My pre-bedtime ritual now has a new event line-up — drawing. I know it sounds kiddy but this is also Medium and people don’t write about silly things here. Or, do they?

How I started drawing

A budding desire to feel less like a phony designer blossomed into a love for graphite and lines.

To be clear, I have never drawn professionally or been trained in the arts. My past drawings resemble the works of a 6-year old kid. I started drawing because I imagine it would sharpen my design sensibilities.

I began by outlining simple shapes and learning how to shade. I followed…

Freemium products often teeter on the edge of being downright annoying

No surprises there.

Striking a balance between business goals (to drive conversion) and user goals is often elusive and difficult. In this article, I will be sharing how to design less annoying upgrade prompts and paywalls that still convert users.

In a nutshell, Timing + Transparency + Tone = Less Annoying Paywalls

1. Timing / Relevance:

As with any successful marriage proposal, where you ask, when you ask and how you ask matters.

The right moment to propose an upsell varies from product to product (and user to user). …

In today’s digital age, it might be surprising why I eschewed LinkedIn altogether.

Back in school, my university even had a mandatory career preparation course where we had to create a LinkedIn profile as part of the module passing criteria. While the course imbued me with employability fundamentals, I weighed the pros and cons of LinkedIn and eventually decided to delete my LinkedIn profile.

Reasons I’m not on LinkedIn:

1. Content Uniformity

I prefer to have greater control over the display of my professional life, such as in the form of a personal website. …