All Resources
A small, curated library that follows the arc of the practice: making sense of an idea, making it tangible enough to discuss, and the wider view of where this work sits.
Organized into three short sections. Each is representative rather than exhaustive — the aim is a clear through-line, not breadth.
Framing: understanding what an idea is
How practitioners actually work through unclear, still-forming problems — reflecting, sketching, and externalizing thought before anything is finished.
Article · Erika Hall · Mule Design
The 9 Rules of Design Research
A short, plain-spoken corrective from a respected practitioner: research isn't a separate phase you outsource, it's the discipline of asking better questions before committing to answers. The first move in clarifying what an idea actually is — and the discipline that matters more, not less, now that AI can generate the artifact long before anyone has decided what's worth building.
Article · Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky · Character Capital · from Click
Knapp and Zeratsky's method for the moment before you start building — when the question is what to build, not how. The free guide stands on its own; the book Click goes deeper. Their argument fits this site directly: in an era when AI can build almost anything fast, the harder discipline is naming a clear, testable hypothesis about what's worth building at all. The literal two-day team workshop isn't what this practice runs in a single engagement, but the spirit — name the hypothesis before you make the artifact — is exactly the move.
Article · Frank Chimero
A practitioner essay on what it actually means to design natively for digital — screens as a material with their own grain, not blank rectangles to be filled. Originally a 2013 talk in Belfast, still one of the clearest pieces on the subject. Useful framing for anyone whose first instinct is to think about pixels before purpose.
Article · Nielsen Norman Group
How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula
A simple technique for moving an idea out of conversation and into shared form. Useful because early alignment often depends on non-designers being able to make possibilities visible, not just describe them.
Making: the prototype as a thinking tool
Concrete ways to move an idea from talk into a form that can be examined and discussed. The emphasis is on simple, lower-fidelity digital prototypes — enough shape to learn from, without pretending to be a finished product.
Article · Nielsen Norman Group
UX Prototypes: Low Fidelity vs. High Fidelity
A practical breakdown of how much polish a prototype actually needs, and why. Especially relevant here because this practice typically produces low-to-mid-fidelity, click-through prototypes — enough shape to examine and discuss, without pretending to be a finished product.
Article · IDEO
3 tips to help you prototype a service
A short, pragmatic bridge from abstract concept to tangible experience — especially useful when the thing being prototyped is not a single screen but a sequence of small interactions over time.
Article · Stanford d.school
An open, tactile toolkit of methods and short prompts. Useful when a conversation needs a small, concrete exercise to push an idea from talk into shape.
The broader view: where this work sits
A small set of texts that locate this practice inside a wider conversation about humanity-centered, systems-aware design and the long-term consequences of what gets made.
Book · Don Norman · MIT Press
The anchor for this collection: a broader argument for meaningful, sustainable, humanity-centered design that widens the frame beyond usability alone. As AI makes artifact generation cheaper, the decisions Norman writes about — what to make, for whom, and to what end — get more important, not less.
Video · IxDF - Interaction Design Foundation · Don Norman
Humanity Centered Design Principles
A compact statement of systems-aware, human-centered thinking: solve root issues, look beyond the immediate surface, and keep refining in response to real people.
Book · Donella Meadows · Chelsea Green
A concise systems-thinking primer. Helps explain why isolated fixes so often fail, and why leverage, feedback, and structure matter in early framing work.
Article · Maggie Appleton
The Dark Forest and Generative AI
A clear, sober essay on what generative AI is doing to the open web and to our ability to trust what we read. Sits in the broader band because the underlying question — what kind of work, by whom, deserves to be made and shared — is the same question Norman asks at slower scale. A useful frame for why deciding what to build matters more, not less, as building gets cheaper.