About Me

I love thinking in analogies.

Connecting disparate ideas to understand a concept better, or drawing on parallels to explain a concept to someone - this carries a lot of power.

The interests and activities here aren’t directly connected to my work as a UX professional, but they’ve influenced how I approach it.

Photography

I moved to Switzerland in 2010. I quickly concluded that it’d be tragic to live in such a beautiful place and not take more photos. I took up photography as a hobby, went deep down the DSLR gear rabbit hole, and took many great photos on my outdoor adventures.

When we had our first child in 2014, I realized that I’d never be able to carry all that stuff and a baby. I traded it all in for a Leica MP-240 with a portrait lens and haven’t regretted it.

Manual focus means it’s more work to take a picture, but I like how it makes me stop and shoot with intent. Frame the shot. Wait for the right moment.

I’m the designated family photographer and am occasionally co-opted for events and weddings.

Comedy

I’ve long been a fan of improv and sketch comedy.

I took improv classes online and then with a local school, before I started a team - Milquetoast - along with some other students. We perform regularly on the local improv circuit, and I teach classes and facilitate corporate workshops.

I’ve loved learning the mechanics of what makes a scene good and what makes stuff funny. There is a lot that can be gleaned from improv about team dynamics, gaining confidence, trusting your gut, and finding patterns.

In contrast to the spontaneous nature of improv, I also love the slow, intentional act of writing sketch comedy. The process of taking a premise and relentlesly refining it to its essential, most funny, state shares a lot in common with the process of iterative design.

In 2025, I started a sketch comedy collective, Züri Sketch. You can find some of my sketch writing here and here.

Pizza

I love to cook.

I’m definitely a maximalist - the more steps, the more ingredients, the better. The best feeling in the world is waking up, and then remembering that I’ve got something good to cook, marinating in the fridge.

I’m good at making pizza; I even developed a pizza course which I taught a few times while at Google. I’m consistently amazed at how, even though I’ve made 200+ pies, I always find new ways to screw up, and new ways to fix it.

I’m in the early stages of starting a pizza business, Dilettante Pizza.

Educating

If I could go back and do it all again, I think I’d want to be a teacher. I love the challenge of trying to explain really complicated things in really simple ways and take every (appropriate) opportunity I can to do so; having kids is a great forcing function for that (try explaining inflation to a 7-year-old!)

I also like mentoring others and advocating for design thinking.

Dad-ing

One of the most formative personal experiences has been being a parent to my two kids.

They’ve been an endless source of fun and frustration, a trigger for self-examination, and creative inspiration. It’s amazing what we can do when we’re without inhibition and don’t let ourselves get in our own way!

I write letters to my kids, a practice I cherish, and I also write about writing to them (and you should too! Write to your own kids, that is, not mine).