I recently built a home theater PC on Linux. In years gone by this would have been much harder than doing the same thing on Windows or macOS. Today it’s easier, because my agent can do it without my intervention.
The two major desktop operating systems “outgrew” text-based ...
The way I used to design UI was to sit with Figma, or a React prototype with no back end. Imagine every failure mode. Design beautiful flows for each.
I slipped into this mistake while working on LanWhisper, a voice dictation app. I designed for the failure modes I could im...
I’m the person my friends and family come to for computer-related help. (Maybe you, gentle reader, can relate.) This experience has taught me which computing tasks are frustrating for normal people.
Normal people often struggle with converting video. They will need to watch...
Code forces humans to be precise. That’s good. Computers need precision. But it also forces humans to think like machines.
For decades we tried to fix this by making programming more human-friendly. Higher-level languages. Visual interfaces. Each step helped, but we were st...
When you hear “atomic design,” you probably think of Brad Frost. Interestingly, he was not the first person to develop that method of delivering design as components, or even the terminology.
Brad published his atomic design article in 2013. While digging through the arch...
Grids are the best thing to ever happen to graphic design. They form a rational basis for organizing information. They support the harmonious distribution of elements and visual weight. We don’t design things with grids because it’s easy, or because everyone else is doing it...
Fellow members of The International Cabal to Destroy Design, I write you today because we stand atop a precipice, faced with the threat of annihilation. The rogue Eli Schiff has been systematically exposing our wicked deeds in an attempt to derail the Modern Minimalist plot....
Clicking “Unsubscribe” should have a straightforward outcome. In the wild it’s rarely that simple. Here’s an example from Ugmonk, a fantastic clothing brand run by a passionate designer. I’d never unsubscribe from their newsletter in real life, but let’s pretend:
S...
The best designs often look wrong. They appear unexceptional. They don’t show off. They don’t push our technical skills to the limit. They leave out things we expect. They don’t reflect the latest trends.
“It just doesn’t look right.”
“It almost looks unfinished.”
“Nobody...
Human beings need space to express themselves. Eyes have a broad field of view, heads turn, and arms reach several feet in many directions.
Unlike us, our screens are small. They constrain our movement to small twitches of the fingers and a few degrees of eye movement. They...
