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Dan Saffer
Dan Saffer

16.2K Followers

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Jul 13

Design Strategy for Design Portfolios

I hired designers for fifteen years, so I’ve probably seen thousands of portfolios, many of them pretty awful. This isn’t necessarily the designer’s fault: there’s a lot of bad portfolio advice and bad examples out there. The first thing you need to understand is the purpose of an online portfolio…

Portfolio

6 min read

Design Strategy for Design Portfolios
Design Strategy for Design Portfolios
Portfolio

6 min read


Jul 7

Notes on Donald Shön’s The Reflective Practitioner

Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action has so much to say (indirectly) about design and what it means to be a designer, especially UX designers. As it turns out, there is a reason for the fact we’re constantly fighting about things like role/discipline boundaries and titles…

UX Design

9 min read

Notes on Donald Shön’s The Reflective Practitioner
Notes on Donald Shön’s The Reflective Practitioner
UX Design

9 min read


Apr 19

Create More Value Than You Take

Over the last decade, the tech industry has seen a shift towards prioritizing value extraction over value creation. Companies are increasingly focused on maximizing profits, often at the expense of the user experience, their customers' wellbeing, and broader society. Long-term value creation has gotten swallowed by short-term metrics juicing, inserting…

UX Design

4 min read

Create More Value Than You Take
Create More Value Than You Take
UX Design

4 min read


Jan 30

Reconfiguring “Reconfiguring the Value Space”

In 2001, the late management consultant guru Richard Normann, best known for creating the idea of corporate “missions” in the 1970s, wrote the book Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the Landscape. This book has become known, at least in Service Design circles, for creating a vocabulary for certain…

Service Design

6 min read

Reconfiguring “Reconfiguring the Value Space”
Reconfiguring “Reconfiguring the Value Space”
Service Design

6 min read


Jan 2, 2022

My Favorite Design Articles of 2021

The 100 Best Pens, As Tested by Strategist Editors by Karen Iorio Adelson and Lauren Ro At its most basic, a pen has to do just one thing, but there are so many reasons to choose one over another. Does it glide along the page, or does it drag? Does…

UX

5 min read

UX

5 min read


Jan 2, 2022

2021 Bibliography

Not going to lie: Like 2020, 2021 was another terrible year for my reading. Nevertheless, 20 books. Not quite as bad as the (ugh) 10 books I read last year (twice as good in fact!), but nowhere near my pre-Covid reading goals. Fiction The Sympathizer: A Novel, Viet Thanh Nguyen Klara…

Books

1 min read

Books

1 min read


Jun 1, 2021

Why I’m Joining Flipboard

Some of you after reading this headline might be like, wait, they’re still around? Others of you, over 100 million of you, are current Flipboard users. Many of you remember Flipboard as the best iPad app for reading news and articles when it came out in 2010, winning several design…

Jobs

3 min read

Why I’m Joining Flipboard
Why I’m Joining Flipboard
Jobs

3 min read


May 19, 2021

Lessons from a Job Search

Note: I didn’t really want to write this article, but am doing so at others’ urging hoping it’ll give other job hunters some hope, some insights, or at least a laugh. There’s an idea held by many that the more experienced you are, the more accomplished you are, the better…

UX

4 min read

UX

4 min read


Mar 30, 2021

100 Things I Know About Design

There are three great design themes: making something beautiful, making something easier, and making something possible. Design is the art of the possible. Design isn’t just about problem solving; it’s about creating a more humane future. The purpose of any design is to make a hole where the future may…

Design

7 min read

Design

7 min read


Jan 18, 2021

My Top 9 Albums of 2020

All links go to Spotify. #9 Fake It Flowers, beabadoobee Hey kids, do you like 90s female indie artists? How about one from 2020? #8 Flowers of Devotion, Dehd Spiky, catchy. #7 Women in Music Part III, HAIM Ok, I give. This is fun. #6 Introduction, Presence, Nation of Language Inject…

Music

1 min read

Music

1 min read

Dan Saffer

Dan Saffer

16.2K Followers

Designer. Product Leader. Author. Professor.

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