Shawn Cole
Over a decade of strategic design leadership creating value for businesses and their customers. I’m Shawn—I work with and lead a team of incredible creators and builders at Koru.
I write stuff on my LinkedIn, you can send me a friendly message, or check out my ambient music project Sentient Spaces.
I look like this (most days).
What's this, like website update #19?
I go back and forth whether I want to maintain a website. As time has gone on, I've reevaluated the need for, the layout of, and the visual style of my website… many times over.
So after a bit of a break, I'm publishing again. This latest version is kind of an updates channel. I'll try to use it as such.
5 speculative healthcare futures
💉 In 2034, extreme self-care trends lead to individuals hacking their health with sensors, AI and questionable custom supplements and medications.
🤑 The wealth transfer from boomers has created a new class of affluent heirs who invest in exclusive luxury clubs for preventative healthcare.
⚕️ Underfunded and understaffed, rural communities unite to form healthcare co-ops, using social platforms to crowdsource resources and attract travelling professionals.
🕊️ Grassroots movements revive holistic and indigenous health practices to combat environmental health crises, encouraging resilience despite political inertia and technological overreach.
🖕 Open-source medical technologies democratize healthcare access and challenge corporate control of medical intervention.
The Koru team participated in a Hack Day building solutions to operational pains using AI. This is a garment I designed for the winning team.
Behavioural change is one of the biggest barriers in new product adoption. You're better off adding convenience to existing behaviours rather than reinforcing new ones.
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Designing for uncertainty
My entire working life I’ve seen business leaders race to react to market changes. We see something picking up speed and build build build due to FOMO, until we are blindsided by something like unforeseen competition, consumer preference changes, a health crisis, regulatory upheaval and so on. Then we need to react to that disruption. This is troublesome if your business relies on things like growth, capital and market presence. So, pretty much every business.
👉 I have some tips for designers out there looking for their next role. This latest [job] posting has gotten north of 400 submissions that I try to give an honest look.
🫠 This is very time consuming. I know from a designer’s perspective, there’s lots of their own flavour they’d like to add to their resume and portfolio, but please keep in mind there’s somebody on the other end that needs to move quickly and give everyone a fair shake.
So here is my raw feedback on what I’m seeing:
📜 If a resume is a .docx with custom fonts I don’t have, I question the ability to build accessible products. Send a PDF
🎨 If a resume has more than 2 colours and 2 fonts, it’s over designed. Keep it simple
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Do not look down, just keep walking.
20240720
When I speak about some visiony thing, I speak in high-level possibilities. By no means is this meant to be what to do, how to do it, or what the thing looks like. It’s a canvas for exploration. Go explore that space. Do better than what I can do with my vagueness.
Hey design friends 👋 please don't send Figma links as résumés — it's a painful experience. A simple, easy-to-read PDF will do.
Building out in the open
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had wild ideas and tiny projects on the go — but I’ve built it all in private. Here’s why that’s a bad thing.
TLDR: Building in private can introduce cognitive biases and flawed feedback loops that make for troublesome projects. Building in the open can not only garner better feedback, but avoid the heartache of failure. For me, nobody has pushed me to demo or complete any of my private ideas. Perhaps if I make them public, it'll force me to actually finish them.
Automakers risk losing the battle for the car’s 'mind' to Big Tech
It’s no secret that automakers react to shifts in the social and technological landscape like they are steering a glacier. The advancements we’ve seen in vehicle tech — namely through in-car screens and connectivity — have been tiny hops. We need to see leaps. What we’re seeing now in vehicle infotainment systems, gauge clusters, and connected smartphone applications feels more like a panicked reaction to Tesla.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it — most modern in-car interfaces are bad.