VP Eng, Microsoft CoreAI / How To Speak Machine (2025) amzn.to/4556o1i or (2019) amzn.to/2HjDtM6
Redmond, WA
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Metaverse in NYT (2007): “John Maeda isn't real, nor is the island. He is the Resident, and the island is the Metaverse in the virtual world of the Second Life online game. Other works exhibited are a beige Apple II computer, and a dozen or so iPod Nanos.” nytimes.com/2007/05/04/style…
ALT Avatar sitting in a park
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Steve Jobs on the disease of believing that 90% of the work is having a great idea … via @cdixon
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I’ve been carrying around little shards of notes with the goal of creating the LawsOf.Design for business.
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"If you only see one solution to a problem, you don't understand the problem." superpedestrian.com
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“An artist needs to have control of every aspect of a painting. A writer needs to have control over every sentence in a novel. And you simply cannot have control over every sentence in a novel if all you gave was a pretty short text prompt.” —Ted Chiang npr.org/2024/12/09/g-s1-3752…
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Powerful illustration of Moore's Law (128Mb to 128Gb): kpcb.cc/Ret9rb via @HistoryInPics
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"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten." —found on a wall
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"If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings." —saying at @ideo
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Surprised to be able to run #StableDiffusion locally on my M2's GPU in under 30 minutes. Definitely feels like a kind of 🚀 launch to me — I now get it. replicate.com/blog/run-stabl…
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“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.” —found on a wall
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“We found 13% improvement in performance from people working at home.” —@StanfordBiz gsb.stanford.edu/insights/wh…
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I find myself listening to this Fujii Kaze Tiny Desk Concert almost every day piped.video/rGyQHyDMZZI?si=tGYN… Why? Well, #藤井風 is unusually in tune with many themes in life that you come upon when you get older — and yet he fills the space with a rare kind of youthful curiosity. That's pretty cool.
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"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when their work‘s done, her aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."—Lao Tzu
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I didn't think I was going to make any more books, but How To Speak Machine: Computational Thinking For The Rest Of Us happened. It is a primer on how computation works and how it’s transformed the way that business gets done today. Out November 19, 2019. amzn.to/2HjDtM6
ALT Interior pages of How To Speak Machine carries artwork from my 90s era of creating visuals from PostScript code.
ALT Printed book entitled How To Speak Machine: Computational Thinking For The Rest of Us will be available in audio format.
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“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when their work‘s done, her aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” —Lao Tzu
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“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.” —found on a wall
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People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get *the right* things done.
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“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring info and skills …” pbs.org/johngardner/sections…
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“The level of conformity in an organization is in inverse proportion to its creative ability.” —Russell Ackoff hbr.org/2009/11/russ-ackoffs…
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"Designs that have been cut and spliced from a Photoshop document feel clunky and un-natural." —@timbdesignmpls kpcb.cc/1rVFWj8
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I've always found that talented introverts express their ambitions through quality work as their form of extraversion — and disappointedly watch as the squeakier wheels of extroverts get all the grease. This can lead to one of two behaviors: 1/ resentment and giving up for want of extrinsic motivation, or 2/ acceptance and continued curiosity fuelled by intrinsic motivation. Path 2 gets even better when they win the lottery by finding the right boss :-).
My theory why quality is so rare is that it is rare to have people care for their work or allowed to care for their work.
The culture shifted from people doing their craft to fastest way to check the checkbox
grantslatton.com/nobody-care…
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Design is both “artistic” and “scientific” -- it’s a hybrid discipline with the accent on *hybrid*.
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Quantitative information builds confidence. Qualitative information builds commitment. So choose the combo platter.
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“Supermarkets in Vietnam have adopted an initiative from Thailand that makes use of banana leaves instead of plastic as a packaging alternative.” nextshark.com/banana-leaves-… via @mira_lane
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I've been training myself to become a Product Manager, Data Scientist, and User Researcher these days and the 2018 #DesignInTech Report rollup tells me why.
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“If you just communicate clearly, you’ll do better than 99% of startups.” —Kevin Hale: themacro.com/articles/2015/1…
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"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when their work‘s done, her aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."—Lao Tzu
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Kids make priceless artworks as gifts for loved ones because they can't buy less meaningful things yet.
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People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done.
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The younger visionary is good at finding new keys, and the older visionary is good at knowing which doors to open.
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"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." —Lao Tzu
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Design used to be the seasoning you'd sprinkle on for taste; now it's the flour you need at the start of the recipe.
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My four rules are celebrating their 17th anniversary, and I recalled them thanks to #TCG16 creativeleadership.wordpress…
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"A mid-level engineer improves the product. A senior-level engineer improves the team.” —Cate Huston @catehstn, Mobile Eng. Lead @Automattic
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“Sometimes the most quiet person in a meeting has the key that can unlock the future.” —a quiet friend
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“Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions.” —Nicholas Negroponte
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No, I didn’t! Thanks for the FYI — I’m an even bigger ARMY supporter now. Thanks @sabrina
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Thanks to @MIT Professor Ishii for helping me re-find "The Bermuda Quadrilateral" from my past. maeda.pm/2017/11/14/the-berm…
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“Can you keep your spirits up when things go wrong?” —in a wallet-sized clipping from a past CEO mentor
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“Programmers have the largest impact when they are designers.” —Denning+Martell mitpress.mit.edu/books/great…
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My 4 Rules (1999) 1. Don’t speak ill of others. 2. Avoid passive aggressive behavior. 3. Listen broadly, but don’t waffle on decisions. 4. When in error — admit, apologize, move forward. creativeleadership.com/cl/my…
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“No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it’s doing; but most of the time, we aren’t either.” —#MarvinMinsky
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Scribbled down Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination in 2010, and have found it to be sturdy. creativeleadership.com/cl/br…
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“People care about their problems more than they care about design. Solve their problems, and they’ll learn to care about design.” —@dburka
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“Self-promotion doesn’t make you into a better designer. Doing better designs makes you a better designer.” —@dburka
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My Four Rules (1999): 1. Don't speak ill of others. 2. Avoid passive aggressive behavior. 3. Listen broadly, but don't waffle on decisions. 4. When in error — admit, apologize, move forward. creativeleadership.com/cl/my…
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“Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions.” —Nicholas Negroponte
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People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done.
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This Mandelbrot-esque take on Conway’s Game of Life by @shr_id is quite lovely oimo.io/works/life/
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“I found out then that engineering is not quite as important as imagination.” —Satoru Iwata (1959-2015), Nintendo CEO gamasutra.com/view/news/1237…
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People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get *the right* things done.
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Inclusive design toolkit by @MicrosoftDesign is now available as a download: download.microsoft.com/downl…
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Balancing “What We Do Well” vs “What We Can Be Paid For” vs “What We Want To Do” kpcb.com/design/how-to-be-ha…
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When we become too focused on finding the solution, we tend to overlook the opportunity to reconsider the problem.
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Balancing "What We Do Well" vs "What We Can Be Paid For" vs "What We Want to Do": kpcb.com/design/how-to-be-ha…
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Meeting the exquisitely clear-minded @ryolu_ the other day was a real SF treat for me.
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If you’re working with folks in your org who haven’t worked directly with a customer in the last few days, you should always question the analyses they’re bringing you. maeda.pm/2018/02/03/the-i-is…
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“The Most Important Design Skill For An AI-Dominated World” by Katharine Schwab fastcodesign.com/90163779/th… #DesignInTech
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“We’d like workers with these skills, and by the way, we don’t want to train them.” via @WEF weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/h…
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10 laws and 3 keys for Simplicity in design, tech, business, life: lawsofsimplicity.com/los.htm…
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"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." —Lao Tzu
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There are designers like classical music artists (honor the past), like deejays (remix culture), and like scientists (push the frontier).
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“We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth.” (1964) —John W. Gardner
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Empathy makes you fully invested and accountable for THEIR success — for those who are depending upon you, to solve THEIR problem.
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"Nobody wants to fail. When you make a mistake, you can choose to learn from it. And that constitutes *not* failing." --Don Norman
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“If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.” —Eric Shinseki (on my studio reminder wall)
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"The way Bernini makes marble look like flesh. 23 he was when he did this. 23!" —@daisyfroud via @beccanalia
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Maria Popova @brainpicker is a 1st-person, Ivy-class liberal arts institution for the Web: brainpickings.org via 2014
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“Organizations prefer clarity, certainty, perfection. Human beings are ambiguous, uncertain, imperfect.” —#RedBurns
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“The work of art is a scream of freedom.” —Christo and Jeanne-Claude dezeen.com/2016/06/17/christ…
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I've found that the most creative people are confident about one thing: their doubts in themselves.
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“MVP → M♥E (Minimum Lovable Experience) = Easy to use, Meets value prop, and Well crafted.” —Maria Giudice #EUX16
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“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.” —@brainpicker brainpickings.org/2015/02/09…
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Meticulously roadtested list of pros and cons in modern prototyping tools by Emily Schwartzman kpcb.com/design/prototyping-…
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The video-first 2020 CX Report is now live with all pieces available: cx.report/2020-cxreport/ Have a safe weekend everyone! #cxreport20
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"To achieve scale in design, you need to design systems: Design the way you design." —Katie Dill #DesignInTech
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“Fail fast” and “embrace failure” miss the fact that failing isn't the goal. “Recover fast” and “learn from failure” matter way more.
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“You need a really solid infrastructure in order to be flexible [as a business].” —@steveaoki hypebeast.com/2016/10/steve-…
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Computational design and art from Professor Levin’s studio.
My students completed their computationally-generated GIF loops this past Friday, here's a gallery of their projects: cmuems.com/2018/60212f/deliv…
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