podcast 2025
Future Perfect Book Club
futureperfectbook.club
Co-hosted with Joel Goodman, exploring the intersection of design, technology, and the future of institutions.
Read article →Twenty years building teams and shipping services for millions. Former Head of Design at 18F, now Assistant Professor of Practice in Urban Technology at University of Michigan. Founder of State Capacity AI and Occupant.
Featured Work
Occupant — AI Compute Benchmarks
Nobody knows what AI actually costs. Institutions are signing contracts they can't evaluate, with no benchmark for whether they're overpaying or what the market looks like.
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18F — Building Design Practice & Federal Leadership
I built and scaled the design practice at 18F from 21 to 40 practitioners, then served as Chief of Staff at the Technology Transformation Services. Eight years learning how to make institutions work differently from the inside.
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State Capacity AI
AI is making decisions, and nobody has to tell you. There's no standard for disclosure, no shared language for what kind of authority a system has, and no easy way to contest a decision made by software.
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AT Protocol Projects — Trust Infrastructure
Interconnected suite of decentralized data infrastructure and public goods experiments exploring how identity, reputation, and trust can work without centralized platform control.
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Teaching Public Mechanics at Michigan
Design education shouldn't train people to build more apps. It should teach them to understand infrastructure, repair what's broken, and build systems that serve the public.
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Building a consumer price index to measure AI spend via Occupant.ee. Still thinking about Andor. ICYMI: My 2025 year in review is here.
Recent Appearances
article January 2026
Some advice on managing your design career upwards
Piccalil.li
Navigating design leadership, building influence across organizations, and positioning yourself for strategic impact.
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talk November 2025
Beyond Civic Tech: Public Mechanics Starts at Home
Cascadia Open Source Fall Conference
Why civic tech fails when it ignores maintenance, repair, and the invisible work that keeps public services running.
podcast September 2025
Repairing Service Design for the Age of AI
Service Design Show Podcast
Exploring how service design must evolve to address the challenges and opportunities of AI-driven systems.
Read article → video October 2025
Design Systems and Public Services
YouTube
Discussion on service design, public sector innovation, and building decision systems that work at scale.
Currently Reading
- Waging A Good War by Thomas E. Ricks
- Maintenance of Everything: Part One by Stewart Brand
- Religion And The Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas
- The Field Guide to Design Futures by Giovanni Caruso, Silvio Cioni
Listening To
- Sunshine and Balance Beams by Pile
- Ripped and Torn by Lifeguard Radio
- DDR by Sharp Pins