What we're thinking about, what we're up to, and what comes next

Listen and engage with NASA's Chief Scientist Dr. Jim Green speaking on a broad range of science and space topics at live at Blink or online. Date TBD.

Karen Clark Cole, Blink’s CEO and co-founder, will be a regular commentator on the new podcast from Loren Feldman, former editor at Forbes.

Do you feel silly, amused, or fun-loving? That’s a positive emotion. Do you feel guilty, repentant, or blameworthy? That’s a negative emotion. Both positive and negative emotions change the way that our brain operates. Negative emotions narrow our perspective to focus on threats. Positive emotions broaden our field of vision.

The holiday break is here, and the Blink team is excited for a restorative time away from the studio. Quiet days and long flights make for some great reading time. Here are some books—UX-related, fiction, and otherwise—recommended by Blink.

Even people with considerable power — owners, CEOs, board chairs — are often reluctant to have the tough talks that are required for them to achieve the outcomes they desire.

There are countless conference round-ups out there, so here is a list that focuses on the conferences we’re actually attending next year.

Nature and nurture are both critical to your career path, and so at Blink, we focus on both of these in our employee development.

The human brain is not wired to have an "on" and "off" switch for work and play—and operating as if it were will deplete one’s energy and creativity.

We are thrilled to be a part of the Seattle Interactive Conference. We are delivering three talks, two panels, one live-podcast recording, one workshop, and more! Seattle Interactive Conference is Thursday, October 17 and Friday, October 18.

Karen talks to Mike Adams, host of About Money Radio, about how Blink has grown since she was last on the show, and why user experience research is still an important part of designing a website, product or service.

On August 6, 2019, Karen Clark Cole was interviewed live on stage by Rachel Gauvin for a Startup Grind San Diego. The interview aired on the Fresh Brewed Tech podcast "Tacos & Tech"

On August 7, 2019, our CEO and co-founder Karen Clark Cole was interviewed by Patricia Kathleen on her podcast.

Specifically choosing San Diego as our first full-service office outside of Seattle is largely due to its size and demographics.

We recently finished construction of two usability labs in San Diego. Take a photo tour of our studio which is located in the heart of East Village just a few blocks from PETCO Park.

We just completed construction of two state-of-the-art usability labs in our downtown San Diego studio. We can configure our San Diego usability labs to evoke professional office spaces, medical exam rooms, cozy living rooms, or anything in between.

From chatbots to intelligent assistants, conversation interfaces are changing the way that people interact with their computers, and designers have a unique opportunity to shape this medium at the ground level. Like all emerging tech, best practices are still being developed, but here at Blink we’ve had the opportunity to design a few of our own and learned a lot along the way.

As a user experience designer, it can feel as though I am waging an on-going, never-ending battle against complexity, especially when working on enterprise systems. A popular route to simplify an experience is to implement a design system. Design systems are essential, but what I hope to show in this article is that a design system alone — particularly if it’s primarily a component level design system — does not guarantee a simple, consistent experience.

Blink's cofounder and CIO was awarded the Myron L. White Award for his dedication and service to the Human Centered Design and Engineering program.