Steyn Viljoen

From the wooden steps of our honeymoon in Mozambique to a sliver of sun on our kitchen floor, some of life's most restorative moments can't be captured.

With Taking Children Seriously, it's entirely possible to raise children without forcing them to do anything.

By not forcing screen time limits, we’ve shifted the tone in our house from anxiety and guilt to trust and respect.

Today we’re building boring products because we struggle to go much deeper than “I’m alright”.

While building a pergola, I cut the cross beams too short.

Disobedience makes us human.

A case study on how we reduced the complexity and cognitive overhead of account security by turning the Luno app into a 2FA app.

“Should kids have screen time limits?”

I liked the block input as it simply helps explain how many digits you need to type in without having to read anything.

Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.

The most mature teams use less force and more problem-solving.

By shifting the conversation from you are wrong, to we might be wrong, we acknowledge that we don’t know 100% and there is always room for error.

Progress happens in the absence of certainty.

Since I finished the waterfall, dragonflies have started to roam around, bees collect their daily water, a choir of frogs moved in, and my sons regularly use the waterfall as a jungle gym.

Done doesn't mean perfect.

This is optimism: knowing that problems are inevitable but having the means to solve them, even though we might not know how yet.

When we create prototypes and stop considering the messy reality people find themselves in, our ideas inevitably connect with reality, like a truck and a low bridge.

It's in the pausing that we start to appreciate that neither your work nor my work is an isolated fragment, but part of a world which includes...

When the recruiter asks why you are leaving your job, what will you say?

A 65-year-old UX designer lands in your hiring inbox.

All alien movies get it wrong.

900 hand-carved stone sculptures: that’s really the only thing the Rapa Nui people have to show for the 500+ years they inhabited Easter Island.

Design is a process of resolving conflicting constraints, and, as Alexander rightfully said, drawings help us work out intricate relationships between parts.

When's the right time to fix an igloo?

Once upon a time, 75 0000 years ago… So what happened 75 000 years ago?

Is a universal language, written or visual, possible or desirable?

A fictional story about the legend of the arrow and how it became the most universally understood symbol.

Simplicity often lies on the other side of complexity.

My summary of Christopher Alexander's "A city is not a tree" paper:

Designers are gardeners, real gardeners.

How writing lets you meander through your brain's neurological 'streets' — creating new connections, discovering new paths and encountering serendipitous moments.