I write on this blog weekly. Nobody edits me. Nobody tells me to âsoften the toneâ or âadd more tactical takeaways.â
I also pitch articles to other publications. They have editors. Standards. Opinions about what their audience wants.
Sometimes they publish them. Sometimes they send polite rejection emails that say ânot quite right for usâ which means âtoo weirdâ or âtoo honestâ or âwe already published something about onboarding last month.â
Hereâs the ones that made it through:
Podcast: UX Band-Aids that Hide Real Problems
HackerNoon
HackerNoon likes tactical breakdowns of why things fail. I like writing about why things fail. Good match.
Featured as a Top Story. Reached 2,407 people in three weeks. Apparently âyour pricing page is a confidence problem, not a design problemâ resonated.
This one got featured in their newsletter twice. Spent 9 days on the homepage. Translated into 12 languages. Made trending.
If you think your pricing page is âjust design,â this will probably annoy you. (Good.)
My new book published Feb 2026
AI promises to make design faster. More efficient. More productive. But what actually breaks when it enters the process?Â
âLooks Good to Meâ examines nine structural problems beneath the productivity pitch. Tools that only agree with you. Context that decays with every exchange. Edges and outliers going extinct. Baselines that invert until broken becomes normal.Â
Not future speculation. Present observation.Â
Through sharp, sardonic essays, product designer Tanya Donska documents what actually happens when AI enters the design processânot whatâs supposed to happen, but what does. From sycophancy to model collapse, from estimation failures to inverted bus factors, these essays trace the real costs hidden under the efficiency promises.Â
For designers, developers, product managers, and anyone working with or thinking critically about AI tools.
Links to Amazon, Apple books etc to follow
Grokipedia
Grokipedia is basically Wikipedia for people in the design and tech world. Not the watered-down version. The one where people actually write about what you did, not what you claim you do.
Having a profile there matters because itâs third-party validation. I didnât write it. An publication did. Which means it has to pass some threshold of âactually worth documenting.â
Shows up in searches, links back properly, and doesnât disappear when the algorithm changes. Itâs boring credibility infrastructure that actually works.
Sitepoint
Same photo. Same tool. Worse results six months later. Itâs not a bug, itâs model collapse.
When AI trains on content made by other AI (which is basically the entire internet now), the model degrades. Each generation gets fuzzier. Your design tools are quietly getting worse and nobodyâs talking about why thatâs happening or what to do about it.
Pitchwall
What Early-Stage Founders Should Know About Product Design Before Spending Money
Product design costs 32K-58K. Most founders canât evaluate what theyâre actually paying for.
When to invest, what to avoid, and the one metric that actually tells you if design is working. (Spoiler: itâs not about how pretty it looks.)
Medium
Mediumâs Product Coalition focuses on team dynamics, hiring, and the messy human parts of building products. Less âhereâs a frameworkâ and more âhereâs why your team is struggling.â
The myth that designers need to be therapists, diplomats, and mind readers to work with âdifficultâ stakeholders.
You donât need better soft skills. You need better clients. Or at least clients who donât think âCan you make it pop?â is actionable feedback.
Why hiring only âseniorâ or âthe bestâ designers creates teams that canât function.
When everyoneâs overqualified, nobody wants to do the unglamorous work. Your team of 5 senior designers all want to âlead strategy.â Nobody wants to fix the button states.
Credential inflation is expensive. And it doesnât make better products.
On why âsoft skillsâ is code for âhire people who donât disagree,â what credential inflation costs teams, and why the future of design isnât about hiring more designers. Itâs about hiring better ones.
Why I Write for Other Publications
Reason 1: Instant audience
My blog gets some 20-40 visitors a day. HackerNoon gave me 2,407 readers in three weeks. Math is math.
When you write on your own site, youâre building an audience from zero. SEO takes 6-9 months to matter. Content compounds slowly.
When you write for an established publication, you borrow their audience. You get immediate reach. Then those readers either come find your blog or they donât. Most donât. Thatâs fine.
âI wrote a blog postâ means nothing to skeptical clients.
Reason 2: Editorial validation
âI wrote a HackerNoon Top Story that got featured twice in their newsletterâ means something. Itâs a credibility signal. Third-party validation that you can write, think clearly, and say something worth reading.
Is it fair that external validation matters more than the quality of your own work? No. Does it matter anyway? Yes.
Reason 3: Better writing
Editors make you better. Not because they âfixâ your writing. Because they force you to clarify.
âIs this point clear?â âDoes this example land?â âCan you cut 200 words?â
These are uncomfortable questions. Your own blog doesnât ask them. Editors do. And your writing gets sharper because of it.
Reason 4: Constraints breed creativity
Every publication has a style. A tone. An audience expectation.
HackerNoon wants tactical. Medium wants team dynamics. Peerlist wants career reality.
Writing for their constraints makes you adapt. You learn what works for different contexts. You get better at matching message to medium.
Your own blog has no constraints. Which means you can ramble. And sometimes you do.
Reason 5: Itâs marketing that doesnât feel like marketing
I donât run ads. I donât sponsor newsletters. I donât buy LinkedIn impressions
I write useful articles that solve real problems. Publications share them with their audience. Some readers come find me. Some become clients.
Thatâs marketing. It just doesnât feel gross because Iâm not interrupting anyone. Iâm helping them fix their broken pricing page or understand why their onboarding sucks.
I write what Iâd write anyway. Then I pitch it to publications where it might fit. If they say yes, great. If they say no, it goes on my blog.
Either way, the work exists. And the work matters more than where it lives.
If You Liked Any of These
Youâll probably like the rest of this blog. Same voice. Same opinions. Less editorial oversight.
More boundary-setting. More uncomfortable truths. More calling out things nobody wants to admit.
The difference: on my own blog, I donât have to soften edges or add âpractical frameworksâ to make editors comfortable. I can just say the thing.
Which sometimes makes it better. Sometimes makes it worse. But itâs always honest.
Want to republish or translate any of these? Email me. Iâm reasonable about it.