Teresa Watts
Oh me, oh my. Anyone else feel like that whole ‘2025 is the year of the snake and there’s a lot of shedding’ is very, VERY true? Anyway, I have some happy reasons for my tardiness (like a positive New York Times review of No New Things! Stoked in an understatement), as well as some less-fun ones I…
For Charli XCX fans, this summer is (or was) brat summer. But for San Francisco technologists and venture capitalists, it’s felt more like generative AI’s coming-of-age summer. The tech slowdown seems to have skipped over generative AI—I keep on meeting VCs investing in the area, and startup…
Over the past few weeks I have been using GPT-4 to help me cook. Need a substitute for an ingredient you forgot to buy? GPT can suggest an alternative. Time to clear out the cupboards? Simply type: “Please create a recipe using two eggs, a jar of borlotti beans, a potato, a leek, and the scrapings…
In 1964, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum began working on a program that, as he modestly described it, “makes certain kinds of natural language conversation between man and computer possible.” ELIZA, named after a character in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, was one of the world’s…
In conversation after conversation, I hear: “My company needs to focus…” “Our strategy is not a strategy….” “We try to do too much…” “Our leaders are always pushing us to do more at once…” “We keep chasing short-term outcomes…” “Our WIP is too high…” But here is something everyone needs to…
I gave this talk at Agile Cambridge on 2 October 2025 Thank you very much for having me. I’d like to start with a quote from Ian MacKaye, who is a musician and also a skateboarder: “Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you. For most people, when they saw a swimming…
The 7 deadly sins form a centuries-old religious framework that warns against unchanging human temptations that always cause weakness and trouble. Instead, humankind is urged to embrace the 7 opposing virtues, which require extra effort but ultimately strengthen and protect the individual. In this…
In my book, Co-Intelligence, I outlined a way that people could work with AI, which was, rather unsurprisingly, as a co-intelligence. Teamed with a chatbot, humans could use AI as a sort of intern or co-worker, correcting its errors, checking its work, co-developing ideas, and guiding it in the…
Brioches and Knife, Eliot Hodgkin, 08/1961
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When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound prudish and monk-like. Attention is something we “have to protect.” And we have to “pay”1 attention—like a tribute.
But we shouldn’t forget how interesting…
The interplay between repetition and variation is central to how we perceive structure, rhythm, and depth across mediums. By: Samuel Jay Keyser BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently. Made at the high point of Kline, de Kooning, and Pollock, Andy Warhol’s…
Rick Rubin in September 2006 — Photo by jasontheexploder, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) We’re drowning in content. Every platform, every scroll, every second—more inputs, more noise, more things trying to hook your attention. The old metrics of intelligence—who memorized the most, who spoke the…
John Cutler 4 min read· May 29, 2016 In my career I’ve heard this conversation play out over and over: Eng: “Um, we have no idea what UX is even doing.” UX: “OK, why don’t we try to add the UX tickets to Jira.” Eng: “Um. Damn. That many stories? That is going to clutter everything up.” UX: “Product,…
Every few months I put together a guide on which AI system to use. Since I last wrote my guide, however, there has been a subtle but important shift in how the major AI products work. Increasingly, it isn't about the best model, it is about the best overall system for most people. The good news is…
Much has been written about what AI’s magical powers can enable—whether engineering, design or documentation. But I believe something just as interesting is happening with how teams build in the era of AI.
This post was co-created with gems of insight from Henry Modisett, head of design at…
On this page The story of how a weird little UI to collect sentiment alongside survey responses defied constraints and triumphed over skepticism through usability testing. One would think that we’ve more or less figured survey UI out by now. Multiple choice questions, checkbox questions, matrix…
February 11, 2025 Macbeth Consulting the Witches, 1825, Eugène Delacroix How do you make a language model? Goes like this: erect a trellis of code, then allow the real program to grow, its development guided by a grueling training process, fueled by reams of text, mostly scraped from the…
Ridgeline subscribers — A funny thing happens when a Snickers bar goes from whole to eaten — the wrapper transmogrifies from useful to toxic. Suddenly, this thing that was keeping germs and dirt off your chocolate sugar log is now “useless” and with this comes the heaviest burden a modern person…
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL Fall 2014 GRIT A Skeptical Look at the Latest Educational Fad By Alfie Kohn This article is adapted from The Myth of the Spoiled Child, which contains references to the relevant research. A new idea is hatched; it begins to spread; it catches on; it inspires a flurry of books and…
I love a big-volume skirt but an elasticated waistband does me no favours, so I drafted this one with all the comfort of elastic, but a more flattering waistband. With an elasticated back and a flat front waistband, this has come to be called the FFS. The Flat Front Skirt (what else?!). All this…
9 min read· Feb 7, 2025 Looking to hide highlights? You can now hide them from the “•••” menu. What if coding no longer required long hours of writing syntax, debugging errors, or scrolling through endless documentation? Instead, imagine a workflow where you simply describe what you want, and it…
Assumed Audience Anyone who thinks they can’t draw, but would like to learn I know plenty of intelligent and highly motivated folks who are dying to learn to draw. Some are so intent on their desire, they’ve gone out and bought themselves iPads. The other half are actively thinking about buying an…
Perhaps you’ve heard of scarcity mindset before, but didn’t quite know what it was or why it’s so toxic. Here’s a definition: Scarcity mindset is the state of believing that what you want is in limited supply. That you will never have enough of that thing. You could have this feeling around money,…
Do you feel like you’re trapped by your creative life? This is almost a trick question because – for most creatives – the answer is a resounding “Yes.” Feeling trapped as an artist might sound oxymoronic to the uninitiated, but it often feels like a defining feature of what it means to be involved…
For years, I’ve heard some variation of the following lament from clients, collaborators, and friends with startups: “There’s so many use cases we could solve for, but every user we talk to wants something different, and we just don’t know which ones to focus on.” or, “We’ve designed for all the…
This is a talk I presented Local-first Conference https://www.localfirstconf.com/ in Berlin, May 20241ya . It’s specifically directed at the local-first https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ community, but its relevant to anyone involved in building software. For the last ~year I’ve been keeping…
Personal Software Lee Robinson Personal computers became mainstream in the 90s. Yet in a strange twist, the software they ended up running wasn’t very personal at all. Sure, you could bring the machine home, plug it in, and have your very own computer. But the programs inside—the operating systems,…
Mid-to-late January strikes me as an excellent time to consider the goals you’d like to achieve this year. It’s much better than, say, the start of January, when you might have allowed the calendrical moment to fool you into launching an aggressive plan to transform your life completely (the subtext…
Click lower right to download or find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. I've claimed that the best way to learn is by writing about important topics. (Examples I've worked on include: which charity to donate to, whether life has gotten better over time, whether civilization is declining,…
Click lower right to download or find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. I’ve spent a lot of my career working on wicked problems: problems that are vaguely defined, where there’s no clear goal for exactly what I’m trying to do or how I’ll know when or whether I’ve done it. In particular,…
Click lower right to download or find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. I have very detailed opinions on lots of topics. I sometimes get asked how I do this, which might just be people making fun of me, but I choose to interpret it as a real question, and I’m going to sketch an answer here.…
Published inBootcamp · 4 min read· May 8, 2022 A number of years ago I took that initial step from my career as an individual contributor designer into a design manager role and by step, I should say it felt more like a giant leap into the unknown filled with that wonderful mix of excitement and…
August 2020 Piloting an ocean exploration ship or Martian research shuttle is serious business. Let's hope the control panel is up to scratch. Two studs wide and angled at 45°, the ubiquitous "2x2 decorated slope" is a LEGO minifigure's interface to the world. These iconic, low-resolution designs…
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