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Forget everything you thought you knew about basement-banished vending machines selling Funyuns, Pop-Tarts, and maybe Snickers bars. Today, touch-screen interfaces, 3D-printing capabilities, and a host of other technological advancements make the vending industry ripe for disruption by creative companies.

For all the hype around the Internet of Things, most people are still content to control their homes manually. A recent Gartner survey found that they don't mind getting up to adjust the temperature or turn off the lights, and 58 percent of respondents actually prefer the idea of standalone devices to connected ones.

Agile is the most common methodology in software development today because it promises fast development timelines with better results, and that makes it appealing to businesses. Everybody says they're agile, and a handful of companies even go through the motions; they might even have a scrum master on their team; but what does it all mean in reality? And how can you actually start seeing value from it? Despite all of agile's declared benefits, it's not easy to implement, and agile alone doesn't answer all product development problems, especially for executives.

A while back, a large manufacturer asked us to retool the user experience for its product. We assumed it wanted us to research its target users and design a product to fit their needs. Our client assumed something else, and sadly, the miscommunication sank our partnership.

Before I became a user experience designer, I worked as a trial lawyer. That might sound like a serious career switch, but to me, the core responsibility of the two roles is similar. Instead of fiercely advocating for my clients, I'm going to bat for a different sort of client: the users of the products and services that the Yeti team tackles.