Being at home with a full family means lots of people video conferencing all at once. This is putting a strain on our home networking setup. I have tried a few methods. Here are some of my learnings. 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi The tried and true Netgear router. It works for a room, maybe…
My lease (Kia Sportage) was over and I needed to get a new car. I know I am just a single car owner, but I believe electric cars are the future and want to do my part. My first thought was the Kia Niro since I was leasing a Kia already. I drove it and…
I have made many requests in the Spectrum.Chat community. Some are long standing, others have been completed. Here is my consolidated Wishlist for 2020. Built In UI Components Every designer I have ever worked with and every desktop application I have ever seen all have some common elements. Here is a short list: Tables Combobox…
My primary design tool is Figma. Long gone are my storyboard days of PowerPoint design. Right now, my team is 6 designers strong and they are all co-authoring like mad inside of Figma. We use it for everything. Figma has grown steadily in the past couple of years. They are making innovative features that people…
The Roadtrip Metaphor I love metaphors and this one is one of my favorites. Imagine a project as a roadtrip with some friends. Sometimes you will be driving, sometimes you will be in the passenger seat, sometimes in the back seat. There are people, like your parents, who just want to know where you are,…
I often like to think of things in a spectrum or on a line graph. A junior designer asked me how to convince the product management team to increase the scope of the project to add in all of the usability features. He said that it was a better product that way. I drew him…
I’ve been using a new top-of-the-line Mac as my primary desktop for the past 11 months. Although it was not by choice, I made the best of it. I installed the Beta of Sierra and now Catalina. I experimented with different apps and ways of organizing my desktops. Lately however, I have been missing Windows.…
We had some WiFi problems at work. It went on and then went off. On and off, back and forth. I think the problem is that we have added too many people in the room and the hardware is getting overloaded. It raised the question in my head, “How much do we need internet to…
I have to give credit where credit is due. In April, I complained that Adobe was taking years to build out basic things in XD. Today, they released a huge update. Let’s see how it compares to my complaints. Text Transform. Done! Scale Resize Symbols Independently. Done! Quick Access to Google Font Library – not…
Note: This post is fairly technical, using (without explaining) many marketing concepts. It has a big impact, but may be complex for many people, especially designers. Many people in the world would prefer that everything online be free AND that their privacy is ironclad. The problem is that this ignores the economics of how everything…
I try hard to avoid Twitter. I use it (and LinkedIn) to publicize my blog posts. I click publish and voila! Insta-tweet. Sometimes, I will tweet a little joke or pun, but I hardly ever participate in the normal Twitterverse. The main reason is that every time I get into a conversation on Twitter, I…
Designers are one of the worst markets to make products for. We are fickle/disloyal and we are picky beyond reasonableness. I feel badly for people who design products for us. With that said, I have grievances and need to air them. Adobe. What the heck is going on over there? I am going to point…
I was using a LG 34UM68-P ultra wide monitor, but I was having some trouble seeing the edges of the screen. They literally were so far away that they turned blurry to my old eyes. Previously, I had been using a LG 34UC80-B 34-Inch 21:9 Curved UltraWide QHD IPS Monitor and I really appreciate the…
No one has the intention of making things worse. All designers have positive intent. However, in reality, there are plenty of services that get worse with upgrades. Recently, I have had a few upgrades that feel like downgrades. Feedly iPad App I am not sure what prompted such a big change, but I am completely…