The Inside Shift
The Inside Shift is a set of practical tools, a growing body of thinking, and a community for anyone creating experiences, environments, and narratives that shape people’s lives. It started as a question I couldn’t stop asking: are the things we create doing good, or doing harm? This is the 7-week process behind turning that question into a platform — the research, the writing, the design, and everything in between.
Dreaming Big
Week 1
For 23 years, one question followed me: am I contributing to the greater good, or the greater harm? It started two years into my first job as a graphic designer, and I still carry it with me. Even while leading creative for public health in real time.
That question became a whitepaper, Designed to Fracture, which argued that as creators, we aren’t just users of attention-exploiting systems — we’re builders of the environments that shape people’s consciousness. It closed with a line that became the seed of everything after: “This awareness is an act of resistance. It begins with us choosing to change the system from within and refusing to disappear inside it.”
The Inside Shift is the answer to that question.
The Foundation
Week 2
I had 7 weeks to build the Inside Shift’s platform. I chose WordPress over Ghost and Squarespace, purchased insideshift.co, and started asking the question that would become the platform’s spine: what if there were a simple way to pause before creating something and think through the experience you’re asking another human being to have?
From the beginning, I committed this platform to being thought-leadership-driven, including a practical framework, a foundational essay, a philosophy, a call to action, and a section for future visions including concepts for a TED Talk, a monthly newsletter, and an annual publication.
Research shaped the direction early on with IDEO’s design research ethics, Hartford and Stein on attentional harm, and Don Norman on human-centered design. Each provided different angles with the same conclusion: our work shapes people’s experience, whether we mean it to or not.
To help keep my dream and all its tasks organized, I set up a Trello board to hold myself accountable and maintain my sanity. I produced an in-depth production timeline and mostly stuck to it. One thing this build taught me was to be flexible, and when a new idea emerges that shifts the plan, go with it.
“I am reaffirmed that not only can I dream this, but I can also do this.”
Epiphanies
Week 3
Two ideas surfaced, shaping the platform’s emotional core. First: “I’ve carried a 23-year tension about whether my work contributes to good or harm, and surely I’m not alone in that.” Second, arriving the very next morning, a third place for a shift to happen emerged. It doesn’t have to happen in a system or a job; it can also happen entirely inside a person, and that still counts.
Alongside the thinking came the look: soft gradients, interlocking shapes that intentionally defy physics, a calm and editorial feel meant to set the platform apart from typical tech products.
Building it for Real
“It was Elementor several, Jessica 0.”
Weeks 4 & 5
Learning a page builder from scratch, while also drafting all of the platform’s content (the essay, framework, philosophy, call to action, future visions, headers, buttons, etc.), tested every part of me as a creator and the process. There was a moment I almost defected to Squarespace for the easier route, and I’m glad I stayed, got uncomfortable, and learned instead.
The essay took shape around a single argument: designers and communicators don’t just make content; we shape attention, behavior, and belief. And that responsibility holds “even when our power to change things is small. And even if the only shift happens inside of us.”
The essay found its permanent home as a live page, and three future-facing concepts: a TED Talk, a newsletter, and an annual publication, took shape as fully designed one-pagers.
Making it Interactive
From the beginning, the framework was emerging as five stages: See, Shift, Choose, Create, Reflect, paired with Margin of Agency’s acknowledgment that agency isn’t equal. This approach gives people a way to think about what they can change, influence, or shift within themselves when the humane choice isn’t fully available.
Then I wanted to make the “why this matters” tangible. The Tug became an interactive comparison between what something is called and what it actually costs, with a click-through moment and a shared live counter that tracked every pause. I used Figma Make to help turn the widget designs into working code.
A Pivot
Week 6
This is where the vision critically changed.
User testing revealed a common thread: too much abstract language up front. One reviewer put it plainly — elevate the point, maybe even to the homepage. I realized my focus was missing the whole point: “I was leading with wordy, esoteric philosophy and thought leadership, and burying the very tools that I want people to use.”
I rebuilt the platform’s entrance with a rotating header, using Figma Make to bring it to life: “This is for architects, designers, communicators…you.” The goal was to make clear that this work belongs to anyone who creates something another human experiences. I didn’t want The Inside Shift to read as a resource exclusively for people in tech or design. The responsibility belongs to all of us.
The full philosophy moved to the About Us page. The home page narrowed in: who, what, why, all above the fold. And the framework itself got renamed — no longer just a philosophy, but a set of practical tools.
Real Life Proof
The same week, a reviewer’s team ran into a project they found genuinely objectionable. She told them about The Inside Shift — that they could find some margin of agency, even when it felt impossible. Her colleagues were, in her words, “all VERY interested.” One felt visible relief just from talking it through.
The Finished Platform
Home, About Us, Practical Tools: The Tug, Margin of Agency, and The Shift Tool, Inside Perspectives, and Future Vision. Seven weeks, from a 23-year-old question to a white paper, and now a working platform that people are already applying to their own work.
What’s Next?
Very early on, this stopped being just a project. It became something I want to keep building.
This platform is proof there is a life beyond the artboard waiting for me, and The Inside Shift is a bridge to that new world.
“You really hit the center of something important.” — MJ, reviewer