Joshua Wold

@joshua.joshuawold.com.ap.brid.gy

A real newsletter for product designers. 🌉 bridged from https://joshuawold.com/ on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/

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Longform Stories

Make something wonderful

If you're following this blog, you're probably the type of reader who creates things. You find joy in taking atoms—or the digital representation of them—and pushing against entropy. It's your mission…

2d ago·6 min read·1020 words

The human bottleneck

There's been a lot of talk about finding ways to 10x productivity amongst folks in tech. I've been part of that conversation, trying to identify how I can speed up what I do. This, of course, juxtapos…

May 29·5 min read·881 words

A time for learning

I've been writing a lot about product design the last year or so. With all these new AI tools I'm constantly wrestling with where design can fit in. Well you know what? I'm almost settled on how I fe…

May 28·5 min read·951 words

A different tactic

I've had an internal goal for the last year to write 750 words each day. Some days I meet that goal, some days I get overwhelmed and my writing goes nowhere. Earlier this week I was encouraged by my …

May 22·3 min read·516 words

Product design's future

Over the last year, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going to happen to product design as a field. I started my career as a graphic designer, and I loved it. But after a few years, I realized it…

May 22·6 min read·1152 words

Google Omni and Product Design changes

Refocusing this blog For the last few weeks I've been wondering what to write about. It's not that I have nothing to say, but rather that the things I want to say don't quite match how I want to say …

May 20·6 min read·1153 words

Product design thinking

Like many other designers in the industry, I was mostly self-taught. When I was starting, there wasn't really a field of product design for taking classes. We had to figure it out from others along th…

May 15·6 min read·1157 words

Joy in a hobby

Over the last four years I've found a new hobby: basketball. And funnily enough, I don't even playExcept. It's important to have something we care about that isn't motivated by a financial return. …

May 14·1 min read·88 words

Doing a hard thing

It might just be that I'm getting old, but I appreciate what I've had to struggle for. Back in community college my brother and I attended a few semesters together. In one English class, a summer cond…

May 13·1 min read·99 words

We need your brain

Last week I was working through a challenging design problem. I needed to create a new set of screens for an app. Because of some limits on the hardware used for the app, there's a lot of constraints …

May 11·1 min read·99 words

Slow reading

Last month I bought a new e-reader. I've been following the cycle of new devices over the years, and have been particularly interested in small screens. I have a Kindle Paperwhite—and it's fine. But …

Apr 20·1 min read·91 words

Change is assured

Ask me twenty years ago what I'd be thinking—on almost any given topic, and it's likely that the younger version of me would be surprised by the person who has had 38 cycles around the sun. We shift …

Apr 3·1 min read·93 words

A primer on Claude Code for beginners

Claude Code is an amazing tool. And with each update it gets better. I've been using it since last summer, when a friend strongly encouraged I give it a try. I'd been a fan of Replit before, but they…

Apr 1·1 min read·104 words

Embrace the seasons

I've been thinking about seasons lately. It might be a result of a recent Cal Newport episode (great podcast by the way), or just the fact that we're shifting from Winter into Spring here in the north…

Mar 31·1 min read·94 words

The Joy of Tinkering

I was talking to a friend recently about career progression and the challenges I've faced over the last two decades in navigating work and life. So much of what we talk about as a society is related t…

Mar 18·1 min read·96 words

You can help

Product design, product management, any roles that touch the digital creation space for app development: all of these are shifting and changing so fast. In the last couple of weeks, I've had numerous…

Mar 16·1 min read·92 words

Following the leader

Leadership is tricky. It's easy to get wrong. It's easy to take the wrong assumptions from finding a willing follower and believing that their adoption of you means anything in particular for your g…

Mar 5·1 min read·89 words

Look to help

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ― Fred Rogers I've been thinking about this…

Mar 4·1 min read·109 words

Fun and play

I have an annoying trait that I've come to appreciate. The energy with which you demand I do something creates an equally inverse desire to not do it. Thankfully I'm not the only one. But for some r…

Mar 3·1 min read·97 words

What comes next

The shift in product design Product design is changing as a profession. I've been writing about this for the last year, but just this month it feels like things are accelerating. I'm not the only o…

Feb 19·1 min read·89 words

An app in an hour

There's a lot brewing right now about AI taking over the world. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But stressing out over the future doesn't help. Yes, I want to keep learning all I can and apply the le…

Feb 13·1 min read·96 words

The credit isn't yours

My career started because I got into graphic design as a teenager. That led into me being a product designer today. I got my first internship at a screen printing shop, and things took off from there…

Feb 12·1 min read·99 words

Collecting versus enjoying

I feel like I've become someone who enjoys the idea of something more than the actual thing itself. I've become a collector of people's thoughts. All without ever having read many of those thoughts. …

Feb 11·1 min read·98 words

Love is the greatest

Over the last decade my views on nearly everything have shifted. If I go back further, to my teens, just about every perspective I have on the world is different. We should change. As new informati…

Feb 9·1 min read·92 words