts of the country, so some times are modified. I’m reprinting it here in admiration and to preserve it as online platforms progressively deteriorate.

Directions

1. In your stand mixer, dissolve yeast in warm^[3] water, allowing it to rest for a few minutes. Add a third of your flour and half of your eggs. Mix until consistent.
2. Cover the mixture with the remainder of your flour, without stirring. Let it stand for one hour, covered airtight with plastic wrap. You’ll return to the wet batter bubbling up through the flour.
3. Add the remaining half of your eggs, light brown sugar, vanilla extract, and honey.
4. With your mixer’s paddle attachment, mix on the lowest speed. Scrape down the bowl regularly to ensure no unmixed flour. After 15-20 minutes the dough should form into a ball around the paddle.
5. Add the butter in tablespoon increments over the course of 10 minutes. You should see them fully incorporate, and not rush.
6. Continue scraping, waiting for the dough to ball again. This should take under 5 minutes.
7. Scrape the dough into a large bowl covered airtight with plastic wrap, and allow it to rise at room temperature for four hours.^[4]
8. Punch down to relieve some (but not all) air from the dough. Then, allow it to rest in your refrigerator overnight.
9. The next day, take the dough from the fridge. Portion each into six balls weighing 114g apiece. If not cooking immediately, wrap these tightly in plastic wrap and freeze. When cooking from the freezer, make sure to move them from to the refrigerator the night before to gently defrost.^[5]
10. Then add 1/6 of your pearl sugar to each ball, both on the surface and within the dough.
11. Shape each into an oval, allowing a 90 minute rise loosely under a warm, damp cloth.
12. Cook in your waffle iron to the desired doneness.

I’ll write these comical dialogs another time. They further reduce to snide and nihilistic debates investigating the value of—in this case—small, performative acts.

Old Wil leans into, one, the idea that performative acts are to the detriment of productive action. Consider: expressing rage becomes an outlet in itself, and so instead of channeling energy into outcomes, we expend energy toward a zero-sum. This encourages complacency. Performativity becomes not just a means, but an ends, accomplishing nothing while patting oneself’s back. Old Wil, two, then argued that this allows for false friends: Congressional Dems enrobing themselves in kente cloth meant jack shit when they continually failed their electorate. In my own smaller-scale but directly harmful experience, I observed on three occasions that academic language was so easily imitated as to allow abusers into otherwise safe spaces.

Old Wil made the point that performativity is inauthentic because it’s for the sake of audience as opposed to personal self-expression. This devalues self-expression for its own sake, which in itself is a poor practice. If your self expression is worthwhile to you and performs no meaningful harm, Today Wil says to have fun.

As a straight-passing queer white dude, Old Wil was regularly frustrated by hearing progressive overtures from his actually-straight white male colleagues, resented their posturing in lieu of action, and was growingly disappointed in white progressive’ vocal and loud impotence. Pod Save talks about Trumps’ evils, but what do they do?

Today Wil is still disappointed in the white progressives. Unlike moderate Democrats with their further-left factors, Today Wil empathizes with Old Wil: his younger, vitriolic, and debatably less-defeated ally.

Today Wil argues that when a part of—or allying with—disadvantaged and harassed populations, language and signs are an important means of ingroup signaling, and that signaling is inherently performative. If one doesn’t bother to visibly share their perspectives until there’s opportunity for impact, others looking for friendship, connection, and a safe outlet are left in silence. If one has the comfort and privilege—in my case, as a confrontational straight-passing white dude—use it judiciously, but use it. Don’t grow fond of your voice, but use it enough to be a known element to those who need it.^[2] Otherwise the onus is on those hurting more to actively seek safe spaces, and we fail to connect—ultimately fail to organize.

There are challenges—if one finds themselves in isolation, your role can be to create a space where wider expression is safe. Be wary of speaking for others, or worse, speaking over others. Performance creates a space where together we can do better work, but is not then work in itself, and so it behooves us to regularly self-check.

Today Wil argues that if we nickel-and-dime the ways in which we engage, and furthermore that if we criticize the ways in which others engage, we approach nihilism. Where does the critic’s idea of performativity end? A Facebook post is performative. A discussion with colleagues without resulting action is performative. Joining a protest is performative. Newcomers are left with no options, ridiculed by the knowledgable theorist for trying.

As a young teenager through my undergraduate,^[3] I volunteered at the St. Andrew’s Food Pantry regularly for six, maybe seven years. I remember a related internal debate over that time: is this action the most impactful thing I can do?

Towards the end of my time at Pantry, I joined the church’s Mission Committee. It turns out that I’m not particularly satisfied by the planning aspect, either. Even if after years of volunteer hours, clients still need help, it’s worthwhile help to give—and someone must.

We prioritize impact and measurable harm reduction, and so we must regularly asses the effectiveness of our actions. However, obsessive analysis and reprioritization leads to gatekeeping and nihilism. One’s actions don’t have to be the most impactful to be worthwhile; we offer the energy at hand.

So I’m putting my “Fuck Greg Abbott” bumper sticker back, because it lets y’all know that I’m one of the cool kids, and that’s good.

It’s difficult to write about one’s work when caring more about craft—I’m no Design Evangelist. I love Design as a field and craft, but I don’t talk much about what Design is or what Design does. I like to show more than I like to tell, and that does a poor job at scale.

Design’s shape is ambiguous.^[1] That said, Design is a number of things, and so is Design at Zello.

Design is the way of things—the way things are crafted, built, and experienced. In this way, everyone’s a designer. Backend engineers design APIs, and salespeople implicitly and explicitly design customer journeys. This is Design, but not Design at Zello.

Design at Zello is specifically responsible for the visual design, UI, and UX of our Android, iOS, and Desktop apps. We’re responsible for that of Zello Bridge, Zello Kiosk, and zello.com. We pride ourselves in helping to craft easy-to-use products that are not only better than the competition—often, that bar is low—but that also delight our end users. We’re responsible for the Zello brand—from screen and print assets, to icon libraries and copywriting guides and brand voice. It’s in this same multidisciplinary perspective that Zello Design is responsible for the engineering and maintenance of zello.com—the way of things is not limited to a specific medium, and so one finds engineers, but also prototypers, researchers, and others, amongst designers.

Design as a field is unconstrained, and is rather a mindset, process, and set of broad skills that can be applied across different projects.

If Design is this amorphous, what delineates it from other crafts? Everyone designs, but what makes a Designer, and what makes a Designer at Zello?

Designers are specifically concerned with the how of solving a problem—a product manager has identified an impactful problem, or a marketer needs a campaign, and a designer delivers the how. The Designer is concerned not just with the production, but judges their outcomes based on audience understanding—how does the end user interact with our product? How does the end user utilize a newly shipped feature? Design differs from art in that art’s success is not market-determined, whereas design exists within a marketplace in part differentiated via usability and novelty.

Our designers judge their work through an often personal lens of aesthetic and craft, and an impersonal, broader, user-centered lens. We bolster that broader lens via heuristic evaluations, usability testing, and other reality checks. Craft is both subjective and communal, but we work against biased subjectivity.

The Design I practice and build at Zello is an intersection of what gets it built, and designers at Zello are expected to occupy that intersection of crafts which get it done.

Demand accountability. Transparency and direct conversation help. I’ve known similarly-behaved individuals, and despite the unpleasantness of the process, the only effective tactic is to leave no quarter for ambiguity. I recall a colleague—using much of Manton’s similar empathetic framing: “we’re on the same side and splitting small hairs”— saying verbatim that “the Proud Boys are good men.” We’re entitled to our opinions, but one’s privacy to them cannot be taken for granted where their opinions cause harm. The least we can do for ourselves is to know the face of our oppressor, and then act with that knowledge.

Somewhere in Adam’s many Mastodon posts, he makes an implicit(?) point that in these moments of unease where many of us are looking for safe communities, it behooves us to plainly share our thoughts, exposing those sea lions^[2] who can’t.

Quoting Robb, it shouldn’t need to be said. Fuck Nazis, transphobes, and the rest. Adam’s People Pledge is a great broad sentiment, but I believe that in these times we need to explicitly spell out potential ambiguities.^[3] Even a competent president couldn’t legislate away the rich tapestry of gender identity and experience, let alone this witless administration. There exists infinite space in which to express the milieu of genders and sexualities. The diversity of human experience is emergent—it can be intimidated, oppressed, and culled, and each time it blooms these facts are self-evident.

Here’s a photo. View our talented photographers’ portfolio, and consider hiring them, at jyangphoto.com

Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together, we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take… If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation… It takes a lifetime to learn another person… When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season

Darien and I were married on Saturday. I started writing a version of this three days before, thought “what the hell am I doing?” and went back to preparation including completing my vows and statement. As a child, the first church where I belonged had members write their own vows. This made sense. As a chronic skeptic, I wanted to write my own vows. Were something not in my own words, I don’t know that I’ve truly internalized it.

At my bachelor party the previous weekend, a friend told me that she looks forward to her boyfriend proposing. She too had objected to marriage, and I was surprised that she’s now discussing wedding budgets. Paraphrasing her words, it means a lot to him, she wants him to be happy, and her previous objection pales compared to his perspective and their shared values. I’d considered before whether that would be enough for me, and it wasn’t. Marriage as a compromise is imbalanced, and I can’t commit myself to something without intrinsic personal meaning. Between my own writing, discussion with Darien, and discussion with Jim, I can describe that meaning in first principles.

My feelings regarding marriage changed when Darien and I first discussed our life goals. I wouldn’t say I “didn’t believe” in marriage—how do you not “believe” in such a finite and measurable institution? I can’t observe and therefore don’t believe in a god, and so I call myself an atheist. Marriage is observable, but often it and its outcomes are disagreeable. So I objected to marriage. A couple’s commitment and mutual love exists platonically, independently of the state and outside observers. We can have and raise kids without reinforcing marriage’s rigid gender norms and expectations. Our mutual feelings don’t need the state’s approval or the peerage of bad actors using marriage as a means of control. Why be party to an institution that enshrines men to the detriment of women’s agency? I can’t abstain^[1] to the privileges granted me within patriarchy, but I could object to its tools in—among others—marriage.

We discussed on kids, community, and the drive forward.^[2] Lifelong learning, continual renewal, and the fear of entropy.^[3] A dearth of self-reliance becomes codependence, but in recognizing that we better each other we observe our smallness amongst the human experience. We’re small, and have so much to gain and so far to grow. ^[4]

I’ve realized that I can be party to marriage as a mutual commitment to continually build each other up, and to grow together. I object to love as possessive restriction, but recognize that together we create a love that mutually reinforces and improves. Margaret L’Engle wrote: “Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.”

Marriage is, to me, recognizing that I look forward not just to growing old together, but being continually improved by your presence. The person I am pales beside the person I’ll be with you.

In Saturday’s ceremony, Jim had us read our own statements of intent to each other. Mine follows.

Darien, I know we’ve seen many different examples of love and partnership.  Marriage as a commitment can be either limiting or enriching, controlling or freeing, possessive or widening. Marriage as an institution can be either stifling or secure. We’ve seen Love be self-justifying and excusatory, whereas it can instead call us to a higher mutual standard.

Because of you, I know that love is not just emotion, but an invitation to become more. I intend for us a love that leaves a better world. Ours will be a love that calls us to responsibility and accountability, built upon our word and mutual respect. Ours be a love that opens, and continues the rest of our lives.

My mother read the opening L’Engle quote, and then we spoke vows to each other as a mutual covenant. Jim proposed these vows to us following conversation with us both, and they couldn’t have been closer to what we both needed from each other.

Darien, I take you as my partner in life.

I promise to grow with you and learn from you in all the years ahead.

I promise our home will always be safe for you physically and emotionally.

I will work with you to make this a kinder and wiser world.

I promise to love you for the rest of my life.

Now I need to go change my name. “Nichols-Higgins” has an exciting ring.

We raise generations of Barbie dolls to believe they are lionesses, when so many of us are still being shaped into lambs ready for the Jeffrey Epstein slaughter. Only if we make it through can we renegotiate the ending.

A society that takes on the logic of a predator, that defends, even glorifies, the chaser, has set a foundational rot. A world that loves its men not just far more than it loves its women, but more even than it loves its children, its girls, can never be just.

Rose Hackman, published in The Guardian

Very often, the healthiest person has to leave.

Jim Rigby, in conversation on December 20, 2024

I’m deliberating how to weave these threads together without alienating you, my reader,^[1] by oversharing.

My fiancée has decided to no longer speak to her parents, and to weather the consequences of family and self-doubt in exchange for the control of asserting agency over her environment, its interactions, and her life in years to come.

I’ve been present through this decision, and heard it discussed through out periphery: directly to, and indirectly around her. Regardless of whether third parties are courageous enough to speak to her directly, there’s a common thread that mistakes her agency for causality, and misplaces causality at her feet. “Why would you do this?”

Many in this periphery are informed, aware, and intelligent individuals. Yet when engaging, they comment towards their personal discomfort in her decision: “what did they discuss?” and the performatively-woke “did she try therapy? Family therapy?”^[2] And given this time of year: “is she going home for the holidays?” Or, pending our wedding: “what if she regrets this in twenty years? Could she hold her nose?”

Despite knowing what happens in families, and to young girls worldwide, reactions consistently limit consideration to her choice. In the best case, “why did she cut them off?” is nearsighted. In a more dishonest case, it knowingly obfuscates the reality of lived experience: that a parent must’ve really fucked up for their child to cut them out of their lives. We damn well know the shapes this takes.

This shape resembles a society that blames young girls and women for their assault, and enshrines their abusers. This shape—assertively on the part of overt misogynists and implicitly by the concerned liberal—teaches and reinforces that victims are responsible for both their abuse and their response to abuse. This framework teaches society “to bemoan the loss of innocence in girls and women, while simultaneously lusting after them” (Rose Hacket, The Guardian). This patriarchal underpinning so pervades that even the well-meaning progressive implicitly blames the victim. Why would you do this to your parents?

We discussed with Jim Rigby on Friday, and while I wasn’t surprised by his perspective, I was both deeply appreciative and impressed by his readiness. Instead of the repeated “why would you?”, he responded that “very often, the healthiest person has to leave.” Like the accusers, he recognized her agency, but he lauded her decision and agency.

Worse is the well-intentioned but critically-unthinking: “this is so sad, why would you do this?” One recognizes tragedy but misattributes responsibility and causality, unable to look beyond the immediate decision. How nearsighted.

Friends, I invite you to lower your blinders^[3] and when discomforted, to step away from the decision-maker, and investigate the context that informed their decision. Few reject family without reason.^[4]

We’re planning 2025 at Zello. Reflecting on 2024 and what did—and didn’t—work. Setting goals. Objectives and key results, one might say. Kicking ass, taking names.

I’m guilty of reversing the process. I’m generally aware of what we need,^[2] and I have projects in mind. I work backwards from those projects to broader goals. I’ve been sitting on a new design for two years? Great, let’s prioritize usability and I subtly, inconspicuously, conveniently suggest solving usability problems via a redesign.^[3] I’m working on this. I’m a bad design evangelist, and while I demonstrate solving problems via design, I have difficulty demonstrating design’s innate value—let alone predicting and estimating it.

Many in this team of current and former ICs bring the same approach. Everyone has shared and individualized contexts through which they make removedly-broad suggestions. Take an idea for what you want to do, back out to a problem it solves, and frame solving that problem as a goal. We twist ourselves into performatively and perpendicularly communicating our ideas. Bias is unavoidable, and the best we can do is to attempt self-awareness, but we should strive to avoid guile.

We investigate only the directions toward which we directly affect outcomes. Skimming the surface, this makes sense. I control my labor, therefore, how can I direct my labor? How might I do this myself and not make work for others? How might I not pass the buck? Our compulsion to contribute^[4] further incentives us to ask “what can I do?” or “how can I deliver value?” Who am I to say what others should do? So I focus in my lane.

This strays counterproductively from organizational goal-setting. Our individual skillsets may be ill-fit to greater problems. Diving below the surface, considering problems from the constraints of one’s personal skillset intrinsically limits. This has a positive aspect: you directly make something happen. It has a negative aspect: this wasn’t what needed to happen. You pat yourself on the back for solving the wrong problem, or worse, doing something largely unnecessary, if not ill-informed and harmful. You’ve mistaken agency for impact.

I’ve seen this regularly in consulting over the last fourteen years. It’s fitting in a small startup — you’re scrappy and do everything you can. The polymath Founder/CEO and founding employees need back braces to bear the towering weight of many, many hats. Hell, depending on my contracting agreement, optimizing for what I can do means more billable hours.

In my professional scenario, it behooves a product designer to know when they can—or can’t—solve a sales problem. Product-market fit may be partially in our wheelhouse, but sales strategy and staffing? No. Don’t withhold opinions and certainly don’t withhold contributions, but respect others’ expertise. In a worst case scenario, in advocating for a design-driven solution I over-inflate my own relevance, and divert resources from where they’re most impactful.

Outcomes branch when one is unlimited by their immediate competencies. Many Founder/CEOs wrongly assume they wear all hats. A product founder moseys^[5] into leading the marketing org while hiring a backfill. An engineering-heavy startup skimps on Sales, while a Sales-heavy startup sells vaporware. A designer co-founds an engineering-intensive startup, and over-indexes the appeal of a novel brand.

It’s increasingly difficult to know what we don’t know, let alone to respect it, when we think that we can stretch to it. I’m no salesperson, and while I can try to recognize sales problems and opportunities, I’m unqualified to solve those problems with my own labor. One wants to help, but helping with one’s direct labor may be misguided. That one can do it doesn’t make it good that one does. We must both ask “what can I do?” and “what should we do?”, and furthermore remove ourselves to “what should be done?”.

You want to organize men. You don’t have to search for issues. The issues are part of the fabric of your everyday lives.

From Andrea Dworkin’s speech at the Midwest Regional Conference of the National Organization for Changing Men, 1983 in St Paul, Minnesota, printed in Letters from a War Zone, titled “I want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape”

Nothing here is groundbreaking, but working with the door open invites us to think aloud. My experience isn’t unique, but sharing it hopefully invites introspection, sharing, and self-correction on the parts of my fellow men.

My paternal aunt passed away in Eldersburg, MD, in December 2014. She was born in 1937, dropped out of high school at sixteen, and soon after married (unofficially per my father’s memory) George, a man 14-ish years her senior. She gave birth to seven children before passing away at 77. She was my Aunt Sally, who as a child, I remember my father loving in a tragic way. Her obituary states that she was married only 54 years, as opposed to memory’s 61. Throughout my childhood, much of this was understated through transparency. Sally was the distant, beloved aunt, and her husband was a distasteful, untrusted, and nebulous man.

Then, in late Fall 2015, and I was a college sophomore when Ambra Gutierrez’s allegations against Harvey Weinstein first surfaced. I was naive, and shocked to learn that one of four women at my university experienced sexual assault. I shared my fresh shock over a family dinner later that week. I misunderstood my mother’s seeming disinterest, and I lacked the self-awareness to realize her apathy reflected she’d long internalized this truth.

That year I first heard about the Pikes’ “rape dungeon”^[1] from friends who rushed.^[2] I lived with a Pike, who feebly protested before falling back to describing “what happens when people drink.”

In Spring 2016, I’m studying in Lyon and following a Tinder date, find myself among a group of intersectional feminists from Edinburgh. In Austin, it was enough to simply be better than the rest of the Texas. The bar was subterranean. These new friends pushed me to grow past my radical feminist foundations, and I’m fortunate to have known them.

I’ve finished the semester abroad, it’s a midsummer Wednesday, and I’m driving back from team lunch with a few colleagues. One-the man who hired me and the two women in the car-is making a case that women’s place is in homemaking and not the professional workforce.

That Winter, a close friend and housemate proudly shared that following our program’s winter formal, he’d slept with a woman he’d crushed after for years. They’d been drinking, but he remembered it proudly and looked forward to a budding relationship. I later learn that she never spoke to him after that night.

It’s election season, I’m a rocking a Bernie tee and listening to Chapo Traphouse, and our third housemate espouses that rape culture, patriarchy, police violence, and class war must be commonly addressed by a worker revolution. It’s cool to disdain identity politics: Hillary ain’t an abuela.^[3]

Despite accusations of raping a 13-year-old ’94, Donald Trump wins the presidential election. Allegations continually emerge throughout, and after, his presidency.

It’s Fall 2017, and I was a senior when accusations against Weinstein were revitalized by Alyssa Milano. My younger brother would soon start his degree at the University of Houston, and I remember my mother’s discomfort with “yes, all men.” When my mother was a child, her grandmother volunteered at Amarillo’s rape crisis center. In my own childhood, they were role models of applied progressive politics, contrasting their regressive home state. Despite her lived experience and assertive politics, she worried for the potential of undue suspicion levied against her male children.

I moved to Leuven, Belgium, in February 2018. One of my new friends has started listening to Jordan Petersen. A regular at our internal student game night proudly declares that marital rape does not exist.^[4]

That same year, my mentor Bob Jensen retires from UT Austin. I’d known him from childhood, and his adult conversations on difficult and uncomfortable topics heavily shaped my views on gender and sexuality. A gap had grown between us as his distrust for what he called “transgender ideology” became a bullish disdain. With increasing difficulty I continued to engage him on pornography and patriarchy. I miss Bob, but remind myself that problematic and poorly-aged role models are best left in the past.^[5]

The pandemic hits the US in March 2020, and reconnecting with old friends sends me down forgotten roads. Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years’ prison.

Throughout 2020 I gathered receipts from old and deleted accounts, and in late Winter 2021 contacted a school district near my high school to report their employee Jeremy Christopher Cameron, a middle school orchestra teacher who attempted to groom me and a cohort of other high school aged boys. An investigation opens and he leaves the district before it completes. I’m was fortunate to have only ever messaged with him.

That Summer, Virgil Texas leaves Chapo following grooming accusations.

In December 2022, Andrew and Tristan Tate are arrested. In June 2023, they’re charged with—reductively—human trafficking and rape.

That Summer of 2023 I learn that someone dear to me was abused by a family member as a child. Her family strove to maintain appearances, protecting an abuser and silencing victims. In trying to understand, I learn to what degree these so-frequent cycles of abuse were unseen in my own extended and closer family.

It’s April 2024, and Weinstein’s conviction is overturned by New York’s Court of Appeals.

Two weeks ago, I conducted a whiteboarding exercise with a product design interviewee. Upon learning that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of fatalities for American teens, and furthermore that the fatality rate of young men ages 16-19 is three times that of young women in the same cohort,^[6] the candidate joked that a treatment was self-evident. Problems disproportionately caused by men beget solutions uniquely tailored to men.^[7]

Now in Fall 2024, we’re tracking the Mazan trial. Nine^[8] of Dominique Pelicot’s fifty co-rapists claim that despite Gisèle’s silence and lack of visible consent, they were duped. Dommage. While some may claim innocence, others blithely own up to their offenses while claiming they misunderstood their actions. This defense predicates on their entitlement to the charity and empathy of both their fellow men and larger community.

I return to old conversations with my mother. Some of these men claimed to have thought that Gisèle consented, purportedly having trusted Dominique to communicate her consent. One thought she was dead. The town’s mayor minimized the crimes against her. Each use the plausibility of their perspective—and their entitlement to relatability—to ignore the severity of her abuse.

I’m unsure whether it’s worse for her rapists to realize the extent of their crimes. If they realize and live with themselves, they’ve discounted her pain and believe that if not deserving grace, they deserve to move on. A lack of realization may be more honest—they aren’t pretending that they’re redeemable.

I’m further unsure to what degree trying to understand these men’s psyches is productive. Refusing to attempt understanding, however, prevents us from self-reflection. If the scummiest among us believe that their explanations are worthwhile, we must ask ourselves how they feel entitled to our empathy and understanding. If the worst men anticipate understanding from common men—by claiming “oh, I thought she consented”—and we comply, we’re culpable. We benefit abusers by prioritizing explanation over outcome.

“Yes, all men” is not misandrist; it’s cautionary.^[9] We are responsible as fathers, brothers, friends, and men, to reject our gender’s monopoly on violence and to smother any attempts at its weaponization. To address today’s lived reality, we must ostracize and exile the abusers among us. To make a better tomorrow, we must proactively teach the next generation that within Patriarchy, every man is capable of committing and defending rape and abuse, and so we must do better. Within Patriarchy, this behavior is not an aberration, and something we must prepare and discourage.

Yes, all men are guilty—guilty of being the kind of men who support the worst among ourselves.

I’ve wanted to think I’m one for birthdays, but I can’t remember having been. I like to celebrate with friends and family, but that’s rarely the day of a birthday, and so birthdays themselves are quieter and introspective.

Within last ten years, I’ve studied in Lyon, completed an undergraduate degree, moved to Belgium, started and ended a serious relationship, moved to Pittsburgh, become a photographer, moved back to Austin three times, learned a new kind of love and respect for a partner, and am no engaged to be married in January. I’ve worked largely one job throughout numerous consulting gigs, and had the privilege to work with a diverse group of skilled individuals. Ten years ago, I had no expectations to where I’d be at thirty, and beyond broad—but more descriptive strokes—forty is similarly veiled.

In no particular order, these are ideas that I wish I’d internalized when younger. Wishing that doesn’t mean I now have, but damn would I benefit now from having thought them earlier.

1. I justify risks in what they do for a partner and myself while priding myself in flexibility, to the exclusion of validating risks in their personal benefit. Move to Belgium for a partner’s degree—it wasn’t ostensibly for me, but damn was it a way to live in Western Europe for another couple of years. Move to Pittsburgh to allow a budding relationship to grow, and now we’re soon to marry. But left to my own devices, I’m risk-averse and veer into inertia. No major moves on my own. Stay with the same company, working the same field, do what’s reliable. I could’ve tried to stay in the Bay after graduating high school, but instead sought a degree I don’t use in a city that I (again) can’t wait to leave. I kept telling myself—while moving abroad and making different moves—that the opportunity still existed, without realizing its benefit waned as I gained other experience. I was afraid to leave Texas because of my father’s age, and ten years later, I’m now only more afraid. I want to take risks for myself while the opportunity remains, and wish I’d realized my counter-bias when first making these decisions.

2. I wish I’d been earlier comfortable in confrontation. I am and have been a confrontational person, but being confrontational and being comfortably confrontational are wildly different. I’m not conflict-averse, and I have to work myself up to what is often necessary confrontation. As a queer child attending small-town Texas schools, confrontation was the only way to make space for myself, but it was unpleasant. This mindset extended far beyond existential conflict and into daily life and the workplace—as the only designer working in engineering-driven startups and later small companies, I had to defend the value of my work by providing counter-evidence against detractors. I dislike confrontation to such an extent that simply contradicting another’s opinion feel like confrontation, but I choose that over avoidance. I can’t not make space for myself, and I worry that if I find myself somewhere that’s unnecessary, I’ll have a hard time breathing. I wish that at some earlier point, I’d learned that it’s okay for others to think I’m wrong, or that one can be regarded wrong while still being safe.

3. My fiancée and I want children, and while my family ties me to Texas, this is no longer a safe place to entertain pregnancy let alone childbirth. Let alone raising children. Let alone being queer. Some say Austin’s an oasis, but if this oasis is the best we have, it’s a shame. I want to live somewhere I’m not looking over my shoulder, and where being a confrontational, cis white man doesn’t conveniently further passing privilege. I was encouraged to travel and see new places, but I wish I’d considered that I could leave. Home was always Texas—despite the disdain—and the solution to my dissonance will be to make home elsewhere. Twenty-somethings don’t need a life plan, but I wish I’d thought further than casting out and coming back.

I’m getting together with family Saturday morning, and friends Sunday evening to celebrate. Today’s been introspection, Saturday will be celebration, and I’ll see where I am in ten years.

Fortunately, we lucked into some great candidates. I believe—and could be misremembering—that we started interviewing late Q3 or early Q4 2017, and signed Amy Roberts for a January 2018 start date. Amy stuck around for a little under two years and did a stellar job bringing our Android app to Material 2, and then designing our Emergency Alerts feature.

Amy decided to pursue further opportunities at Signal when Zello decided to shift focus from our Consumer to B2B offerings in mid 2019, and so we were back to recruiting. I was living in Belgium at this point, and I believe we didn’t yet have in-house recruiters. I recall joining 11pm local interviews, rationalizing that I’d be back in Austin a few months later. We were met with good fortune again in finding Matt McDaniel, whose recent work on Stride and earlier Hipchat were directly relevant to Zello’s clarified direction. Matt was responsible for extensive work on our Desktop app, which sawn his stewardship following an inaugural design sprint from Amy and preceding my Q1 2021 refresh.

Since then, I’ve hired two product designers, hired a design engineer, onboarded a junior PD from our Product Advocates, inherited a ridiculously talented visual designer, and manage the team. While the stages and broad strokes from the following process apply to diverse design roles, these specific exercises and competencies specifically pertain to product designers.

Today’s process

While the interview process has changed significantly over time, the exercises have only been further practiced, and we’ve deepened our sense of signal. In 2017 I couldn’t have told you what a “competency” was beyond work assessments and highly subjective assessments of soft skills, whereas nowadays… I’m working on it. Then and now I prefer to judge a designer by the intersection of their portfolio and self-description, but can tailor my takeaways for those who prefer the descriptive or others preferring the deductive.

I’ve always used this same stable of exercises to assess applicants, an while the order and occasionally instructions have changed, the exercises are more or less unchanged.^[2]

This process ideally takes under three weeks with up to a week to review the initial application, scheduling two screening calls the next week, and scheduling an onsite the following week.

The application and portfolio

Depending on a role’s seniority, we have a hard check against years’ experience. We may also limit applications to those authorized to work in the US, and those willing to work in a hybrid or in-house position in Austin. I then review applications and advance those who meet our design standards, taking specific note of balance between aesthetic sense, platform knowledge,^[3] pattern knowledge, research, prototyping, and influences. I also keep an eye out for how a candidate describes themselves, to later get a feel for their polished and prepared tone as opposed to their live presentation.

This is a candidate’s opportunity to present their best work in a controlled scenario, and so I look for candidates who put their best foot forward. Lastly, many portfolios focus on process over outcomes. While process matters, process is not the deliverable—outcomes are. Hook me, show me what you affected, tell me why it matters and why it’s good, and then show how you arrived there. Show me the paths you could’ve taken and why instead you landed on this outcome. When discussing your work— in your portfolio and later—describe your team and influences, and send a strong signal on the importance of collaboration and knowledge-sharing.^[4]

Screenings

When a portfolio checks out, a recruiter and I separately interview a candidate. There’s a high-enough rate of misalignment between application and reality that we’ve occasionally has a nontrivial drop-off rate following the recruiter interview. Then, I like having an opportunity to get to know a candidate myself before reaching formal exercises.

Recruiter interview

Once I advance these candidates, they proceed to a recruiter interview to confirm further fit with the specific job description. Barring a misalignment between application and discussion—or aggressively unpleasant conversation—folks move on from here to a hiring manager interview with me, where I further investigate a candidate’s self-description.

Hiring manager interview

We discuss a candidate’s path to design, and the different types of projects they’ve taken on and platforms they’ve worked on. We discuss examples of helpful and unhelpful feedback, and how a candidate navigates contradiction and ambiguity. We discuss a candidate’s process, which I use to passively gauge deliverables and processes a candidate considers foundational or auxiliary. I don’t like to ask the immediate question I’m seeking when there’s often a performatively right answer, so one uses other questions to paint the surrounding terrain. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that collaboration is good, but ask them about their process and you can judge the degree to which they consider collaboration a way of working versus simply accepting feedback versus the occasional and proud lone wolf.^[5] I like to additionally ask a candidate about risky decisions and compromises they’ve made—it’s a potentially leading opportunity to over-index on collaboration, but I often find candidates swerve in the other direction and describe conflict and internal politics. I try to get a feel for where a candidate’s process ends — do they work with dev in implementation? Do they track success metrics and reintegrate learnings in their next work? Do they simply move to the next project, washing their hands? Lastly, the candidate has fifteen to twenty minutes of the hour to ask me questions about the role and company.

I aim to learn what drives a candidate, what it’s like to work with them, what value and deliverables they bring to the table without coaching, and their aptitude for flexibility and learning new processes.

Onsite exercises

Following successful screens, our recruiter schedules an onsite interview and arranges candidate travel. We also email the candidate detailed descriptions of the day’s sessions. I brought three of these five to the table back when first writing our process in 2017, and they continue to highlight talent now.

Panel portfolio critique

A candidate is instructed to prepare a deck walking us through two or three hand-picked projects, hooking us with outcomes and then walking us through narrative. While an online portfolio casts a wide net, a candidate can now tailor their case studies to Zello. We want to see what decisions were made, which options discounted, and why. We want to see the processes used to make decisions. We want to see one’s work from visual design through systems, competitive analysis, research, user testing, and handoff. We want to hear what you learned, what you would’ve done differently, and how you grew from those learnings. Like earlier, we look for signal on cross-functional collaboration. Newly, we see how a candidate thinks on their feet during each projects’ critique.

Design challenge

Or, “whiteboard exercise.” A cross-functional panels of PMs and designers provide the candidate with a prompt, and the candidate leads a collaborative session in which they show us what we have to gain by working with them. This is a chance to demonstrate discovery and facilitatory processes, and show one’s process from discovery through design. While the portfolio review demonstrate completed work and relies on self-narration, the design challenge asks a candidate to demonstrate their process.

Many take this as an opportunity to lead us through their unique work, or to go into the cave and come back out with an opaque solution. I’ve softened over the last few years, and now prompt candidates when their exercise veers too far from collaborative. Despite that, candidates prone to isolation still find ways to avoid collaboration.

Third-party critique

By this point, a candidate’s demonstrated their own work, and shown us their collaborative process live. This exercise surfaces a candidate’s ability to turn a critical^[6] eye towards a third-party product^[7] and describe it as a product designer. For candidates skewed towards UX from UI and Visual, or towards Research from UX, or more generally lacking in any specific speciality, this is an opportunity to show what while you’ve done that work less, you understand its principles and can both observe and discuss. We want to hear candidates describe what’s before them as visual designers, and UI and UX designers, but also in terms of user personas, growth, cultural influences, monetization, and business goals. I want to hear a candidate separate themselves from the user in the same way that we are not our user. This exercise further surfaces ego, but in a different way than the other two. There’s a world of difference between “I wonder if they did X because of Y”, “why did they do X??”, and “X is awful; I’d do Z instead.”

Cross-functional interview

We try to keep the previous three exercises in order, but may fit this cross functional discussion—and another break—in-between the previous sessions. This session is a reality check on a candidate’s developer handoff and overlap, often conducted by one of our engineering managers. Beforehand I’ve explored these topics with a candidate, but they’re not my focus.

Executive interview

Nowadays, candidates meet with our COO for further conversation. Bruce is ridiculously discerning, and I’ve found his insights on candidate motivations and growth to be remarkable. I personally have a difficult time pulling myself out of the weeds of a candidate’s work, and this session helps me to align at a high level.

What’s next?

Following the onsite, we make our decision, and move forward.

Reflections

I’ve kept my three exercises through different iterations of our recruiting team. With their feedback, I’ve had to further figure out which parts of the process matter most to me. Some recruiters want to avoid lengthier sessions whereas others prefer longer days if fewer. I’ve seen other roles come and go that push for a unified recruiting process across jobs and to the exclusion of specialty-specific exercises, but we’ve stuck it out—like engineers benefit from pair programming sessions and code challenges, designers need skill evaluations.

And if any of this describes you, I’m hiring.

I was originally unsure whether I wanted to pursue management.^[1] While I’m still unsure, I realized that this position would allow me to increase Design’s impact while continuing my craft in minutiae and at a new, larger scale. A team can do more than an individual, and a skilled coordinator can further enable. And, it’s a new challenge. Signed Wil Nichols, LinkedInfuencer.

So I used to be an IC, and now I’m not. I was motivated by building things and the craft that builds things. Before managing, I found that mentoring and training juniors was rewarding. Nowadays, my team is a mix of early-career folks who can be mentored, and mid- to later-career designers whose work can be further enabled. Both are good. I’m interested in helping designers—regardless of career stage—do better work.

My team’s appreciation for craft prompts them to seek out new opportunities to both impact the company and broaden their skillset. Their love for design, art, and its application drives them to do more, do more differently, and reintegrate new skills back into the day-to-day. I set them up for new opportunity, helping in craft where necessary and otherwise seeking out new opportunities to apply their skills.

I’m fortunate to work with these highly talented, ambitious folks. Their success is largely driven by these characteristics which give me a springboard to further their success. I’m lucky to work with such a passionate team—I didn’t build their passion; they brought it to the table—and so I worry that passion doesn’t scale.

I don’t expect a design applicant to be Online Designer Sebastian Tran van Schneider.^[2] I also don’t expect design applicants to be me—there are benefits and detriments to self-starting a career at a young age,^[3] but expecting to find that baseline is unrealistic. Still, we seek passionate self-starters. Without that springboard, I’m at a loss for how to motivate and develop a career.

Does passion predicate career success, particularly in one’s early career? To what extent can passion variegate and therefore facilitate diverse hiring? How can I recognize passion’s broader shape, and can we reliably recognize passion different from our own?

I admire and relate to passion, but passion for work to the exclusion of other interests is detrimental. We seek to work with human beings, not single-purpose tools.^[4] Can we reliably recognize a healthy mélange of professional passion, hobbies, and other interests, and how do those signals change with career stage?

My own background paints design as a framework encompassing many disciplines and interests, but I often find that’s not the case for others. Where one isn’t intrinsically motivated to further their field of work, is that indifference, and can one succeed with that mindset?

I want the best for my team, and where individuals realize that design isn’t their passion, I don’t know how to help them grow or progress. Can growth be motivated without passion, or will passionless work always lead to inertia and stagnation? When the team or employer need more, how can that reconcile with inertia?

Before making that change, I’d known that I enjoyed mentoring younger designers. I started learning design processes myself when a young teenager, learning to draw icons from others’ PSDs, PSDTuts (Tuts+ or whatever they’ve become?), and MacThemes. As an IC, I’d share source files and process notes but rarely outside private chats, or as evidence of work done. Sharing work was a conscious act, and so was irregular.

Now, I try (and struggle) to work with the garage door up. There’s no implicit threshold preventing me from sharing if I’m always sharing. This means that at work, I work in shared documents. Local files quickly enter version control in common repos. Status updates are shared regularly, despite risking performative updates. I’ve found that this creates a kind of obligation that pushes me towards a greater focus.

And in that interest, I’m now working on this portfolio publicly. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a good portfolio. The last time I had a public portfolio at all was in 2015. I’ve put together pitch decks with narrative case studies, but nothing holistic.

I’ve comfortably worked at Zello for nearly nine years. It made sense not to maintain a public portfolio, but the more time I’ve taken, the harder it gets. I’ve had what feels like a dozen false starts. My private GitHub repos include wilnichols.com-11 through wilnichols.com-14, with the first commit in the oldest repo going back nine years ago.

As a product designer, I need a portfolio, I start writing case studies and then I grow bored, or more urgent work arises. Aa a photographer I’ve needed a portfolio and prioritize expediency, so my photography site didn’t scale to case studies. As a frontend engineer and prototyper, I want to show fun/cool/whatever minutiae. As a designer with fifteen years of experience, I want to show a lot. Every start and stop costs time I could spend on content, but without the aesthetics as distraction from writing — and dredging up decade-old work — I grow listless. This isn’t a unique problem, and certainly isn’t insurmountable, but it’s a me problem that if further left unaddressed, will grow past ten plus years’ avoidance. This was easier back when I only drew icons. Despite the sunk cost, I’m restarting publicly and updating regularly. Instead of waiting for all case studies, I can publish one at a time. Instead of having the perfect design for the first essay, then ten essays, and then the whole site, I’ll publish as I go and regularly iterate.

So, I’m raising the garage door. This public repo is the start of this site. Photography is still available, for now, here. I’ve stripped the version number as a personal kindness.