Writing

Don’t @ me

Practical paths toward shipping to production

How I used radar charts to become mindful of balance and progress across areas of focus

This isn’t a checklist, it’s just directional.

A prediction for both Twitter and my future online

How I solicit, collect, and process feedback during the lifecycle of a design project

First they automated the cashiers, and I did not want universal basic income—because I was not a cashier.

Arranged alphabetically

On leaving my job, my git blame legacy, and looking like hell in my passport photo.

On bland food, jalebis, and feeling alive again.

Exploring the opportunities and challenges for a developer-focused startup in the email industry.

On learning music theory decades too late, squirrel euthanasia, and things that get tossed into the canal.

On getting my AirPod run over by a car, weird lyrics, and becoming a ring guy.

Explaining the CSS I used to make this underrated element look like a physical keycap

Does anybody even click these things?

Some thoughts as our design system hits it tweens.

Could calendar software design away unproductive meetings by removing end times?

An excerpt of my work journal representative of my various responsibilities as a UX Engineer.

How I spurred the Litmus design team to adopt Figma

There are countless people quietly going about their professional lives who are satisfied by just doing their jobs.

I committed an API key and all I got was this irreparable integration.

An observation on my subconscious attempt to assimilate with the engineering department

I worked on the wrong branch all day and it only got worse from there.

Maybe leave the facepalm emoji out of the commit message next time.

Details of updates to my Jekyll site relating to post categories, RSS, and content management

A living, growing list of little things I like

Sometimes it‘s the little things.

Quotes from my coworkers about how I ‘collaborate with bias to action’ and ‘take it to heart.’

Displaying data to users isn‘t very hard, which makes designing, marketing, and messaging a successful product more difficult. What’s the angle? How is it different than the next thing?

What I’ve learned is that, for me to be productive in writing, I need to both have something on my mind and I need the discipline to tell myself, “okay, now I’m going to write.”

What is a product designer anyway? What skills do they have? And what makes someone a senior?

You don’t realise how bad incomplete sprints are for team morale until you don’t have to deal with them anymore.

Building a markup linter into the frontend of our local environment to improve semantics and accessibility

On my struggle to ignore distractions and create new habits that stick

Website redesign: Shaming myself into productivity with a JavaScript chart

Website redesign: Punk’s not dead, it’s just stuck in the footer

Website redesign: Typography, colours, post counts, and some plans

Website redesign: Deciding what’s most important and how to present it. Plus, small feature ideas and a hint about some weird fun.

There’s been a bit of a wave lately of designers redesigning their websites in the open. I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring.

Of all the conference and meetup talks I’ve ever seen, only two standout as truly terrible.

Some practical, achieveable changes I pledge to make.

On ice hockey, admitting you’re related to The Edge from U2, and saying yes.

The “I used to have one inbox and now I have dozens” argument against work chat apps forgets that we now have incredible visibility over what goes on inside our organisations.

Today I asked designers at London tech companies: Does your company offer flexible working hours? 89% said...

The ideal client values your discipline, knows what it costs, and is ready to buy. Make it easy on yourself.

It might be quicker to just delete your account.

On Sensitive Subjects, conference proposals, and the guilt of taking sick days.

A few things I learned about programming while building a small web project.

“You shouldn’t just enquire. You should write, too.” —Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Why the fuck are the same people who’ve been shitting on Revolut all week going to their place for dinner and drinks?

Medium recently made the decision to start paywalling previously free content from people like you and me.

How I did and how I feel about it.

The short answer is your desired annual salary divided by 1,000. The long answer is behind this link.

This one simple trick will make your comments disappear.

Writing is just thinking plus typing. That alone doesn’t make it readable.

I recently completed a course to become a Certified Scrum Product Owner. These are all of my notes from those two days.

It’s data breaches all the way down.

How I'm addressing gender imbalance in the accounts I follow on Twitter.

We’ve spent years telling publishers that the online ad experience sucks and that we’d rather just pay to support them. Now we can.

I find clicking a mailto: link to be very frustrating. Bonus shit points if the link is labelled ‘Contact’ or something equally inconspicuous.

I ignored CSS grid partly out out of tool and framework fatigue, and partly because I thought that what I had was good enough.

There’s a perfectly good Twitter alternative right here.

Every once in a while a designer writes an article that totally changes the way I think about something.

A mostly complete guide to actually getting some work done

I was asked to speak at last month’s London Email Meetup. It didn’t go as well as I would have liked. Here are three pieces of advice to my past and future self.

Recounting the highlights of a successful 2017

I built the user interface Placehold.it should have had all along.

It was obvious from 10:00 on Monday that Reasons To wasn’t going to be like the conferences I normally attend.

Despite all the inspiration sites, social networks, and mood board tools, few people point to specific work they borrowed from. It’s so refreshing to see someone open up and say, “I liked someone’s idea so I used it.”

Eight steps you need to take on every single project to protect yourself as a freelancer

Thoughts on setting the stage for a successful project