Em The Bear, Carmy limpa com a mesma precisão obsessiva com que cozinha. Talvez até com mais cuidado. Há uma cena em que ele limpa o aço inoxidável das bancadas depois que todos saem, sozinho, metódico.

Não é um trabalho criativo. Não vai ganhar uma estrela Michelin. Mas ele entende que sem isso, nada funciona.

Liderança em design tem muito disso.

A lista infinita de tarefas repetitivas. Documentação. Acordos. Orçamentos. Dar follow-up nas conversas. Consertar o link quebrado no documento de onboarding. Reuniões de 2h. Conciliar a planilha de orçamento. Garantir que o repositório de pesquisa não fique desatualizado.

O LinkeDisney premia o espetacular. Mas na maior parte dos dias, liderança é limpar a bancada para que os outros possam cozinhar. Sem reclamar.

Aprendi a encontrar significado nisso.

O jeito como Carmy traz a clareza de uma bancada limpa faz parte da prática. Não só de design - gerentes de produto e de tecnologia também tem essa responsabilidade.

Equipes que prosperam são geralmente aquelas em que alguém, silenciosamente, mantém tudo limpo. Muitas vezes, ninguém percebe.

A bancada está limpa. Agora podemos começar. Feliz 2026.

Se design é política, protótipos são muitas vezes a estrela dos palanques. Um bom protótipo move montanhas. Já diziam os irmãos IDEO:

“Se uma imagem vale por mil palavras, um protótipo vale por mil reuniões.” — Tom & David Kelley

Mas a vida real dos times de produto não é tão fácil. Um protótipo provavelmente será suficiente se você trabalha em uma start-up ou em uma empresa pequena. Mas em corporações, tudo é mais complicado.

Para navegar com calmaria na complexidade, e ser o melhor parceiro dos times de tecnologia, é preciso entender que nem tudo que descreve e especifica a experiência cabe na documentação de UI.

Temos que ampliar nossas caixas de ferramentas, apurar nossa linguagem e fazer o "design antes do design".

Designers de serviço fazem isso muito bem usando a linguagem de jornadas.

Mas ainda existe um vácuo: o entendimento de como o sistema deve funcionar, e sua relação com os dados e plataformas tecnológicas.

Antigamente tinha um pessoal que só fazia isso: os arquitetos de informação. O trabalho deles era usar sitegramas, fluxos, wireframes, diagramas para modelar websites e portais complexos. Estavam bem próximos do que chamamos de modelagem das estruturas de dados.

Central na ideia de modelagem, quando falamos de ambientes de informação compartilhados é descrever as partes do sistema de forma compreensiva.

Recentemente, estive lendo sobre algumas técnicas diferentes de modelagem que podem ajudar Product Designers a encontrar entendimento mútuo com desenvolvedores e areas de negócio.

Essas técnicas ajudam a descrever como os sistemas devem funcionar para suportar as pessoas usuárias, aproximando os times do modelo mental dos usuários. São eles: Concept and Relationship Mapping, do Dan Brown, e OOUX, da Sophia Prater.

Conceitos e relacionamentos permalink

Frequentemente usamos a palavra concept para falar sobre uma visão de design, um conceito, ideia. Conceito no contexto de produtos digitais é um pouco diferente. Estamos aqui falando das ideias que são essenciais para o produto e para quem o usa. Os conceitos de um produto derivam de seu objetivo, e portanto existem mesmo se o produto não exista ainda.

Jira, Trello, Basecamp e outras ferramentas de gerenciamento de projetos tratam dos mesmos conceitos: tarefas, pessoas, projetos. Mas se você usou todos esses produtos na sua visa, sabe que o contexto em que esses conceitos estão relacionados são bastante diferentes.

Como a gente define os conceitos e suas relações é também uma atividade de design.

Para complicar, nem todo conceito é um objeto de dados. E alguns autores usam termos similares, como domínios, para descrever coisas similares.

Vale a visita no post do Dan Brown para entender melhor e seguir sua série sobre Arquitetura de Informação para times de produto.

OOUX permalink

Inventado por Sophia Prater, OOUX (Object-Oriented UX) é uma abordagem de design que usa objetos para estruturar e simplificar experiências digitais.

O modelo ORCA (Objetos, Relacionamentos, Calls-to-Action, Atributos) é a ferramenta central da metodologia. Ao identificar os objetos principais de um sistema, mapear suas relações, definir ações associadas e listar atributos relevantes, desenhar as interfaces se torna um processo menos complexo - mesmo quando o domínio ou o conceito é complexo por natureza.

Sophia é muito generosa e além do curso pago, você pode encontrar os principais conceitos de OOUX no youtube e nesta entrevisa do NN/G podcast no Spotify

Todas essas técnicas, é claro, serão insuficientes sem um entendimento profundo do modelo mental das pessoas que vào usar o seu produto ou serviço.

Se o seu desafio é esse, recomendo o trabalho de Indi Young. Curiosamente, ela também usa a palavra Concept de maneira bastante peculiar. Vou escrever sobre isso depois.

Me parece que temos, de novo, que reinventar UX. E abraçar a complexidade, para conseguir entregar a simplicidade necessária. E para isso, teremos que desaprender e reaprender.

"Os analfabetos do século 21 não serão aqueles que não sabem ler e escrever, mas aqueles que não conseguem aprender, desaprender e reaprender." - Alvin Tofler.

Top 3 links permalink

How to disagree with someone more powerful than you I'm not a fan of HBR content, but Amy Gallo deserves your attention.

He killed something beautiful Jason wrote a beautiful eulogy about the Twitter design team and their contributions. Space Karen killed something important.

Addressing Arguments Against Facial Expressions of Emotion Computer vision and machine learning have improved, and many people have discussed applications to detect emotions based on facial expressions. Dr. David Matsumoto attempts to address some of the arguments against that.

Good things permalink

Do what you love. permalink

The last time I updated my LinkedIn profile, people sent the usual congrats and comments. But one person asked me privately why I have changed jobs so frequently. That question haunted me for months. I have been in this industry for over two decades and have never experienced this speed of change.

Reflecting on my colleague's inquiry, I've been thinking about whether we, as a society, need to adjust our expectations about what a stable career is. An office-based, 9-5, with a 5-year tenure in the same company, is different from the norm these days. We live in a VUCA, post-COVID, AI-supported world.

I am resilient, but sometimes changing is for the best. With time, I have learned to be confident in my decisions and my ability to spot when the conditions are favourable. Or when I can influence change.

I have my mind clear, and my purpose hasn't changed. Every day, when I wake up, I think about that one great thing I will design with my people. Most of the time, I will support and inspire the conditions and conversations for teams to thrive. I am often hands-on, leading by example or trying to be more precise and helpful, showing the thing instead of talking about the thing. Some people call this being a "player-coach". My superpower is to connect designers/writers/researchers/engineers so they can deliver excellent work - I know how to do many things relatively well, but the player-coach definition might be misleading.

I am empowered at this career stage to choose better. The adventure of finding a new job (or doing something different) just started. Am I afraid? Definitely yes. The market is challenging these days. But I am also excited, at the top of my game. Onward.

• I am using WeWork's motto ironically, of course.

Facilitation and Butter permalink

Anamaria Dorgo is the Head of Community at Butter and the most curious person I know. She is always inviting me for cool stuff. We share this infinite love for understanding collaboration. Last year, she asked me to join Butter's first Bootcamp, a week of talks about facilitation - one of the core tools you can use to rethink group collaboration. But my talk was more straightforward and more focused on the basics.

The title was Don’t Leave Anything to Chance: Plan Your Sessions in Butter. There was a bit of theory about the stages of planning workshops and a basic framework to schedule any session. The participants tried the framework live, and I heard people liked it very much. If you want to learn a tried and tested framework to plan workshops, you are in for a treat. It's like a Crash Course on planning and leading a workshop. I hope you enjoy it.

Conference circuit permalink

Since my last post, I have attended Figma Config, where I had the pleasure of seeing Jack Roles and Brice Fontaine showing our work at Farfetch integrating design systems, operations, and user research. Another IRL highlight event I attended was the first in-person IXDA meet-up after three years. Meeting Sophie Gendron, Boon Chew, Jason Mesut and Niclas Ljungjberg. Territory Studio's excellent work in sci-fi interfaces, car interaction design and motion was inspiring. It was fantastic to see some friends and see great work.
This week, I attended the AI and Society Forum, part of the AI Fringe programme. Rachel Coldicutt and her team at Careful Industries / Promising Trouble rocked my world with a beautiful community event. In the first keynote, legendary Abeba Birhane explained the issues with AI and racism. Abeba is a cognitive scientist, and I have followed her work for years. And like a genuine fanboy, I asked her to autograph my credentials and take a picture.

Speaking and giving back permalink

I have also had the chance to speak at IRL conferences this year. Last March, Patrizia Bertini invited me to join a panel with Peter Boesma, Anna Wojcieszczak and others at the Design Operations London conference to discuss the impact of DesignOps. The panel title was How to Introduce and Position DesignOps in Your Organisation to Maximise the Impact. Lovely Zoe Seaman also presented on the same day. Next Tuesday, I will speak at the Innovation Conference. It's the most significant innovation conference in Latin America, with more than 6000 people attending online and about 2000 in Brasilia. I was one of the conference curators, covering service design and inclusive design. I convinced Daniel Burka, Stéphanie Krus, and Anamaria to share their brilliance remotely. I will be moderating a panel about inclusive design. And co-facilitating a workshop about designing voice services with Janaína Pereira. I am excited to return to my home country with such a meaningful contribution. After the conference, I will be travelling to Belo Horizonte to relax, visit my family and eat lots of great food.

Learned things permalink

Learning, teaching, liberating permalink

I am teaching my second cohort at Experience Haus. It's a small team of 6 designers learning Service Design. Before accepting the invite, I wondered whether that made sense. And in that search for meaning, I learned so much about learning. Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy transformed my thinking on teaching, and I am still inspired by it. I am learning things about service design that I have never thought about before. I am capturing some learnings in my new digital garden: sd notes

Things that bring me joy permalink

Leili, AKA little bird. permalink

It was a sweltering day in Brasilia, Brazil. My life was very different at that time. I was young, louder, stronger. And I was dating a girl from my home state. She lived with her adorable auntie, but we were spending a lot of time together. I honestly already knew she was the one from the get go. A few months later, impulsively, I asked her to marry me. Over twitter. About 13 years ago, on the first of April. We celebrate this milestone by travelling to Cabo Verde in March.

Every day, I think how lucky I am to have Leili in my life.

Healthcheck permalink

Overall, I am ok. My diabetes is under control. I am still using continuous glucose monitoring, but things are better. I have lost some weight, and I am slowly coming back to exercising.

Weight: 91 kg Blood pressure: 12/8 Food: I'm trying to eat fewer and fewer carbs, but Gail's Bakery is in my life. Drinks: Not drinking for months, except for extraordinary occasions.

Quote permalink

"Empowerment is a necessary step because we’ve been accustomed to disempowerment. Empowerment is needed to undo all those top-down, do-what-you’re-told, be-a-team-player messages that result from our leader-follower model... What we need is release or emancipation. Emancipation is fundamentally different from Empowerment. With emancipation, we are recognising the inherent genius, energy, and creativity in all people and allowing those talents to emerge. We realise that we don’t have the power to give these talents to others or “empower” them to use them, only the power to prevent them from coming out. Emancipation results when teams have been given decision-making control and have the additional characteristics of competence and clarity. You know you have an emancipated team when you no longer need to empower them. Indeed, you no longer have the ability to empower them because they are not relying on you as their source of power."

L. David Marquet and Stephen R. Covey, Turn the Ship Around!

I am facilitating a workshop: Unblocking Asynchronous Creativity. I will be sharing my journey learning about facilitation and the shift to remote and asynchronous ways of working.

Preet, the conference organiser, freaked me out. He said that there will be probably more than 200 people attending. I know how to navigate the Dunning-Kruger rollercoaster, but I confess I am bit nervous.

Not because of the crowd. I have delivered keynotes to hundreds of people before, but in Portuguese. And this will not be my first gig speaking in English to a big audience. Last year I talked about Design Operations at the first DesignOps Assembly event in London. And the year before, when we used to gather in real life, I was invited for two Design Leadership panels by the kind folks from Clearleft. It was packed, and I think it went fine.

But this is the first time I am sharing something I am not so confident in my skills: Asynchronous ways of working. I work remotely for years now, but async is a new game. And while I was researching for the talk I could not find a lot of information about this. But with or without the anxiety, I am doing this. Impostor syndrome and stage fright: bugger off, you are not welcome. Something that makes smile is that my brilliant partner, Leiliane, is gonna be one of my co-facilitators. She has this ability of calming me.

Yesterday we run the beta version of the workshop. I had the privilege of having some cool cats from my team at Farfetch, a few friends and the part of DEX01 team attending. It was great because now I know exactly what to change. I failed miserably with tooling and the timing was not right, so I have to edit myself.

I haven’t finished the workshop design and the talk yet. But I decided to write today and share this post as a Goodie Bag with a thank you note for the nice people that helped me yesterday.

The five people bellow inspired me for this talk. They not only deserve the credit, but my gratitide. I had the opportunity to learn with them because they all work in the opne, creating valuable content.

Alison Coward permalink

Alison’s work is focused on finding the balance between creativity, productivity and collaboration. Her Messy Middle framework clarifies the complexity of creating good workshops. A Pocket Guide To Effective Workshops was the first book I bought about the topic. And she was the one that inspired me to learn about facilitation.

Goodie: She created a free assessment tool so you can understand your team collaboration practices.

Priya Parker permalink

Author of the classic book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, Pryia also hosts the podcast Together Apart. She is a pioneer in the field, and her work explores what makes remarkable gatherings.

Goodie: She recently created a free guide that updates her book to the hybrid era

Daniel Stillman permalink

Conversation Designer, speaker and facilitator, Daniel recently wrote Good Talk - How to Design Conversations that matter. His Conversation OS Canvas helped me to think about the components of a good conversation. His human approach to facilitation is unique. Daniel changed my life last year when I attended one of his facilitation labs. I have a stick note in my office with something he said that resonates with me every day.

Goodie: His newsletter is just great. You get access to a treasure trove of tools and information. The facilitator hats series is fun and insightful.

Anamaria Borgo permalink

She is the Head of Community at Butter. Butter is my fave facilitation tool and the right thing to do if you are not stuck in Zoom, Bluejeans or Google Meet for compliance reasons. I was a beta-tester and this is how I met Anamaria. She works on the intersection of learning, community management and facilitation. I recently joined two incredible communities of practice where she shows her magic every day: L&D Shakers and Butter Community.

Goodie: Butter Community is definitely the place to be if you want to improve your facilitation skills for free.

Dr Myriam Hadnes permalink

Founder of the dutch consultancy workshops.work, Dr Myriam hosts an incredible podcast. Episode #1, about Human Connection, inspired the part of my talk that I like most.

Goodie: This beautiful map of all podcast episodes and related facilitation techniques and questions.

You should definitely follow all of them. Later on, I will extend this list.

And if you want to know more about tools, I highly recommend this article by the folks at Session Lab.

There is still a lot to do, but it was an exciting side project, and I had help from a brilliant bunch of people. The new layout is live since August, with the same content and new features.

I can wait to get some feedback and iterate. Onward.

Top 3 links

Teach Slower to Teach Better

Jon Kolko is a designer and founder of the Austin Center for Design. As I am more and more interested in education and learning, I found this article about how designers learn and the issue of quality versus speed. Jon is a prolific writer and you definitely should visit his site.

Cancel your meetings

Phil Libin is the founder of mmhmm - a tool that aims to transform video meetings and presentations. In this talk, he explores the value of asynchronous updates. There is also an interesting point about the speed we process information these days.

How to Foster Participation

Inayaili De León shares a lot of wisdom in her 2018 talk at the Design Systems London conference. Build a style guide, and the essential component library is way easier than making a living design system. This work is more complicated, unpredictable. There is no such thing as the right way of doing things, but some good practices always help.

Good things permalink

First 90 days permalink

When I joined my current job I bought this book "The First 90 days". It was heplful to plan my activities during the probation, and a lesson in finding the balance of learning new things and reusing existing knowledge. I feel more connected with the world of luxury and fashion, and I understand how self-expression and style is important for people. I know a lot more about our design org context and achievements.

The support I am getting from the team and the design leadership is excellent, and having this great chap called Justin to call boss is a privilege. So yes, I am happy and excited for the next quarter.

Workshops, love and productive conflict permalink

When I joined, there was a process in place for strategic design work. It’s an innovative approach that intertwines research and sprint activities smoothly. My first mission at the company was to improve part of this process. It was not my first time working with custom sprints and complex programs related to innovation.

But I was changing the process while planning the next initiative, which is not an ideal approach. In the end, it worked really well.

During the planning activities, I was lucky to work with Deborah Nogueira, a long time friend and talented designer. She led an interesting piece on inspiration and competitive analysis. With the right cross-polination with research insights, everything was ready for the hard work to start.

I had to join the incredible team of 5 designers in the sprint itself. It was our first pilot with a lot of changes, and a relatively new group.

I was in charge of the facilitation and planning, working with a Head of Design, a Principal and a Lead Researcher. Together we learned a lot about storytelling, async work, cadence and improvisation of ideation activities.

In some moments I did a bit of hands-on work as well, which was something extraordinary for me. Design Operations work can be tedious sometimes. I frequently miss the simplicity and the joy of delivering design work.

Two weeks ago we had a retrospective about this work. The feedback about facilitation, structure, and energy was very positive. Product leaders and the team were also pretty happy with the outcomes. Feedback from users was positive.

Another good outcome of this work was to have time working more closely with Paddy, one of our Principals. I shared with him some facilitation tricks and we tested new tools and methods to improve collaboration and equal participation in workshops.

Psychological safety, love, and a bit of productive conflict are core ingredients for quality design work. I am happy to say we delivered the work and changed the process significantly with great success. Now it's time to document, iterate and prepare for the next one.

A lens a day #42 - slow change permalink

Wonderful Dan Brown invited me to a chat about Information Architecture. Dan is one of the luminaries in the IA Community and founder of Eightshapes, an American design consultancy. His book Communicating Design helped me a lot a decade ago and.

He created IA Lenses, a deck with 51 cards to help practitioners with perspective when designing information architecture. Recently, he decided to invite Information Architects around the world to discuss the lenses in a video series that is also available as a podcast.

The topic we talked about was slow change, which I was honestly not prepared to talk about. But with great interviewing skills and low expectations, Dan put me at ease at the beginning of the call. We touched on topics like agile, service design and the opportunity to apply IA in a holistic context to enable sustainable change. The interview was recorded during my holidays. The video quality is not great but the audio is quite good.

Learned Things permalink

Meaning is pain permalink

Like many of you, I have lost important people in my life. My best friend and three grandparents and are the ones I am still mourning. And all happened before the pandemic. Mainly because I didn't have the opportunity to say goodbye properly. In July, Fabio Palamedi, a mentor and friend died of Covid. Right now, the last of my grandparents alive, Atilia, is in the hospital. Accepting death and the end of things is something I struggle with.

All of this makes me think a lot about finding happiness. At work, at life, in my relationships. Besides being a self-proclaimed pissed-off optimist, I confess that I have been overwhelmed recently.

Stupidity, prejudice and politics are now hurting or killing the ones I love more frequently. The situation in Brazil is out of control. Staying happy in my privilege bubble while the world falls apart isn’t easy. The ebbs and flows of doom and optimism are insanely hard for my mental health.

Helena, my therapist, is helping me to cope with these dilemmas. It might sound like a truism, but here it is: everything that carries meaning will definitely bring painful moments. If change is the only thing that remains constant, pain is the sidekick.

If you are interested in digging into this, perhaps you will find some joy and reflection reading this post from Scientific American.

The great resignation and communication breakdown permalink

Everyone is talking about the great resignation. Corporations are struggling to provide a sense of safety and fair participation to employees in regard to the decisions on remote work.

It baffles me that in 2021 we are still having discussions about this. It’s not that hard, really. Policy change is a service design challenge — it feels we have learned nothing about how governments handled the COVID catastrophe. (Kudos to Jacinta and New Zealand, the only country that really nailed it)

Even Apple is having trouble. This article published today at Vox is enlightening: it explains so much about the arrogance that comes with power and what is really behind these decisions.

Perhaps the only FAANG that is not having so much problems on this arena is Facebook. Since June, they acted fast and opened the work at home policy to all employees after trying to enforce some rules in May. Perhaps it is because they have way bigger issues to deal with it in terms of reputation.

The back story of the war on global talent and retention is that sad, really. Millions making bad decisions and a communication breakdown. Changes in how we work are happening fast, and leadership and management teams aren’t able to cope with that speed.

I am navigating this theme carefully and doing what I can. Having honest conversations with my team and learning more and more about asynchronous work. We have plenty of possibilities and ways of solving this charade. But the solutions will require flexibility and a new approach. And better communication and transparency, of course.

Things that bring me joy permalink

Late summer in Crete permalink

I had burn-out and got really sick the last march, so these things took a toll in my health. A few weeks ago, I was stressed and really tired. Leili, my lovely partner, noticed the changes in my mood and behaviour and intervened.

She gifted us with a holiday week in Greece. In a place that up to now is my favourite in Europe, Chania. We had terrific days enjoying good food and a real summer. I spent a many hours reading Nick Scalding books and listening to music. Soaking in the beach, breathing fresh air and sipping orange juice. I can’t wait for the next one.

Another visit to the office permalink

Thursday, I visited the office again, and I’ve met people from Product for the first time. It was nice to see them in 3D, taking some selfies, having some tea, high fives and hugs. It was a joy to find out we have a design library and having lunch with Justin and Rufus was great.

Leili’s book permalink

My wife just finished her first book, Cheiro Verde. It's a recipe book with a pinch of romance: a celebration of her family talent and the traditions from Minas Gerais. I’ve had the pleasure to eat 90% of all recipes, and I have to say: it’s all delicious. Now the plan is to help her with the printing production and marketing. She is aiming to launch this year in Brasil. One of the recipes of the book it’s available in English: you can learn how to bake Cheese bread, one of the classics of her cuisine.

Healthcheck permalink

Many things have happened in this area since my last post in June. I had another diabetes review, with some improvement in how I am managing the condition. On the other hand, long COVID is still a thing for me. I went through heart exams, blood samples, audiologists and many consultations. The same old weird shit is still affecting me eventually: parosmia, fatigue and tinnitus. But the heart palpitations are gone and I am really relieved.

- Weight: 98 kg

- Blood pressure: 13/9

- Food: We had great and healthy food this week

- Drinks: No alcohol since August.

Quote of the week permalink

None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” – Mother Teresa.