Thinking
The Capizzi Process
Listen first. Make it visible. Prove it worked.
A working method for people and teams making decisions under pressure. The three principles stay constant. Six flexible actions help teams understand the problem, make the thinking visible, move toward a decision, and prove what changed.
Built from 15+ years of working across products, communications, campaigns, systems, and digital experiences. It's not a rigid sequence. It's a way to create clarity and keep the work moving.
The model
3 principles. 6 flexible actions. Clear momentum.
The principles hold. The actions flex.
Listening without visibility is opinion. Visibility without intent is just output. Proof without listening is data sans context.
Use the actions where the work needs them. Repeat them, combine them, or move back when new information changes the problem.
Action moves work forward. Pick one.
Listen first
Understand the people, problem, context, signals, and constraints before deciding what to make.
Listen first · Action 1 of 6
Gather every input
Gather the reality of the problem before filtering or deciding. Briefs, analytics, stakeholder comments, constraints, and past decisions all count. Filtering is a decision; do not filter too early.
Inputs that live in one person's head are not inputs. They are risks.
What it feeds forward
- A shared input log with source, evidence level, and open questions
- A stakeholder map: who says yes, who lives with it, who can quietly kill it
The Process, in two forms
The Capizzi Process, in print and in practice.
Seeing Past the Cage is my upcoming book on communication design, problem-solving, and the lessons behind the Capizzi Process, shaped by 15+ years of creative, strategy, marketing, and design work.
The Clarity Cards are a practical thinking deck built from the questions I use in working sessions. They help teams stay focused, challenge assumptions, and move discussion toward decisions, because decisions are what move the work forward. They work for marketing and design, but also anywhere people need to think through a problem together.
Printed editions of both are coming.
The book
Seeing Past the Cage
Develops the ideas behind the Process: better communication design in the age of AI. Read the foreword free
The cards
The Clarity Cards
Help people apply those ideas in discussions and decisions. Fifty-four questions: draw one, answer it honestly, then touch the work. Try the deck
Working software
The Process, running as software
The Governance Deck is the method built as a working product. A team answers questions privately, the app finds where the answers differ, a named decider settles each one with a reason attached, and the decisions become dated documents anyone new can pick up and follow.
The field manual
The whole method, in something you can hold.
The full Process: the three principles with their exit tests and failure modes, the six flexible actions, the ten standards of the room, and the one-page field version. A small printed manual and a PDF. Leave your email and it arrives when it ships.
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Call 212-380-3900Read
The foreword, free.
The Human Condition: why empathy is the foundation of digital experience.
Why clarity wins, how to cut through the noise, and what it takes to do great work in the rooms where decisions get made. Fifteen years of agency life, distilled.
Read the foreword
Published
Writing on design, AI, and healthcare.
Ideas from the work, shared with 5,000+ LinkedIn followers.
LinkedIn
From Assumptions to Innovation: Why Mental Models Are a Strategic Advantage
LinkedIn
Agentic AI Starter Kit: Turn the Data You Already Have Into Intelligent Experiences
LinkedIn
66% of HCPs Now Use AI for Clinical Questions. Is Your Brand's Content Ready?
LinkedIn
The FDA's New Digital Era: Why Pharma's Future Belongs to Honest, Human-Centered Experience Design
Talks
Experience design, no-code, and the beginnings of AI.
A 2023 EVERSANA Intouch talk on how no-code tools and emerging AI were changing the way we design experiences.