Technology with a Human Face

Reflective Writing: Keeping People at the Center

Lately, I’ve been practicing a deceptively simple habit: take any idea I’m working on and break it into three parts—what’s the claim, what’s the evidence, and why it matters to an actual human being. It sounds easy, but the third part is always the hardest. Writing for a rubric is one thing. Writing for someone real, with a brain and maybe a little skepticism, is another.

This habit helps me stay focused on people. It pushes me to pause and ask questions like: Who is this actually for? What am I assuming? Is this even landing? That’s where my background helps. Ecology teaches me to think in systems, to notice feedback loops and unintended consequences. Tech and design taught me to look at affordances, to focus on what something lets people do, not just what it claims to offer. And writing studies keeps me honest. If the writing isn’t clear or readable, it doesn’t matter how clever it is. It still fails.

So now when I write, I try to build something that holds together. The claim has to be grounded. The evidence has to carry weight. And the “why it matters” part is what gives it purpose. Otherwise, it’s just information with no reason to exist.

This hasn’t magically fixed my writing. Sometimes I still drift into academic autopilot. But the habit is helping. It’s making me a more thoughtful writer, and maybe more importantly, a more thoughtful reader. Because once I imagine an audience that isn’t me, the whole process shifts.

That’s the kind of thinking I want to bring into other work too—not just writing for the sake of it, but writing that actually connects with people.