systems designinformation design
Arm the Believer Inside
In a big organisation you rarely win the room yourself. You find the believer inside it, and arm them to win it for you.
Thinking in Public — writing by Sunny Joshi
Notes on design, engineering, and the machines we build with.
systems designinformation design
systems designinteraction design
Don't Hide the Constraint. Make It the Idea.
The limits I was handed on four projects weren't obstacles to hide. Each one turned out to be the concept, once I stopped apologising for it.
systems designinformation design
Finalised Isn't Final
We signed off a Diwali design for TUMI. Then a VP pulled it back. A quiet lesson about where design decisions really get made.
interaction designusability
Give Them the Win First
PepeJump handed every new player a reward before they'd done a thing. A note on why a number going up is the most reliable delight in UX.
interaction designhuman factors
Google Pay Taught a Country a Gesture. I Borrowed It.
The best way to teach a new action is not to teach it. Borrow one people already know in their fingers, and point it somewhere new.
human factorsinteraction design
My Friend's Guruji Said No. I Shipped Anyway.
I turned a MacBook into a harmonium with an AI's help. The master's ear said no. Mine couldn't tell the difference. So I shipped it anyway.
human factorssystems design
The Game Was a Disguise
A protest campaign for Afghanistan's banned women cricketers, and the lesson that design's first job is to protect the people in it.
information designinteraction design
The Graveyard Won
The idea I threw away became the whole system. A story about showing your rejected work, and why clients love the reject you buried.
interaction designhuman factors
Trust Is Built With Copy, Not Code
In a scary crypto app, what made people feel safe wasn't the technology. It was plain words and small honest moments.
human factorssystems design
We Made Them Better Traders. They Still Lost.
I designed a crypto app that made trading simple, fun, and better. People still lost money — because the real game was never about skill.
usabilityinteraction designinformation design
The Day Your Interface Disappears
Ten principles for making software feel less like an interface and more like instinct.
usabilityerror preventionsystems design
The Wrong Line at the End of the War
How one misplaced signature on Japan’s surrender document exposed the hidden choreography inside every form.
usabilityinteraction designerror prevention
The Ballot That Made a Vote Point Sideways
What the butterfly ballot teaches us about alignment, error costs and the danger of interfaces that cannot confirm intent.
systems designinformation designinteraction design
How Do You Design a Democracy for 173 Million People?
India’s first general election was not only a political achievement. It was a vast exercise in inclusive system design.
systems designerror preventionhuman factors
The $125 Million Unit Label
The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost at the boundary between two teams—and that boundary is where many systems actually fail.
information designwayfindingusability
The Map That Lied So London Could Make Sense
Harry Beck’s Underground map abandoned geographical accuracy and became more truthful about the journey people were actually making.
information designhuman factorsusability
When Every Alarm Is Urgent, None Is
Three Mile Island showed that displaying information is not the same as helping somebody understand a crisis.
human factorserror preventionsystems design
The Word “Takeoff” Had Two Meanings
The Tenerife airport disaster shows why critical systems cannot rely on language that merely sounds understood.
usabilityinteraction designhuman factors
The Door That Blames You
Norman doors reveal why repeated human error is often an object communicating badly.
information designwayfindingsystems design
Designing for Someone Moving at 70 mph
Britain’s road signs show what happens when typography, language and environment are treated as one system.
information designwayfindinginteraction design
A City Compressed Into Four Characters
The I ❤️ NY identity shows how a tourism campaign became a sentence people could complete with their own feelings.