Weeknotes: October 9, 2026.

Six colorful emoji faces depicting different emotions. Illustration by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

What was good

  • I was able to do a deep focus on 1 key thing this week: Setting up an internal research study for the design system. We’re doing some house keeping with our guidelines and documentation, including revisiting our IA. To better inform our approach, I built a research study (sequence and card sort) in Claude. I had the team do a few test rounds to make sure it’s usable and there aren’t any bugs in the study.

What was hard

  • Saying no to a project. I struggle some with taking on too many projects that come my way, and it’s led to some serious cycles of burn out. I’m trying to be better about it so after being included in the initial ask and some meetings, I made it a point to tell the group I can’t commit to this but that we’d get another content designer on the project.

What I’m looking forward to next week

  • Finalizing the research study and pushing it to the rest of UX. It’ll be an unmoderated study with 3-ish parts.

Tidbits

  • Currently reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, October by China Mieville, The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde
  • Recently watched The Hitcher (1986), Eyes of the Spider (1998), and The Appointment (1982)