Balancing Freelance Life with Maya McBeathDear Reader, Last night, we had a roundtable with Maya McBeath, a human-centered designer, user researcher, and workshop facilitator. Maya shared how to maintain steady work without losing your soul. Freelancing can be tough, but Maya's human-first approach is a way to keep doing the work you love on your terms. The down-to-earth discussion includes:
β β β β Source, shared by Linus Mimetz in the Guildβ β β
β β To ensure you catch the next event, apply to join the Slack group. Work hard to ensure the group is full of mid-level designers and above! βApply to the Guild of Working Designersβ See you next time! βοΈ |
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
When Speed Stops Being the Bottleneck by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, Quick question: What happens when the thing that used to take 12 weeks now takes 4 days? I've been watching this play out across the industry, and it's wild. Lots of companies aren't sharing their new speeds, but a few are: Code and Theory (an agency that works with Microsoft and Amazon) is building dashboards in 40 minutes that used to take a week. They report cutting time-to-prototype by 75%. Coinbase reports a 2-5x increase...
Missed a few newsletters last year? Start here. By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Before we jump into new ideas for the year ahead, we wanted to pause for a moment. If your inbox was anything like ours last year, thereβs a good chance you missed a few newsletters. So instead of sending another new idea right away, we put together a curated catch-up, a handful of pieces from 2025 that capture the questions we kept returning to. If you only read a few things from us last year, these are a good place...
What Can't AI Do in Design in 2026 By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, If you work in design, your feeds are probably saying the same two things on repeat: Hereβs everything AI can do for you, and Hereβs why you should be terrified. Most of that conversation focuses on tools and job titles: βWill designers be replaced?β βWhich roles are safe?β It makes for good headlines, but itβs not how the work actually changes in real life. A few months ago, walking to my studio listening to a Planet Money...