Read the Book
Design today sits at the crossroads of creativity, business, and influence. It is no longer enough to make something beautiful or even usable—designers need to shape outcomes, navigate organizational politics, and prove their value in environments that often misunderstand or under-resource them. This book is a guide to those realities. It collects strategies, stories, and mental models that help you not only practice design, but thrive in the messy systems where design actually happens.
Whether you are a designer, product manager, or anyone trying to push meaningful work forward, the lessons here will help you understand how to align your craft with the forces around you. You’ll learn how to spot opportunities others miss, build consensus across resistance, and set a direction that stays true to your values even as circumstances change. This isn’t about following the “right” process—it’s about learning to design your path through the shifting terrain of modern work.
Arise, Designers
| Chapter Title | Status |
|---|---|
Introduction |
|
| The Real Work of Design | Live |
Why Are Designers Unhappy at Work? |
|
| Intro | Planned |
| The False Promise of Design Bootcamps | Planned |
| The Rapid Commoditization of Design | Planned |
| Designers Lack a Clear Career Path | Planned |
| Designers Aren't Typically Educated in Business | Planned |
| The Politics of Speed and Visibility | Planned |
| Designers See What Others Don't (and Care Deeply) | Planned |
| Designers are an Afterthought in Team Structure | Live |
| Teams are Built for Output, Not Problem Solving | Planned |
| The MVP Misunderstanding | Planned |
| The Overlap Between Design and Product Management | Planned |
| What Can Designers Do? | Planned |
Understand the Business |
|
| Intro | Live |
| Market Conditions | Live |
| Growth Strategy | Live |
| Selling Strategy | Live |
| Product Expansion Strategy | Live |
| Funding and Exit Strategy | Planned |
| Evaluation: Where is Your Business? | Planned |
| Business Strategy Will Impact You One Way or Another | Live |
Understand What's Important to You |
|
| Intro | Planned |
| Set Your North Star | Planned |
| Discover Where You Can Thrive | Planned |
| Work for a Company that Allows You to Work How You Want to Work | Planned |
Self-Sabotage and Hard Truths |
|
| Intro | Live |
| Stop Obsessing Over the "Right Way" to Do Things | Planned |
| Everyone Falls Victim to Dunning-Kruger | Planned |
| You Are Not a Designer. You Work as One. | Planned |
| The Overcommitment Paradox | Planned |
| The Under-Resouced and Under-Represented are the Most Likely to Be Punished | Planned |
| Your Company May Not Value What You Offer as Much as You'd Like | Planned |
Become Powerful |
|
| Intro | Planned |
| The Myth of Thor's Hammer | Planned |
| Trade Theater for Traction | Live |
| Build Your Coalition | Planned |
| The Outward Spiral Method | Planned |
| Be Pragmatic | Planned |
| Stop Asking for a Seat at the Table and Pull Up a Chair | Planned |
| You Have to Do More Than Point at Problems | Planned |
| Put Us vs Them to Bed | Planned |
| Slay the Gossip Beast | Planned |
Reframe and Expand the Value You Provide |
|
| Intro | Live |
| Focus on the Type of Work You Commit to Doing | Planned |
| Take the Lead on Solving Hard Problems | Planned |
| Learn How to Draw a Line Between the Work You Do and Profits | Planned |
| Be More than What Others Expect You to Be | Planned |
| Think Outside What You Were Trained to Do | Planned |
| Strategy is Easy. Logistics are Everything. | Planned |
| Don't Try to be Indispensible | Planned |
The Realities of Working With Other People |
|
| Intro | Planned |
| People Have Made Up their Minds. Have the patience to change them. | Planned |
| Fitting In Perfectly Robs You of Your Value | Planned |
| Everyone Overvalues their Own Contributions | Planned |
The Future of Design |
|
AI and Design - The Bad |
|
| Design in an Age of Madness | Live |
| AI As Performance Art | Planned |
| A Wave of Mediocrity | Live |
| Hyper-Optimizing for Engagement at all Costs | Planned |
| Dehumanizing Customer Experiences | Planned |
| Weaponizing Influence at Scale | Planned |
| Industrializing Ideation | Planned |
| AI as a Stand-In for People, Research, and Data | Planned |
| AI Becomes the "Right Way" | Planned |
| Gray Goo - Homogenization Covers the Earth | Live |
| The Acceleration of Universal Loneliness | Planned |
| Creativity and Critical Thinking are Outsourced to the Machine | Planned |
| Every Role Will Question the Need for Every Other Role | Planned | What Will be Required of Designers | Planned |
AI and Design - The Good |
|
| Unleashing Creativity | Planned |
| Outsourcing the Noise to AI | Planned |
| A Junior Designer Available 24/7 | Planned |
| New Strength for Small Teams | Planned |
| New Value for Users | Planned |
The Evolution of Design |
|
| The Path of Specialization | Planned |
| A Rethinking of Org Charts and Responsibilities | Planned |
| An Expansion of Expectations | Planned |
Saving Product Development from Itself |
|
| Solution-Oriented Teams | Planned |
Why Is Innovation So Hard? |
|
| The MVP and Dopamine Trap | Planned |