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Disney
The Mouse Knew
What a company built on talking mice can teach the rest of us about experience design and storytelling. Turns out the magic isn't magic — it's relentless, deliberate craft, and we can steal plenty of it.
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
Even Disney Can Fall Into the Dark Age
I should warn you up front: I am a Disney Adult, and I am not the least bit sorry about it. If you grew up like me, you understand. I was raised by a single mom who worked herself to the bone, and every couple of years she scraped together enough to take me to Disneyland. When the real world got too heavy — and it got heavy a lot — we'd duck into a dark theater and let a Disney movie carry us somewhere kinder for ninety minutes. That wasn't escapism for us. It was oxygen. So
AI & Workflow Systems
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
Your Employees Meet the Slop First
In the last post, I argued that "AI slop" is a signal, not just an insult. I laid out three patterns for how people experience AI inside a product or content stream: Invisible Assistance, Visible Augmentation, and Slop. And I promised to come back and expand them. Here's the twist I saved for this one. When people talk about these patterns, they picture customers. The user staring at the feed. The reader reaching for the report button. The audience that can smell a machine-wr
When Your Audience Names the Problem, That's the Signal
LinkedIn just added a "Seems like AI slop" button. Think about what that admission actually contains. A platform built on professional self-presentation, owned by Microsoft, deeply invested in the AI moment, looked at its own feed and decided it needed a formal mechanism for users to say this feels fake. Its chief product officer said the company blocks hundreds of thousands of automated slop comments a day and has stopped billions of automation attempts in a matter of months
Product Craft & Patterns
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
4 days ago6 min read
Your Employees Meet the Slop First
In the last post, I argued that "AI slop" is a signal, not just an insult. I laid out three patterns for how people experience AI inside a product or content stream: Invisible Assistance, Visible Augmentation, and Slop. And I promised to come back and expand them. Here's the twist I saved for this one. When people talk about these patterns, they picture customers. The user staring at the feed. The reader reaching for the report button. The audience that can smell a machine-wr
5 days ago7 min read
Organizational Systems
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
Your Employees Meet the Slop First
In the last post, I argued that "AI slop" is a signal, not just an insult. I laid out three patterns for how people experience AI inside a product or content stream: Invisible Assistance, Visible Augmentation, and Slop. And I promised to come back and expand them. Here's the twist I saved for this one. When people talk about these patterns, they picture customers. The user staring at the feed. The reader reaching for the report button. The audience that can smell a machine-wr
When Your Audience Names the Problem, That's the Signal
LinkedIn just added a "Seems like AI slop" button. Think about what that admission actually contains. A platform built on professional self-presentation, owned by Microsoft, deeply invested in the AI moment, looked at its own feed and decided it needed a formal mechanism for users to say this feels fake. Its chief product officer said the company blocks hundreds of thousands of automated slop comments a day and has stopped billions of automation attempts in a matter of months
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