Welcome!
Animacy describes the spectrum between the inanimate and animate.
‘To bring something to life’.
This is where the psychology of what makes people exceptional meets design and product building. Applied to real people, teams, and systems.
If you spend enough time here, you’ll:
have clear words for patterns you’ve always observed but couldn’t articulate
understand the behavioral science underneath your big questions
think more clearly about yourself and the people you design for
You’ll feel at home here if you:
think across disciplines and refuse to stay in one lane
want to understand why people think and act the way they do
want the science without the jargon
Who’s writing this?
Hey, I’m Eve-Marie. Welcome!
I’m a research psychologist who spent years studying performance and imagination. Then I left the lab to design products in the tech space.
I’m currently at Shopify, where I've spent years building internal tools and programs across UX, data, and software development.
But I didn’t plan to end up here.
Two things have driven everything I’ve ever done: understanding what makes people exceptional, and the need to share what I find along the way.
Not just understand in theory, but really deconstruct it. What makes a person reach their potential? What happens in the mind when someone grows, creates, or finally does something they didn’t think they could?
This mission brought me to a sports performance lab in undergrad, trying to understand optimal experience. Then, a Masters, then a PhD where I researched imagination, daydreaming, and how the stories we construct about ourselves shape who we become.
But I couldn’t stay in the lab. I’ve never wanted to just theorize.
So I built university courses on creativity and innovation and taught them. Started a consulting company helping startups apply the creative process to real problems. Found my way into organizational design in the public sector. Then Shopify and tech.
Every curious idea starts as energy. Learning to deconstruct the complex, find the human underneath, and give it shape. That's the practice. That's what I want to share with you.
