Anton Sten

Albert Einstein supposedly said "If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it”.

If you haven't read my previous posts in this series, you might find the other parts interesting: Working as a UX-designer and Working as a UX-lead.

If you've followed my work for some time, you know I enjoy discovering new products and surgically inspecting how they work, what features they have, and how they've decided to solve some of the common UX problems.

There's no new post this week.

Working remotely is something that a lot of people have been forced to get used to during the last months.

One of my worst kept secrets is that I don't design very much despite being a designer.

Guilty song confession time: when I'm out driving, I like to listen to the song "What am I" by Why Don't We.

Nearly three years ago, I wrote about what I envisioned would be the future of the UX-designer.

Some weeks ago, I asked people from my newsletter who are on my Slack channel what they wanted to learn more about.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a short excerpt from Basecamp's Shape Up called Wireframes are too concrete.

If you are in charge of a web site that provides even slightly important information, or important services, it’s time to get static.

A couple of times every year, I like to get away for a few days and reflect on the work I'm doing.

These are challenging times and the future is very uncertain for many businesses.

There is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it.

A few weeks back, I asked people who subscribe to my newsletter if they would be interested in joining a Slack channel with me and others from the newsletter.

I was recently talking with a potential client about a position that sounded interesting.

The best business advice we ever got is from Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com (Jeff bought a small piece of our company in 2006).

As people obsessed with great UX, we tend to discuss the importance of the entire user journey.

Can you believe we used to willingly tell Google about every single visitor to basecamp.com by way of Google Analytics?

If you're a frequent visitor of my website, you've probably noticed that there's a fresh coat of paint.

While Olsson himself was immediately sold by the idea, convincing K-Rauta’s internal stakeholders of the need for speed was less easy.

As with previous years, I like to finish out the year by taking a look back.

Most of the time, I'm unable to share the work I've done with companies or even talk about what was made because of rather lengthy NDA's.

Twitter was alive yesterday with drama, after 1Password raised a whopping $200 million in funding, breaking an independence streak of 14 years.

I even received an email from my mailing list provider the other day that my welcome email had a higher rate of abuse complaints than they allow.

When Figma initially marketed themselves as the first collaborative design tool, I asked myself: “Why would I need that?

One of the most rewarding things with having a newsletter is getting insight into your subscribers every day lives.

Here's a couple of random things that I've been thinking about lately: Often when I talk to businesses, I highlight the importance of focus.

The big misconception I’ve seen designers and developers often fall victim to is believing that handoff goes one way.

This is a write-up of a keynote I held at Hyper Island on October 4 for the students of the Digital Media Program on the topic of Professional Paths - e.g. reflections and discussions around choosing a career.

One of the most recurring questions I get from people just starting out in the UX field is if I have any tips for getting started in UX design.

More often than not, when we talk about 'creating great user experiences' we think about the challenges from an internal point of view when we really should consider the user - it's literally 50% of user experience.

One of the most important steps in developing any digital project is defining what success means is.

Because the complex of AI tools and human review exists in this feedback loop, the stakes only get higher as companies improve voice assistants, asking us to embed them deeper into daily life.

When I was just starting out, I’d see some of the decisions my early bosses made and I’d think, I’m not experienced, but this is how I’d do it.

Even though UX is a very broad subject to write about, to find new ideas for my newsletter on a bi-weekly basis is sometimes hard.

One of the things I always try to push right away with new or potential clients is that I'm just a one-man company.

When we're designing digital experiences, we focus on the big stuff - the overall experience.

This might come as a surprise to some of you, but I haven't always worked with UX.

It's been two years since I launched my second book, Mastering Freelance, which, in turn, was launched two years after my first book, User Experiences that Matter.

If it's one thing designers seem to love, it's to redesign things.

One of the most preached sayings within UX is to always serve the user.

No one writes the i-word down because they are naive, or because they don’t mean good.

One of the think I believe we should all do to improve our lives is learn to celebrate the our successes no matter if they are big or small.

It tells the story of hackers compromising Nest Cams in private homes by taking advantage of lax security on the cameras.

Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault.

As I have just outlined what I think it's like working as a UX designer, I thought it would make sense to follow up with what I'm doing most of the time these days - the work of a UX-lead.

The tool I use for payment processing and file delivery of my books, Gumroad, is celebrating the day they launched (April 4, 2011) by reducing their fees for all purchases to 0% for that day.

One of the things I love about sharing my experiences through writing this blog is the feedback I receive from readers.

I believe it is important to occasionally look back and reflect on the things that are important in our lives and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my work.