Oli Gardner

The main objections I hear about hiring UX contractors: “The ramp-up will be too slow,” “They’re too pricey,” and, “They won’t know our culture, or how we work.” Let’s unpack that. 👇 With recent UX downsizing, companies might have smaller permanent design teams — but trust me, demand for design work is still there, because stellar contractors are building that demand.🌟 I’ve watched it firsthand as I oversee staffing at Outwitly Inc. By utilizing contractors to augment their teams at specific points in the design lifecycle, organizations can still get the work done — without burning out their internal team with millions of feature requests on top of their usual load. It can be a win-win that keeps businesses healthy. 🌱 Back to those objections. Like many UX-related objections, they’re generally founded on shortsightedness: 🏁 Ramping Up vs Acting Now: 🏁Bringing on a contractor can actually add velocity, especially with longer projects that promise big impact but get pushed out or deprioritized because of the sheer amount of work. If you need something done and no one else has the capacity now, you can bring on a specialist for six months, instead of waiting. (^You can also make use of contractors to lay the foundation for upcoming work, like specialists in design ops, research ops, design systems, etc., while others focus on immediate deadlines. ) 💰Up-front Cost vs ROI: 💰Contractors often have higher rates because they take on higher risk, but when you consider the cost of slow internal hiring, employee turnover, long-term overhead, employee benefits, etc., contractors can be a lower-risk option. Specialized contractors can also pull research initiatives out of holding patterns and uncover opportunities for innovation with major ROI potential. 🧩 Like-Minded vs New Perspectives: 🧩New personalities aren’t scary! Blended teams are amazing for bringing in fresh perspectives and diverse skillsets that your internal team members can learn from and adopt, to the long-term benefit of their organizations. (^ Plus, the beautiful thing about the people who tend to go into contracting is that they’re often senior practitioners, willing to bet on themselves because they know they’re experienced enough to consistently win contracts, and they HAVE to be that good to find work.🔥) 👉 So, in reality, you get the "cream of the crop," new perspectives and more speed/flexibility. You get to skip over red tape and get straight to work. (Especially if you have support with choosing the right candidates.) If you’re considering this hiring move, OR you’re trying to convince your supervisor to consider it, give this blog post another look: https://lnkd.in/gRP-V3JS We posted it a while ago, but it’s still a good resource. I’d be interested to hear about other experiences with blended teams. What’s your favourite part?  What’s working best? #UXDesign #StaffAugmentation #UXContractors #BlendedTeams #DesignOps

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When it comes to user research, we can’t just provide a long laundry list of pain points and tiny fixes. 📝 That’s not enough. 👇 Researchers so often get stuck in the hamster wheel of incremental product improvement that we aren’t actually spending enough time with our research (synthesizing it using design thinking) to provide true innovative solutions. (As you know, providing innovative solutions is the KEY to creating real impact.) Instead, what usually happens is that stakeholders receive these research reports with a big long list of basic, surface-level pain points to address at the end (🥱), along with some basic recommendations, and they get added to some product/feature roadmap, prioritized, and implemented in a routine life cycle. 🤷 This is great, to an extent! BUT, hello!!… DESIGN (the bigger umbrella of design) is NOT about identifying a million pain points and painfully fixing each one. Design is about creating experiences and things that delight ✨ and excite 🤸people, while being functional. User research should support that. 👉 Try not to get stuck in this trap when you’re working on your next project.  Next time, when you’re looking at a fresh set of raw research data: 🧩 Strategize: Employ frameworks to start processing the themes and repeating ideas in your data. 🧘‍♂️ Marinate: Let these themes and ideas wash over your subconscious again and again, even while you sleep! 🌀Bend and push your creative mind: Work hard at putting those ideas together in new and exciting ways. 💥 Don’t stop until you get to the magic: You will find those “aha” moments waiting underneath it all. 🎯 Communicate and sell that magic in your reporting: Showcase opportunities that will actually get at the deep-rooted design problem and elevate your organization into a trendsetting power player. The way we do this for our clients is through Action Plans. Yes, we still provide the laundry list of pains — because it IS still useful. BUT, the genius 🧠 we deliver is in translating these larger themes into ACTIONABLE and INNOVATIVE solutions that will literally transform the way those businesses deliver their products and services, and propel them ahead of the industry. This is how you get noticed in your UX career — bringing these types of solutions to the table!! #UserResearch #UXResearch #DesignInnovation #UXCareer #DigitalTransformation

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Want better ideas? Remove barriers. Last week I joined an Innovation Design session at Platform Calgary, and one message really stuck with me: “𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗰𝗸.” Here’s what I mean. I sometimes find myself jumping to solutions by thinking: “What’s our budget?” “What are our current systems?” “What are we allowed to do?” But that’s thinking from a place of limitation, constraint. I’m unintentionally closing the door on creativity before it begins. 𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝗜 𝗱𝗼? Create an environment where “rust” hasn’t set in. An industrialist once said: “𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻.” That means: ➡️Start with options, what if? ➡️Ignore assumptions. ➡️Create conditions to think differently. A great way to do this is change your environment. Go to another desk, room, building, location and start thinking new. The new surroundings will break thinking habits. Innovation isn’t about technology, it’s about better thinking. How do you solve problems? Share below.

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I had a technically deep, slightly unsettling conversation with Manick Bhan from Search Atlas a few weeks back while we were both in Toronto for SEO IRL. We DIDN'T talk about "optimizing content" or "buying cheap backlinks" to survive until the next algorithm update. We talked about the fact that the floor is currently being ripped out from under the entire digital marketing industry. 🎙️ Google vs. ChatGPT: The Battle for Search Has Already Begun Watch the full podcast episode here: https://lnkd.in/erRMy3pQ Manick and I reflected on how SEO is being replaced by agentic search and how AI models actually read the web. Most businesses still don't know whether they even exist in AI answers. They're ranking well in Google and assume that translates into LLM relevance. It doesn't. We're living through a genuine architectural shift. This is not another algorithm update. It is a completely different way that information gets discovered, trusted and surfaced. In this episode we unpacked what my team at WLDM AI Research Lab has learned from analyzing 300,000+ AI citations across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini - data that shows how LLMs decide what to cite and why there are a lot of wrong assumptions and misinformation about these topics. Domain Authority? Barely correlates. Traffic? Often irrelevant. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness? Nice words. Not how it works. Search engines and LLMs are both forced to infer meaning - but they infer differently. Google looks at links, user signals and authority. LLMs look at semantic depth, text quality scores and co-citation patterns. Which means the optimization steps are fundamentally different. In our conversation, we broke down: - The Citation Paradox: Why your #1 Google ranking means nothing to an LLM - How sites with Zero Google traffic end up as top AI citations - Why personalization in AI generated answers is weaker than we assume + and why that’s dangerous - What 300,000+ real AI citations reveal about the future of trust (exclusive insights from WLDM’s data study) - How asking questions changes the model itself (LLM superposition) - Why agentic traffic is about to become one of the most important KPIs in digital marketing By 2027, 25-30% of search traffic will come from LLM interfaces. That's not far away. That's 24 months. You can either learn how to influence the LLMs now, or you can grab the popcorn and watch your business become invisible in real-time. Question for you: Have you checked whether your brand shows up in AI answers? If the answer is "no," what exactly is your plan for next year? 📺 Check out the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gagJmgeT #SEO #AI #LLMs #DigitalMarketing #AImodels #AICitations #AgenticTraffic #GEO #LLMs

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Just got back from Shopify Editions.dev in Toronto. While everyone was talking about AI-generated theme blocks, I was in the hallways talking to the people who actually have to implement this stuff. - Anne Thomas from Design Packs explained the technical reality behind universal blocks and why existing theme developers are concerned about migration paths. - Ezra Firestone (Zipify) thinks the real opportunity is sitting right in front of us: the Shop app that 100 million people already have installed. - Karl Meisterheim from Liquid Weekly had some sharp observations about the catalog API. Worth listening to if you're building on Shopify or advising clients who are. Link in comments.

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Shopify just dropped their Winter ’26 editions. Some really interesting stuff here around AI, AB Testing (love this), B2B, and Shop App. This is what stood out to me. 1. Sidekick is getting serious AI inside Shopify that does real work: insights, reporting, workflows, theme edits, image cleanup, even building simple apps. Shopify is trying to remove the busywork that drains teams. 2. Commerce moves into AI-native channels Shopify is now pushing products directly into AI chat platforms. We knew this already, but still great to see. Customers discover and buy inside conversations. This is a big shift in how people will shop. 3. Better tools for storefronts A/B testing, rollout scheduling, cleaner theme editing, more flexible catalogs, more variants, better search, and a massive upgrade in how merchants can manage complex stores. The SimGym feature looks promising: simulate shopper behavior before launching anything. 4. Retail and POS upgrades New POS Hub hardware, better inventory accuracy, subscriptions in-store, custom receipts, faster syncing, and same-day delivery options through Uber Direct. If you run retail + ecommerce, this is def a win. As always, with editions, Shopify isn’t just releasing features, they’re building the foundation for how e-com will work in the next decade. AI doing the grunt work. Stores that adapt automatically. Buying that happens outside the “traditional” storefront. Real tools that move the needle. This is the direction the industry is heading. #shopify #editions #ecommerce

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Some of the worst behavior in the agency world happens quietly… behind the scenes… when founders are most vulnerable. I met with a brand founder this week who launched with a splash. Big audience, great traction out of the gate. Their dev shop saw the early numbers in Shopify. And instead of congratulating them or doubling down on support… They went pencils down until the founder agreed to renegotiate the contract. Translation: “We saw your metrics. We want more money. Until then, we’re not doing anything.” Absolute criminal behavior. This is the kind of thing that gives service businesses a bad name. It’s entitlement masquerading as strategy. And here’s the crazy part - if they had half a brain, they’d realize there are three paths when a client starts crushing it: 1. Continue to do good work and expect the workload to increase as the brand scales which should theoretically result in a natural progression to increase the contract size. 2. Threaten your client as a strategy to get more money and they concede. 3. Threaten your client as a strategy and lose them entirely. They wanted 2 to happen, but didn't even consider option 3 being viable. In an industry that’s reputation-driven where founders talk, group chats talk, DTC Twitter talks, your character is your differentiator. The “secret” to client retention isn’t complicated. Just be a good person. Do the work you said you’d do. Treat growth like a privilege, not leverage. Wild concept, I know.

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Manage your ads by typing sentences.... 🤯 On Feb 2nd, they opened the Ads MCP Server to public beta. What that actually means 👇 You type "pause all campaigns with ROAS under 2" into Claude. It does it. Across your entire account. You type "expand my US campaign to Canada." Done. No rebuilding anything. You type "show me campaign performance for October." Consolidated report. No spreadsheet exports. The old way rewarded patience and mouse accuracy. The new way rewards strategic thinking. 🔧 I've been deep in MCP workflows for months now, so I put together a step-by-step walkthrough showing exactly how to connect Amazon Ads to Claude. Covers everything from generating your MCP token to verifying live campaign data is pulling through. ⚠️ One thing I'd stress: start with read-only access. Pull reports. Analyze data. Build trust in the workflow before letting anything touch your budget. The early adopter window on this is 12 to 24 months before it becomes mainstream and the edge disappears. 🔗 Link to the full walkthrough below 👉 https://stan.store/keplo Have you started experimenting with MCP yet?

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While the live conversation at Web Summit Vancouver may have happened a couple of weeks ago, the topic of how AI is impacting marketing for startups isn't going away anytime soon. So here's a handy recap of what you should know, be aware of, and consider for the future when it comes to using AI in your marketing. TLDR: - If you're a founder hoping that AI will replace the need to hire a marketing team, think again. - If you're a marketer hoping to get some of the boring admin tasks handled, you might be in luck, but proceed with an eagle eye. Oh, and showing up IRL is where it's at. If you're on the fence about going to an event, jump off the fence and into a plane, train or automobile. Ciara (Ki-ra) H., Allison Braley, Julie Choi https://lnkd.in/gb-wccvF

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We reviewed our latest wireframes for our R&D platform today, and the biggest takeaway had nothing to do with software. It was empathy. 🔵 Most of our clients are brilliant operators, but they’re not tax experts and they’re not product designers. 🔵 They don’t know our definitions, acronyms, or sequence of steps. The good news is that our job is simple: - remove friction, - speak plainly, and - guide people like we would want to be guided from the dark. Empathy is a competitive advantage. Especially in tax. That’s why we’re building a proprietary platform to claim R&D tax credits in a variety of fields. Wine, CPG, engineering and many more in addition standard software dev projects. Easy UX, backed by a small army of ex-Big 4 vets at Tax Hack Accounting Group. Launch coming soon 🥊

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A short lesson from a client project we worked on a few years ago At Sqaleup Inc., one project in particular changed how we approach building products. We started with what looked like a clear brief. Clear goals. Clear scope. Clear timeline. Then reality kicked in. As development progressed, ideas kept changing. Features were added, removed, reintroduced. Priorities shifted almost weekly. Nothing unusual, this happens more often than people admit. The real issue wasn’t scope creep. It was clarity. The problem itself hadn’t been fully defined. So we kept building, adjusting, rebuilding. The product worked technically, but direction kept moving. That experience taught us something important: Code is rarely the real problem. Clarity is. Since then, we’ve changed how we work at Sqaleup. Before writing a single line of code, we now focus on: ✅ Defining the real problem ✅ Aligning product goals with business outcomes ✅ Challenging assumptions early ✅ Deciding what not to build It’s helped us ship better products, faster, with less waste for both us and our clients. We still take on client projects. But only when there’s space to think, question, and build with intention. Because shipping fast is easy. Shipping the right thing is what actually matters. Sayonara✌🏽

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23%. That’s the revenue lift tied to consistent user experience across platforms. You don’t need a stat to know what happens when design fragments. Too many vendors. Mismatched systems. UI elements that never quite align. The hidden cost is time and trust. Teams spend more onboarding new partners than building momentum. Users feel the seams. When companies commit to continuity instead of patchwork, the effect compounds: - 30–50% faster design-to-dev handoff - UX consistency that builds trust and conversion - Less design debt and smoother ramp-ups That’s why teams like Airbnb and Salesforce invest in unified systems and long-term design partners. Not just for speed, but for cohesion. The difference isn’t subtle. It’s the line between momentum and drift.

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Brain dumping right now but . . . Diving deeper into Shopify’s new “agentic commerce” docs gave me a real “this is actually happening” moment. This isn’t about adding AI integrations to storefronts. It’s about Shopify becoming an agent-native commerce backend, sharing data seamlessly with your favourite AI chat. Shopify will soon explicitly support a setup where brands can run a Shopify backend that syncs directly to AI agents - without a traditional storefront at all. This is the new agentic plan. What really stood out was how Shopify has split its documentation into apps, storefronts, and agents. Not “how your storefront integrates with AI” - but agents as an entirely separate consumer of commerce data. A separate sales channel. Right now, everyone is asking: “How do I integrate my Shopify store with AI?” But that’s the wrong question. The real shift is this: The storefront matters less to agents than the data architecture behind it - products, catalogues, collections, availability, pricing, loyalty, tracking. The future looks like this: We optimise storefronts for humans and crawlers - branded experiences, CRO, SEO, performance. But in parallel, we put equal weight into optimising the commerce data layer - so agents can retrieve, understand, and serve that data cleanly and accurately. Schema. Catalogue structure. Data consistency. Signal clarity. We’ve been pushing a Data-First approach for the last year. This feels like the natural next step. Search-First & Agent-First. The infrastructure is finally catching up.

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