The Invisible Mechanism Behind UX Thinking: The Question That Shaped My Entire Career

My earliest memory is my father handing me a crayon on the highway and asking me to draw the gear inside a McDonald's sign. The one that made it spin. I was three.

That question, “what's the invisible mechanism?” turns out to be the question I've been asking my whole career. In design. In research. In AI.

And apparently torturing my daughter with too.

She's 12. She calls me MOMSTER sometimes. Last week she made shrimp fried rice from scratch. In a pan. Not a wok.

I asked her what she thought made a wok work better than a regular pan.

She looked at me, ROLLED her eyes, and said: "Mom. It's the shape."

She's never used a wok. She figured it out by cooking. By doing the thing until the thing made sense.

That's the invisible mechanism.

Not the tool. The understanding you develop by using it.

My father handed me a crayon and asked me to imagine what I couldn't see.

What's the invisible mechanism in your work?