One day I noticed a change on my YouTube feed. There were videos about this new product called Notion popping up all over my homepage. I am passionate about the topic of productivity, so naturally, this hottest productivity tool on the Internet piqued my interests. After watching about 8 hours of YouTube tutorials and fiddling with a million features in Notion, I realized as good as everything all looks, Notion won’t make me a more productive person. It won’t magically turn all my goals into reality.

To be fair, this is not what Notion claims to do. It’s simply an…

One of the main reasons I love working from home is that I have full control of my time. I don’t have to be sitting in an office during a specific timeframe, just because it is what’s expected of me. Having control over the 24 hours I have each day, means that I can be mindful of where exactly I am spending every hour, every minute.

When it comes to optimizing productivity, people tend to talk about how to accomplish as much as possible in a certain amount of time, how to squeeze every minute of your life so you…

Imagine that you’ve just been assigned to a brand new project as the lead UX designer. You have a rough idea of what the project is, and what is potentially involved. Where do you start?

In my entire designing career, I’ve been searching for answers to this question. Because I know the beginning is the hardest part of everything. Once you know what to do, it’s just a matter of doing it. Figuring out and prioritizing what to do, is more difficult than it sounds. You want to make sure you’re going to spend energy on what matters and deliver…

Let me tell you a personal story.

When I became a product design manager, my first direct report was someone who graduated from the same school, the same program as me. Portfolio looked solid as a new grad, the interview was smooth, made a great first impression with everyone. It looked like she checked all the boxes comparing to other candidates.

I brought her on as my first-ever direct report. Being a manager was exciting and scary to me at the same time. But I thought, how hard can it be? …

If you thought we lived in a racism-free world in 2020, the truth has never been clearer.

In amidst of all the racial justice movements and the media attention they’re getting, three types of people emerged:

1. They’re avid, vocal, anti-racist supporters. They rally and protest.
2. They understand the importance of this topic but feel uncomfortable talking about it, so they avoid it at all costs.
3. They are uneducated, indifferent about this topic. They don’t think it affects their lives and they are apathetic.

I suspect in today’s America, the majority of people fall into #2 and #3. Society shouldn’t expect…

I remember learning about Lorem Ipsum from a web design course in college. It was taught as a handy little trick when you didn’t have real content and didn’t bother to create any. Little did I know that while you can argue filler text helps you design the general layout of your application, it means nothing to the users, stakeholders, or really, anyone, in the real world.

Visual designers can perhaps get away with filler text during the early stages when testing out concepts, but for most of us, UX designers, product designers, simply cannot. …

I know. 2020 Sucks. For those of us who live in the States, s*** hits the fan every day. I am wondering all the time, can this year get any worse? It’s becoming more and more difficult to stay optimistic as the year goes on.

At this point, I am sure a lot of people have given up their new year resolutions, goals, and ambitions. Positive outlook. Gone. Optimistic energy. Gone. And I don’t blame you. 2020 is a year of massive disruptions that no one in a thousand years would ever have been able to predict.

I am sure…