THE ARCHIVE

I stopped chasing Head of

Design had been brought in to dress work that had already happened, not shape it. Three reasons why I stopped chasing the head in favour of hands-on senior product design – UX is the wrong word; AI is changing too fast to watch from a distance; and the work I actually want to do requires proximity.

5 min read

17 June 2026

BJJ

AI can't see you

The promise is a world-class coach in your pocket for the price of a single private lesson. The reality is more interesting. What I learned from prompting Claude about jiu-jitsu – what it gets right, what it fundamentally can't do, and why the validation step isn't optional.

6 min read

17 June 2026

AI + Design

67 out of 100

In June 2025, I was prompting AI with phrases like "game-changing legal assistant." By April 2026, I had a scored audit across seven dimensions of AI effectiveness and was challenging outputs as a default habit. The honest account of what changed, what the scores revealed, and what the remaining 27 points say about where good AI use is still developing.

5 min read

17 June 2026

BJJ

The list

The BJJ instructional market has over 3,000 titles. Roger Gracie won multiple world absolute championships with fewer techniques than you can count on two hands. My complete game plan – twenty-one techniques, organised by stage, chosen for high win percentage and my own constraints.

6 min read

17 June 2026

AI + Design

The two AI threads

I use Claude daily, have a structured instruction set, and scored 73 out of 100 on an AI effectiveness audit. None of it made me better at designing AI features for my users. The two skills designers are conflating – AI as your tool and AI as your product – and why the gap between them matters.

5 min read

17 June 2026

Craft

What minimalism misses

The card was clean, focused, minimal – everything modern UX teaches you to aim for. The users hated it. What UserZoom testing with 110+ legal professionals taught me about why information density is not complexity, and why minimalism solves the wrong problem when the stakes are high.

5 min read

17 June 2026

BJJ

Tap early

Tapping feels like losing the moment – but not tapping often costs you the session. The BJJ habit of resetting early, and what it teaches about design decisions: killing the prototype in week two rather than week six, scrapping the direction after one bad research session rather than three.

4 min read

17 June 2026

Craft

The 15-minute problem

A fee earner described her day. By the time she'd checked Proclaim, Outlook, SharePoint, and back again for a single billing approval, she'd sometimes forgotten why she started. Fifteen minutes for a task that should take a second – and the discipline to let that one finding reshape everything else.

5 min read

17 June 2026

BJJ

The long roll

In a room full of twenty-year-olds who just came off a rugby pitch, the one thing you learn fast is that you can't beat them at their game. The training philosophy I built around being old, slow, and un-athletic – pressure over speed, technique over strength, and why the goal is still being on the mat at sixty.

6 min read

17 June 2026

AI + Design

How an AI summary becomes an action

AI features are usually judged by what they produce. The harder design problem is what happens next. The decision tree I built behind Proclaim's summarisation feature scores every summary against five criteria, picks the right three onwards actions, and turns a one-shot output into part of the working day.

6 min read

17 June 2026

BJJ

Showing up is most of it

Wednesday: four taps in five minutes. Thursday: I went back anyway. The one consistent thing about improvement – at BJJ and in seventeen years of product design – is that the gap between sessions matters more than any breakthrough in a single one.

4 min read

17 June 2026

AI + Design

AI features users actually trust

A fee earner dismissed an AI suggestion – not because it was wrong, but because nothing told her why to believe it. Five design decisions that emerged from building AI features for legal professionals, and what separates trust-building features from those users ignore.

5 min read

17 June 2026

BJJ

Starting jiu-jitsu at 40

The year I was turning 40, I walked into a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym for the first time. I'd talked myself out of it for years – it was too late, too expensive, and too selfish. The story of one taster class, the voice at the door telling me to leave, and why I signed up before I'd even caught my breath.

5 min read

Let's talk. Open inbox, always.

Whether it's a question about something I've written, an interesting design problem, or a hello from another designer working on hard things – email's the best way to reach me.

Email me

Thinking out loud. Notes on design, AI, and a bit of jiu-jitsu.

I stopped chasing Head of

I stopped chasing Head of

AI can't see you

67 out of 100

The list

The two AI threads

What minimalism misses

Tap early

The 15-minute problem

The long roll

How an AI summary becomes an action

Showing up is most of it

AI features users actually trust

Starting jiu-jitsu at 40

Let's talk. Open inbox, always.