Words that would otherwise be coming out of my mouth

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  1. 01 Mar, 2021

    Notion Habit Tracking: Update 2

    I wrote about how much I love Notion and I’ve been keeping track of my healthy habits using the tool. Keeping up with new years resolutions and forming new habits requires consistency above all else. When things start slipping, it’s […]

  2. 24 Feb, 2021

    Material Design Text Fields Are Badly Designed

    saving space at the cost of clarity, ease of use and accessibility is a bad tradeoff to make. Source: Material Design Text Fields Are Badly Designed — Smashing Magazine

  3. 16 Feb, 2021

    Front-of-the-front-end and back-of-the-front-end web development

    The Great Divide is real, and I’m pleased that the terms “front-of-the-front-end” and “back-of-the-front-end” have gained traction ever since I quipped about them on the Shop Talk Show. A few of my clients have actually moved away from a culture […]

  4. 15 Feb, 2021

    The Never-Ending Job of Selling Design Systems

    This image is fantastic: This is a great read from Ben: The Never-Ending Job of Selling Design Systems – A List Apart

  5. 12 Feb, 2021

    Building better products with a design token pipeline

    This is a good deep dive into setting up design token architecture. It largely maps to how we tend to structure things, with some slight language and architectural differences: They use “Option design tokens”; we call them “Tier 1” or […]

  6. 04 Feb, 2021

    Notion Habit Tracking: Update 1

    I recently wrote about how much I love Notion and have been using it to stay on top of my personal and professional life. One of the things I’ve been using Notion for is to track my progress on healthy […]

  7. 03 Feb, 2021

    Design system components, recipes, and snowflakes

    “When should we make something a component?” is a question I’ve been fielding for years. My strong answer: right from the start. Creating things with a component-based mindset right out the gate saves countless hours and wailing and gnashing of […]

  8. 31 Jan, 2021

    The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML – Terence Eden’s Blog

    The PSP’s web browser is – charitably – pathetic. It is slow, frequently runs out of memory, and can only open 3 tabs at a time. But the GOV.UK pages are written in simple HTML. They are designed to be […]

  9. 31 Jan, 2021

    The context dilemma: design tokens and components

    Source: The context dilemma: design tokens and components | Frontside

  10. 14 Jan, 2021

    Squarknote #5 – Squarknotes

    This is a super impressive productivity workflow from Susan Fowler, and it’s amazing to see how being thorough and disciplined can yield big results. I have a far less thorough version of this that I’d like to write up. Some […]

  11. 14 Jan, 2021

    The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists

    Source: The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists – Scientific American

  12. 14 Jan, 2021

    The Only Strategy Left for Democrats

    Source: The Only Strategy Left for Democrats Democrats have been presented a mandate to govern aggressively on behalf of the people and the nation, and in the face of a violently unspooling and destructive right-wing party. Democrats have won the […]

  13. 13 Jan, 2021

    Fear and Loathing in The United States of America

    This is the first post I’ve ever written with the mindset of “I’m going to revisit this post 1, 5, 10, 20, 40 years down the road and either laugh or cry at how accurate or off the mark I […]

  14. 06 Jan, 2021

    Slowly Falling In Love With Notion

    This post is a long time coming. I’ve been using Notion since 2017, but it’s been a slow journey to get to a point where I can say that our relationship is official. Notion is now an invaluable tool for […]

  15. 21 Dec, 2020

    2020

    It’s difficult to put into words just how terrible 2020 has been. It’s been utterly devastating at a macro level, and at a personal level it’s proven to be the most brutal year of my life, shattering me physically, mentally, […]

  16. 12 Oct, 2020

    Cheating Entropy with Native Web Technologies

    The more I author code as it will be run by the browser the easier it will be to maintain that code over time Source: Cheating Entropy with Native Web Technologies – Jim Nielsen’s Weblog

  17. 05 Oct, 2020

    Design Systems For Figma: Bringing Context To Design Systems

    The products we design are always influenced by the users’ world where they are situated. By bringing context into design systems first, before building the components which result from it, we enable teams to make more confident decisions and deliver […]

  18. 24 Sep, 2020

    Color within Constraints by Linzi Berry

    Fantastic article by Linzi Berry about creating a smart, accessible color system to power a design system. Source: Color within Constraints. A scalable color system for digital… | by Linzi Berry | Tap to Dismiss

  19. 21 Sep, 2020

    An Introduction to Multi-Platform Design Systems

    This is a fantastic article about supporting multiple platforms with a design system. It maps very well to my experience helping organizations create and maintain technology-agnostic design systems. Ultimately, these efforts are way more a people thing than a technology […]

  20. 07 Sep, 2020

    The American Death Cult

    This is an important article that finally captures a source of frustration I have with right-wing politics. There is no rational, logical reason for not responding with all of our hearts and minds to save lives in this pandemic. But […]