Balancing Freelance Life with Maya McBeath 🎥


Balancing Freelance Life with Maya McBeath


Dear 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:

  • How Maya started freelancing
  • Cultivating resilience by diversifying income streams
  • Practical work-life balance insights

Source, shared by Linus Mimetz in the Guild


COURSE: Defining UX Strategy
Learn to design a winning strategy that aligns design with business.
Buy a Seat


COURSE: Facilitating Workshops
Learn to turn meetings into momentum and clear decisions.
Enrollment opens December 15
Next cohort: March 23–April 30, 2026

Join the Waitlist for First Access
4 presale seats already claimed


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!

Apply to the Guild of Working Designers

See you next time! ✌️

Jeff Humble
UX Strategist & Co-Founder
The Fountain Institute

The Fountain Institute

The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.

Read more from The Fountain Institute

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: Here’s everything AI can do for you, and Here’s why you should be terrified. Most of that conversation focuses on tools and job titles: “Will designers be replaced?” “Which roles are safe?” It makes for good headlines, but it’s not how the work actually changes in real life. A few months ago, walking to my studio listening to a Planet Money...

Does the Double Diamond make sense for AI-enabled teams? by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, For twenty years, the Double Diamond has been our north star. Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. It's elegant. It's teachable. It's in every junior's UX case study. And it made sense…when it was created. All that upfront research made economic sense when coding was the most expensive part of the process. Better to get it right before handoff because it's expensive for engineering to make changes later. But...

People surrounded by bright question and exclamation marks, representing uncertainty and judgment.

When Frameworks Fail and Gut Feelings Take Over By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, You know that moment when the data looks clear, the framework is airtight, and yet something in your stomach says, don’t do it? That’s judgment, the quiet, inconvenient voice that shows up when the evidence has already spoken. It’s also the thing most of us struggle to explain, even though our careers depend on it. Businesses love reasoning. We build frameworks to make decisions look rational, dashboards to make them...