It all began one night at the Press Club in San Francisco, where I was attending my first company event. As the youngest guy in the company, I was the least knowledgeable when it came to alcohol (debatable) and wine.

A lot of designers overestimate the value of unique UI design for the success of a product. The truth is that it's actually hardly important at all. It doesn't matter how unique your UI is, competitors will eventually copy it and it will end up commoditised.

Inevitably, when I bring up the topic of designers working ethically, someone will reply with some flavor of "that's nice, but I have rent to pay." Feel free to substitute "rent" for student loans, childcare, medical costs and various other very real and very valid concerns.

For a very long time we had been serving a pretty standard font-stack -  Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif  - safe in the knowledge that this selection would give us a trouble-free, albeit uninspired, font in which to render our desktop website.

We've been doing a series of Jobs to be Done interviews over here at Highrise . After hearing from customers, my brain immediately went into: "We should add this. Jim would want us to build that. Zoe would love it if we made that even better."