commadot.com Posts

Use Case: You are a hiring manager or recruiter and you want to set up lots of screening calls with lots of candidates. You could email them back and forth, but that is error prone. It’s better to have an automatic system. I had previously reviewed Calendly and Apooint.ly. Here are a couple of others. CanuMeet.com I’ve actually adopted this service as my go-to for appointment management. It’s easy to use with a modern interface. It’s not perfect, but the free version gets you pretty far. Additionally, the paid version has some nice benefits. All in all, I am very…

I am hiring 4 designers this year, approximately 1 per quarter. Therefore, I’ve been reviewing dozens of portfolios. I spend a little more time than average on them, because when I was looking for new jobs, I hoped hiring managers gave my work more than a cursory glance. Unfortunately, most design websites are fairly poor. Here is some advice for presenting yourself well and also for getting better as a designer. Have a Design Tools Section As a designer, you are going to use design tools. Sketch is not the only tool people use. You will not have a choice…

Scoop is a carpooling/ride-sharing service. Basically, I put in when I want to leave and it matches me up with people who want a ride near my work/home. They pay $6 and I get $5 of that per trip. The service in general is greatly appreciated, but the experience leaves much to be desired. Here is my design critique after using the service for a few months (exclusively as a driver, not a rider). Ask the Right Questions I don’t care when I leave; I care when I arrive. If I have a meeting at 9am, that means I need…

I never really thought about this until recently, but my first job as a product designer came when I was 32 years old. Maybe it’s best to backtrack and show the progression of what I thought I was. In 2nd grade, I made a sculpture of my father’s head. It looked better than the other kids. I thought, “Maybe Im an artist?“. In my early teen years, I read Mad Magazine, and copied the drawings, especially those of Sergio Aragonés. I thought, “Maybe I am a cartoonist?” Around that same time, I loved playing with computers. My dad bought us all…

I spend a good deal of my life sitting in an office chair. It’s a good bet that you do as well. The chair at my desk; I have adjusted to have the right parameters of height and position. However, it’s still fairly uncomfortable. When I get up, I find it hard to stand up straight. My back moans in pain for several minutes. Contrarily, when I get out of bed, I don’t feel the same strain. Now when I go into a meeting, that’s a different story. Those chairs are made by the devil herself. They are usually not…

UX Candidate Design Challenge – v1 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v2 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v3 As I am now hiring more people on the design team, I came up with a new design exercise. However, to jump to the end, it was too damn hard. So I only used it about 6 times before deciding to put it out to pasture. So, as I do with all retired design exercises, I share them with the world. Design Challenge Treasure Data is a system to manage many databases in an enterprise. There is data everywhere and it’s not…

Disclaimer: My own site isn’t perfect. There are much better portfolios than mine. I have done a terrible job of showing the problem, iterations, and case studies for the work I have done over the past 205 years. I put plenty of energy into this blog, but not as much into the portfolio section. With that said, I am back into the swing of recruiting and looking at lots of portfolio sites. Some are based on templates and others are obviously hand-coded. Here is some insight into what I am looking for. Blink Whether you like it or not, I…