Annotate the handoff, not the mockup
Why my design files now ship with fewer screens and more sentences, and the four kinds of note developers actually read.
Read the essay (7 minutes)
Journal
Notes on design work, written when something is worth writing down. The longer pieces also go out in my newsletter, about four times a year.
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Essay -
Note Research with wet feet
The best interviews I did this year were on a slipway at 8am. People who are about to do the thing remember far more about how they plan it than people sitting in a meeting room. I’ve stopped booking rooms for research whenever I can avoid it; I go to where the decision happens instead.
The cost was a flask of coffee and two wet trainers. The Tidewatch case study has the full story.
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Note Critique night, two years in
Twenty-four evenings, about 190 screens. The most common note I give is still “What should I look at first?” followed by a silence while the designer realises they don’t know either. The second most common: the button says what the system does, not what the person wants.
We’re starting an online edition in September for people who can’t get to Rotterdam on a Thursday.
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Note Raising my day rate, and the email I sent
I moved from €640 to €720 a day this year, the first change since 2023. I told every current client two months ahead, kept the old rate for work already booked, and explained the reason in one line: I’m taking fewer projects so each one gets more of me.
Nobody left. Two clients replied asking why I hadn’t done it sooner, which I am choosing to take as a compliment.
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Note Forty-six error messages
Rewriting every error in a product is the least glamorous week of design work I know, and often the most valuable. A good error message says what happened, whether it was your fault, and what to do next, in that order. Most say only the first, in the system’s words.