How to Get Started
Become a part of Conscious Tech and design a sustainable future 🌀
Welcome to Conscious Tech
Aloha, this page will help you navigate the content, get the most out of your time here, and understand how to provide value to the community.
Who is Sera Tajima?
Sera is from Maui, Hawaii and currently resides in Amsterdam, NL.
As a Growth Product Designer turned Advisor, Sera has led successful products from zero-to-one startups to public companies across Webflow, BetterUp, Hired, Zendesk, and Y Combinator startups. Her unique approach to building products has driven remarkable results, including a 200% increase in acquisition. She has given talks and workshops at Uber, Ikea, Design X, the University of Hawaii, the University of Waterloo, and more.
Sera brings a decade of hands-on experience leveraging design for conscious business growth —a perspective she's distilled into actionable frameworks through workshops and talks that have helped thousands of designers step into strategic leadership roles. Her frameworks have been adopted by teams at Instacart, Ikea, Turo, Zendesk, Walmart, and more.
Sera started the newsletter and podcast to document her own discovery journey and spread awareness on how to design conscious technology for a sustainable future because so few companies integrate wellbeing or the planet into their design process. In general, her writing style is conversational and often humorous.
Publication Schedule
Monday - Podcast & Highlights
Wednesday - Essential Bytes Newsletter
Essential Bytes to Get You Started
Not sure where to start? In Wednesday’s Essential Bytes, I distill topics like product growth strategy (growth, product design, AI) climate tech investing, conscious entrepreneurship, sustainable productivity, and consciousness.
Growth Strategy
3 Stages of Product Market Fit: Case Study From Early Stage Startup Gable (Deep Dive)
Your Guide to Product Led Growth (PLG) Part 1 (Deep Dive)
Your Guide to Product Led Growth (PLG) Part 2 (Deep Dive)
Your Guide to Getting Started With Growth (Free Guide)
The Growth Loop (Deep Dive)
Growth Design Primer (Deep Dive)
The Designers Guide to Acquisition (Deep Dive)
All Things Retention (Deep Dive)
BTS of Growth Design at Netflix (Video)
How This Designer Generated $3M ROI at Netflix: Growth Design Strategy | Fonz Morris (Deep Dive)
Growth at Figma (Deep Dive)
This is the only METRICS cheat sheet you need (PDF)
Product Design
Everything You Need to Know About JTBD (Deep Dive, Pod)
Global Design Conferences You Need to Know About (Deep Dive)
How Founder of UX Tools Makes Time for Play | Tommy Geoco (Pod)
Systems Thinking for Designers (Deep Dive)
Your Complete Guide to Information Architecture ((Deep Dive)
Emotionally Intelligent Design (Deep Dive)
Decolonizing Design (Pod)
Asian American UX Designers: Career Stories & Product Design Recruitment | Hang Xu (Pod)
Introduction to Circular Design (Deep Dive)
Sustainable Design for Digital Products (Deep Dive)
How to Elevate UX with Energy Efficiency (Deep Dive)
Scaling Climate Impact: Inside Watershed's Journey to Reduce 500 Mt of Global Emissions (Pod)
Artificial Intelligence
Your Comprehensive Guide to the AI Landscape (Deep Dive)
Tech Industry Scrambles for Data Centers to Meet AI Demands (Deep Dive)
AI's Unstable Energy Demand for Data Centers (Pod)
AI Energy and Water Consumption (Deep Dive)
Is OpenAI the New Creative? (Deep Dive)
What Designers Need to Know About AI (Deep Dive)
China's AI Deepseek Causes US Reset: No More Blank Checks (Deep Dive)
AI Semiconductor Supply Chain Disrupted by Hurricane Helene (Deep Dive)
Climate Tech Investing
The Climate Tech Landscape (Deep Dive)
Conscious Entrepreneurship
Rethinking Capitalism (Deep Dive)
What Does it Mean for a Business to Grow Sustainably? (Deep Dive)
Decentering Growth (Deep Dive)
Design or Disaster: TED Speaker Gaya Herrington on Preventing Global Collapse (Pod)
Design for a Better World with Don Norman, Co-Founder of Nielsen Norman (Pod)
Crossing Planetary Boundaries (Deep Dive)
Sustainable Productivity
Are You Suffering From Burnout? (Deep Dive)
Daily Energy Map: Productivity System for Sustainable Success (Deep Dive, Template)
Consciousness
A Guide to Healthy Communication (Deep Dive)
Let’s Talk About Success (Deep Dive)
How to Design Your Life | Phil Pham (Pod)
Why Become a Paid Subscriber?
Unlock your full potential. ⭐️
Free Subscribers Get:
Basic Podcast Access
Essential Bytes Newsletter
Paid Subscribers Get:
The annual plan is 17% cheaper than subscribing monthly. Paid patrons get everything free subscribers receive, plus:
Essential Bytes Newsletter + Sera’s audio reading 🎧
Advanced frameworks/templates (downloadable PDFs) 📃
Complete archive access 📖
Private Slack community 💬
Ability to comment on substack
How to Get the Most Out of This Newsletter
Subscribe for the complete experience and access to the collective.
Comment to start a conversation. That’s why we’re here. Let’s share our ideas. 💡
Share if you resonate with an article! This helps the newsletter grow. 🙏
Connect with the technologists here. We’re building an authentic community of people who care about technology for a sustainable future.
That’s it! Thanks so much for stopping by.
Mahalo 🤙
Sera Tajima
Contact podcast@the-craft.io to share your product with our community.
Welcome everyone! Very glad to have you here. Please comment if there is a topic you'd like me to cover. Talk soon.