I finished Black Ops 2 yesterday. Is it too much to ask that games make some sort of sense?

I’m no longer writing Designing The Future Web. Even after 18 months and 25,000 words, the well of knowledge is filling faster than I can draw from it, and it’s become clear that I can no longer make the sacrifices a book demands.

Here’s something I was taught a few years ago about how to adjust your management approach. 

It is the hybrid designer – not the specialist – who is most in demand, and every capable visual designer has picked up interaction design fundamentals. The specialists’ differentiation and competitive advantage is shrinking. 

Later this month I’ll be joining Twitter as a senior designer, working on the evolution of Twitter’s apps with the London team. It’s Twitter’s first full-time design position in Europe, and as such has huge potential – and undoubtedly some intriguing challenges.

I was going to write a long post, but I think a rough diagram suffices.

Last year, the UX uniform I’d worn for a decade started to feel like a straightjacket. I wasn’t learning as rapidly as I once did, and my work had plateaued. I felt I was coasting, and falling victim to dangerous nouns like boredom and arrogance.

It’s an exhausting treadmill. No wonder ours is largely the domain of the young.

“If you have a client that won’t pay for responsive design, get a client that will.”

I’m sure “Great design is invisible” looks fantastic on a crisp Helvetica poster but, like all slogans, it whitewashes complexity.

But this year – and I suppose this is my 2011 retrospective – I’ve visited five continents and spent a quarter of the year overseas. I’ve visited places I always dreamed of and perfected my security choreography: belt, laptop, liquids in under ten seconds.

Recently there’s been much talk of “content out”, the idea that web design should be inspired by the qualities of the text and images of a site. It’s a healthy idea, but like any slogan, it is open to misinterpretation.

Today I changed my signatures, my profiles, and my label to “digital product designer”.

A friend from a successful e-commerce site got in touch recently. He’s been steadily redesigning the site, with the help of an external design team. I know the company he’s working with. They’re good. But he hadn’t yet seen the bottom-line rewards he’d hoped for, so he asked for my thoughts.

Even a talented wordsmith must first clarify his thoughts and eliminate ambiguity to make a convincing argument. Editing is integral to this thought process.

Is a book a relic, or a canvas? Is this defacement or annotation?

At the point of largest displacement – when you’re deepest in a particular phase – you’re actually at a standstill. Only when swinging from one phase to the other do you reach your top speed.

When choosing a picture for a persona, use a real photo, not a cartoon. A cartoon doesn’t add life to a persona; it drains life from it.

I’m itching to get started full-time, but right now I’m having so much fun that a few more weeks is worth the wait.