Vy Hoang, UX Designer

This year, I’m making a conscious effort to spend more time learning and creating instead of mindlessly scrolling through the news on my phone. As I’m getting older, I’ve realized I’d rather focus on the things that make me genuinely happy than worry about everything that’s out of my control. To make that happen, I plan to read two or three books each month, pick up my guitar more often, and get back into sewing—creative hobbies I’ve missed but never seemed to have time for.

Professionally, I’m looking to strengthen my leadership skills. Over the course of the year, I want to push myself to take on more initiatives, lead projects on my own, and really explore what it means to “own” the process from start to finish. By stepping outside my comfort zone, I’m hoping to become more confident in my ability to guide a team and bring new ideas to the table.

Blake Oates, Senior UX Researcher

2024 was a pretty productive year for me personally, but it wasn't without its ups and downs. Two moves within six months of each other, unexpected (though, thankfully, brief) unemployment, trying to balance my time between old and new commitments - it was somewhat tumultuous year. Throughout the year, however, I noticed one consistent activity that I was engaging in was reading. I've always enjoyed reading, but rarely made time for it. However, toward the end of 2024 I have been reading more and more.

I would like to carry that habit over to 2025. Simply stated, my resolution is to read more. However, in true, goal-setting form that New Year Resolutions often are, I've decided to make it a point to work through a reading list that I've been wanting to try for a while now: The Daria Morgendorffer Reading List (available here: https://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2014/09/30/daria-morgendorffer-reading-list/). This is a list of 57 books that Daria can be seen reading or referencing throughout the animated series Daria. I always got a kick out of watching the show and thinking about how her reading choice may be related to the topic of that specific episode. Furthermore, many of the books listed have been on my personal reading list for a while.

Unfortunately, I am a very slow reader, so the idea of reading 57 books in a year is a bit daunting. My goal is to tackle half of the list. This will also allow me to avoid certain books that I've already tried, but couldn't for the life of me keep an interest in (I'm talking about you, Melville.) With that said, I better get on Amazon and start looking for my first choice from the list."

Mick McGee, Co-founder and Vice President

Personally, I was definitely caught up in the wave of illnesses in 2024 far more than in recent years. So, I definitely want a change there in the coming year. Thankfully none of it was serious – just repetitive and frustrating.

Perhaps similar can be said about business. While there were interesting and exciting happenings in 2024, there is still a good bit of hesitancy and anticipation in the tech world, at least as it relates to work (and for many companies, employment). I hope for a change there, but as has been my stance since the world-shift brought on by Covid, I no longer try to predict the future. Let it come; let it happen. (Which, I realize, has become a mantra for my annual resolutions – and I’m ok with that.)

Rally Pagulayan, CEO

A challenge you face as you get older is you get too comfortable with your tools and your approaches and become more reluctant to change. This accelerates a path towards obsolescence. Personally, I’ve always leaned towards the leading edge of things and was always comfortable trying out new technology and methods, so this never really worried me. But recently, I’ve seen some personal signs of stagnation. When TikTok went dark and everyone around me generally freaked out, it struck me that I didn’t really feel anything because I never really got into TikTok. Considering that TikTok is huge and probably the prominent social media for most people (younger than me) these days, that was a little bit of a sign. The recent rise of generative-AI is another example where I haven’t really jumped in with much enthusiasm although it’s obvious that it’s going somewhere big (even if we don’t know quite where yet). So, my resolution for this coming year is to make a concerted effort to lean into new tools, new technologies, and new approaches. One specific example will be to actively look for opportunities to use generative-AI in my day to day work. More generally, I’ll really look for opportunities to think differently about things and take new approaches and purposefully push against personal obsolescence.