# Matt Ström-Awn

> The personal website & blog of Matt Ström-Awn.

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## Writing

- [The least wrong colors, version 2](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/the-least-wrong-colors-version-2/index.md): A library, a CLI, and a GUI with new evaluators, more controls, and better results.
- [High-agency strategy](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/high-agency-strategy/index.md): As AI thins out the management layer, strategy has to be built from the inside — salient enough to act on, memetic enough to spread.
- [Design from the inside](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-from-the-inside/index.md): Now that software changes faster than the tools and methods of design, what should designers do differently?
- [Expansion artifacts](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/expansion-artifacts/index.md): What should we call the tool marks that generative AI leaves behind? And what can we do with them once we've learned to recognize them?
- [Decentralizing quality](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/decentralizing-quality/index.md): Understanding quality is essential to building successful products. But who gets to decide what quality is? And how do we build systems that make quality inevitable?
- [The product design talent crisis](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/product-design-talent-crisis/index.md): The demand for product designers at the top of the talent pool is happening at the cost of junior and entry-level roles. We need to reverse this trend to ensure a healthy future of our practice.
- [The history of album art](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/album-art/index.md): How design pioneers like Alex Steinweiss, Reid Miles, and S. Neil Fujita saw an opportunity to connect music to listeners through art
- [UI Density](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/ui-density/index.md): UI density is more than just the way things look; it's about the information they convey and how much value they generate.
- [The polish paradox](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/the-polish-paradox/index.md): We like to talk about polish in design, but what does it mean? Is it just a fancy word for quality? Or is there something deeper at play?
- [How to generate color palettes for design systems](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/generating-color-palettes/index.md): Color palettes are one of the most fundamental aspects of design systems. How can we make them more flexible, scalable, and accessible?
- [Creating a positive workplace community](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/culture-policy-enforcement/index.md)
- [Design-by-wire](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-by-wire/index.md)
- [Platform Design: Interfaces, Incentives, Emergence & Second-Order Thinking](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/platform-design/index.md)
- [The micromanager's dilemma](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/the-micromanagers-dilemma/index.md)
- [Ballet dancers and shot putters](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/ballet-dancers-and-shot-putters/index.md)
- [Generative art Open Graph preview images](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/generative-art-og-images/index.md)
- [Beauty in the machine: Post-industrial design](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/post-industrial-design/index.md)
- [How to pick the least wrong colors](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/how-to-pick-the-least-wrong-colors/index.md)
- [Hockey sticks don't look like hockey sticks](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/hockey-sticks/index.md)
- [Functions and the future of design systems](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/functions-in-design-systems/index.md)
- [Stop brainstorming](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/stop-brainstorming/index.md)
- [The legacy of NFTs](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/nfts/index.md)
- [Beyond 10×](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/beyond-10x/index.md)
- [Pictures of websites](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/pictures-of-websites/index.md)
- [The service-based design org](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/service-based-design-org/index.md)
- [The hand and the brain](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/the-hand-and-the-brain/index.md)
- [Copying is the way design works](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/copying/)
- [The things of everyday design](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/the-things-of-everyday-design/index.md)
- [Collaborative design research](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/collaborative-design-research/index.md)
- [A design API in practice](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-api-in-practice/index.md)
- [Bottom Line Up Front: write to make decisions faster](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/bluf/index.md)
- [How to make big changes one step at a time](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/designing-change/index.md)
- [What is a brand?](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/what-is-a-brand/index.md)
- [A brief guide to design feedback](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/critique-vs-review/index.md)
- [Engagement is an antimetric](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/engagement/index.md)
- [Breaking looms](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/breaking-looms/index.md)
- [People alignment vs. purpose alignment](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/people-alignment-purpose-alignment/index.md)
- [The paradox at the heart of A/B testing](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/ab-testing-paradox/index.md)
- [All the books I read in 2019](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/2019-books/index.md)
- [Product thinking is a lifeline for struggling design systems](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/product-thinking-for-design-systems/index.md)
- [Design APIs: the evolution of design systems](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-apis/index.md)
- [Making an audio waveform visualizer with vanilla JavaScript](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/waveform-visualizier-javascript/index.md)
- [Design and machine learning](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-and-ml/index.md)
- [Learning how to see](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/learning-how-to-see/index.md)
- [Intuition vs. data](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/intuition/index.md)
- [What google search shows us about the future of product design](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/google-search/index.md)
- [Using Netlify to build an email sign-up widget](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/netlify-email/index.md)
- [The management strategy that saved Apollo 11](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/distributed-decision-making/index.md)
- [The Role of Doubt in Design](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/doubt/index.md)
- [Delight comes last](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/delight-comes-last/index.md)
- [The inevitable same-ification of the internet](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/sameification/index.md)
- [Responsive roadmaps](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/responsive-roadmaps/index.md)
- [The slippery slope of in product messaging](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/wayfinding/index.md)
- [Switching to variable fonts](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/variable-fonts/index.md)
- [Compounding design, expiring design](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/compounding-design/index.md)
- [Optimize for learning](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/optimize-for-learning/index.md)
- [How to take your team's creative pulse](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/pulse-check/index.md)
- [All the books I read in 2018](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/2018-books/index.md)
- [Inclusive design on the Tokyo subway](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/inclusive-subway-design/index.md)
- [How to have more inclusive meetings](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/inclusive-meetings/index.md)
- [Who are design systems for?](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/who-are-design-systems-for/index.md)
- [The design system you already have](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/the-design-system-you-already-have/index.md)
- [We'll fix it later](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/fix-it-later/index.md)
- [Just-in-time design](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/just-in-time-design/index.md)
- [Research, empathy, simplicity, speed](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/research-simplicity-empathy-speed/index.md)
- [Designing with code](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/designing-with-code/index.md)
- [The 1-hour design principles workshop](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-principles-workshop/index.md)
- [My management philosophy](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/management-philosophy/index.md)
- [Agile & anxiety](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/agile-anxiety/index.md)
- [Crystal ball 1-on-1s](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/crystal-ball/index.md)
- [Really bad design exercises](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/design-exercises/index.md)
- [Flight crews don't decide where to fly](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/crews/index.md)
- [Why the web will win](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/web-platform/index.md)
- [My favorite job interview question](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/interview/index.md)
- [The Wall Street Journal's Fonts: Escrow, Exchange & Retina](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/wsjfonts/index.md)
- [What makes a good design principle?](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/principles/index.md)
- [How to get the best design feedback from your team](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/feedback-revisited/index.md)
- [Making WSJ.com more accessible](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/wsj-accessibility/index.md)
- [Design better data tables](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/tables/index.md)
- [Datum ipsum](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/datum-ipsum/index.md)
- [Tiny data visualizations](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/tiny-data-viz/index.md)
- [Mind the gap: designing graphs with missing data](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/gap/index.md)
- [Goldilocks your graphs](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/goldilocks/index.md)
- [Well-designed interfaces look boring](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/boring/index.md)
- [Towards better creative feedback](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/feedback/index.md)
- [Asymmetrical symmetry](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/go/index.md)
- [Make it 'til you make it](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/make-it/index.md)
- [Better problem solving: unask the question](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/unask/index.md)
- [Taking credit for success](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/success/index.md)
- [What happens when things go wrong](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/wrong/index.md)
- [Practice makes perfect](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/practice/index.md)
- [Be curious](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/curiosity/index.md)
- [Working to work](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/working/index.md)
- [A website to call my own](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/website/index.md)


## Projects

- [Copilot Money](https://mattstromawn.com/projects/copilotmoney/): Setting the quality bar and shipping a powerful new feature
- [Stripe Merchant Dashboard](https://mattstromawn.com/projects/stripe-dashboard/): Sweating the details of Stripe's most-used product
- [Stripe Mobile App](https://mattstromawn.com/projects/stripe-mobile/): Enabling millions of merchants to run their business from their phone

## Ethics for Designers

A series on the history and application of ethical thinking, tailored to digital design.

- [The unexamined life](https://mattstromawn.com/ethics/the-unexamined-life/index.md)
- [Virtue ethics](https://mattstromawn.com/ethics/virtue-ethics/index.md)
- [Deontology](https://mattstromawn.com/ethics/deontology/index.md)
- [Consequentialism Explained: Ethics Based on Outcomes (For Designers)](https://mattstromawn.com/ethics/consequentialism/index.md)
- [What Is Care Ethics? A Designer's Guide to Relationship-Centered Morality](https://mattstromawn.com/ethics/care-ethics/index.md)
- [Know thyself](https://mattstromawn.com/ethics/know-thyself/index.md)
- [Ethics for designers in the real world: Snapchat’s Juneteenth filter](https://mattstromawn.com/writing/ethics-snapchat/index.md)

## Reading

- Lenin's Tomb — David Remnick
- Quarantine — Greg Egan
- Rendezvous with Rama — Arthur C. Clarke
- A World Appears — Michael Pollan
- Blindsight — Peter Watts
- 1929 — Andrew Ross Sorkin
- There Is No Antimemetics Division — qntm
- Schild's Ladder — Greg Egan
- Capitalism — Sven Beckert
- Luminous — Greg Egan
- Artemis — Andy Weir
- 7 Powers — Hamilton Helmer
- History of Western Philosophy — Bertrand Russell
- Return from the Stars — Stanisław Lem
- Axiomatic — Greg Egan
- How to Hide an Empire — Daniel Immerwahr
- Where Wizards Stay Up Late — Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon
- The Day of the Jackal — Frederick Forsyth
- Diaspora — Greg Egan
- The Box — Marc Levinson
- Failure Is Not an Option — Gene Kranz
- The Passage — Justin Cronin
- Say Nothing — Patrick Radden Keefe
- The Proud Tower — Barbara W. Tuchman
- Boom — Byrne Hobart & Tobias Huber
- Daemon — Daniel Suarez
- Nexus — Yuval Noah Harari
- Shadow Network — Anne Nelson
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat — Oliver Sacks
- Slouching Towards Utopia — Bradford DeLong
- The Demon of Unrest — Erik Larson
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind — Shunryu Suzuki
- Bernoulli's Fallacy — Aubrey Clayton
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd Ed. — Edward R. Tufte
- The MANIAC — Benjamín Labatut
- Age of Revolutions — Fareed Zakaria
- The Peace War — Vernor Vinge
- Nuclear War — Annie Jacobsen
- The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
- When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut
- Chip War — Chris Miller
- A Fire Upon the Deep — Vernor Vinge
- Fall; or, Dodge in Hell — Neal Stephenson
- How Buildings Learn — Stewart Brand
- On the Origin of Time — Thomas Hertog
- Going Infinite — Michael Lewis
- Ametora — W. David Marx
- Democracy Awakening — Heather Cox Richardson
- Termination Shock — Neal Stephenson
- Is Math Real? — Eugenia Cheng
- Deception Point — Dan Brown
- Napoleon — Andrew Roberts
- Good Strategy, Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
- The Soul of a New Machine — Tracy Kidder
- Dreams of a Final Theory — Steven Weinberg
- The Perfectionists — Simon Winchester
- Patriot Games — Tom Clancy
- The Wager — David Grann
- Seeing Like a State — James C. Scott
- The Hunt for Red October — Tom Clancy
- Kill Chain — Andrew Cockburn
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — John le Carré
- The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
- The Idea Factory — Jon Gertner
- And Then There Were None — Agatha Christie
- Thinking in Systems — Donella H. Meadows
- Blue Mars — Kim Stanley Robinson
- The Making of a Manager — Julie Zhuo
- Noise — Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
- Green Mars — Kim Stanley Robinson
- Red Mars — Kim Stanley Robinson
- The Mirror & the Light — Hilary Mantel
- Bringing Up the Bodies — Hilary Mantel
- Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
- The Price of Peace — Zachary D. Carter
- The Machine That Changed the World — James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
- Murder on the Orient Express — Agatha Christie
- How the World Really Works — Vaclav Smil
- Red Notice — Bill Browder
- Helgoland — Carlo Rovelli
- The Code Breaker — Walter Isaacson
- The Selfish Gene — Richard Dawkins
- The Grid — Gretchen Bakke
- The Phoenix Project — George Spafford, Gene Kim, Kevin Behr
- To Start a War — Robert Draper
- Energy — Richard Rhodes
- Permutation City — Greg Egan
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution — Peter Watts
- The Bomber Mafia — Malcolm Gladwell
- 11/22/63 — Stephen King
- The Evolution of Cooperation — Robert Axelrod
- A Memory Called Empire — Arkady Martine
- Journey to the Edge of Reason — Stephen Budiansky
- Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
- Guns, Germs, and Steel — Jared Diamond
- Creative Selection — Ken Kocienda
- Stories of Your Life and Others — Ted Chiang
- The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments — George Johnson
- The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson
- Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek
- 1776 — David McCullough
- On Writing — Stephen King
- A Wizard of Earthsea — Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Beginning of Infinity — David Deutsch
- Piranesi — Susanna Clarke
- Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart — Mark Epstein
- The Quiet Americans — Scott Anderson
- Masters of Doom — David Kushner
- Altered Carbon — Richard K. Morgan
- Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
- Benjamin Franklin — Walter Isaacson
- The Guns of August — Barbara W. Tuchman
- American Colossus — H.W. Brands
- Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
- The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
- Design Unbound — Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown
- Twenty Bits I Learned About Design, Business & Community — Dan Cederholm
- The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
- Rescuing Prometheus — Thomas P. Hughes
- Thinking in Services — Majid Iqbal
- The Clockwork Universe — Edward Dolnick
- The Splendid and the Vile — Erik Larson
- The Way of Zen — Alan Watts
- Good Services — Lou Downe
- Instantiation — Greg Egan
- Borne — Jeff VanderMeer
- Dark Matter — Blake Crouch
- Recursion — Blake Crouch
- Hooked — Nir Eyal
- Atomic Habits — James Clear
- Do I Make Myself Clear? — Harold Evans
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World — Jack Weatherford
- The Obstacle is the Way — Ryan Holiday
- The Mythical Man-Month — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
- The Mastermind — Evan Ratliff
- Dare to Lead — Brené Brown
- The Square and the Tower — Niall Ferguson
- Several Short Sentences About Writing — Verlyn Klinkenborg
- High Output Management — Andrew S. Grove
- Radical Candor — Kim Malone Scott
- The Art of Taking Action — Gregg Krech
- The Goal — Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
- Shanzhai — Byung-Chul Han and Philippa Hurd
- Rocket Men — Robert Kurson
- Competing Against Luck — Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall and David S. Duncan
- Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Articulating Design Decisions — Tom Greever
- Org Design for Design Orgs — Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner
- Pandemic — A. G. Riddle
- How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell
- Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
- The Black Swan — Nassim Taleb
- Einstein — Walter Isaacson
- Midnight in Chernobyl — Adam Higginbotham
- Trillion Dollar Coach — Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle
- Exhalation — Ted Chiang
- Brave New Work — Aaron Dignan
- Endurance — Alfred Lansing
- Leviathan Wakes — James S. A. Corey
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century — Yuval Noah Harari
- Discussing Design — Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry
- The Fifth Season — N.K. Jemisin
- Predictably Irrational — Dan Ariely
- Ball Lightning — Cixin Liu
- A People's History of the United States — Howard Zinn
- How To Cook Your Life — Dōgen Zenji and Kōshō Uchiyama
- Thinking in Bets — Annie Duke
- The Wizard and the Prophet — Charles C. Mann
- The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States — Jeffrey Lewis
- Why We Sleep — Matthew Walker
- SPQR — Mary Beard
- Good to Great — James C. Collins
- The Culture Code — Daniel Coyle
- On Grand Strategy — John Lewis Gaddis
- Bad Blood — John Carreyrou
- 1491 — Charles Mann
- Enlightenment Now — Steven Pinker
- The Foundation Trilogy — Isaac Asimov
- Why Buddhism is True — Robert Wright
- I Am A Strange Loop — Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Dreaming the Beatles — Rob Sheffield