Design Director at Superhuman (formerly Grammarly) Not really active here any more. You can find me on other sites these days 🦋
Dublin › Berlin
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I sat down with Tom Scott recently to talk about a wide range of topics about how we design at @Superhuman (formerly Grammarly).
We touched on hiring, how roles are shifting and how AI is still continuing to change everything.
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Slack tip:
Changing to a theme where notification dots aren't red can significantly reduce Slack stress.
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Curious if left sidebars will fall out of favor as more product teams adopt Arc.
Dealing with double, collapsible sidebars can be quite frustrating.
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Hey @nikolasklein - what about a way to quickly change the fidelity of designs in @figma?
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Woah - I was able to use Claude to take @pjonori's Dieter Dots code and convert it to little web app. Took 5 minutes.
We're all going to be building our own on-demand mini apps very soon.
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Web typography just got another little bit better!
text-wrap:balance has landed. This allows multiple lines of text to have their lines broken in such a way that each line is roughly the same width, often used to make headlines more readable and visually appealing.
bugzilla.mozilla.org/1731541
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It's a classic innovator's dilemma scenario.
ChatGPT is creating an alternative to traditional search. Google is struggling to balance their desire to innovate and while not destroying their existing business.
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Thread about icons.
With Google's new icon strategy, they seem to have moved away from a family-approach to a company-approach.
Previously there was a Google style, but families differentiated by shape & colour. Family style is great, but I guess hard to scale to 100s of apps.
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Using Claude's new artifacts feature, and realised it's fantastic wireframing tools.
You can build clickable semi-working wireframes incredibly quickly.
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Every time I try code something from scratch, I'm still pretty shocked at just how complicated it is to even get a dev environment up and running with libraries and dependencies.
Really feels like everything is held together with duct tape and glue. It's so fragile.
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Woah this took off! 😊
I don't have a soundcloud, but I work in a startup building a next generation presentation tool.
So if you're tired of fiddling with Keynote, Google Slides, or Powerpoint check it out: pitch.com.
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Introducing the world's best AI presentation generator, created by @pitch.
Read on to hear what we built, why we built it and what are our future plans!
Check it out:
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I’m excited to launch a personal project I’ve been working on with @mateuszsiek91 🚀
Fluidmotion, a web app for making beautiful animated background for apps, videos or presentations.
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This last week has me dreaming of a desktop @tldraw app, with AI prototyping, inspired by the likes of Framer Classic, Processing and Origami.
• 2 pane view
• Mashup any content for input
• Iterative timeline & remixing
• Instant publishing
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Exited to announce I'm joining @Pitch to try create a presentation tool that people love instead of merely tolerate! I'm starting this Monday, and am moving to Berlin.
Lot's of change ahead in 2019.
(Happy to hear all your gripes or thoughts on PowerPoint/Gslides etc.)
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There was a cut bike stand near out office in Berlin. I reported it to the local authority and they fixed it within 24 hours and emailed me when it was done! Mind blown 🤯
That's how to do local government and rebuild people's faith in government.
ordnungsamt.berlin.de/fronte…
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I’ve been doing a @framer course with @lintonye for the last month. This is my final assignment, a prototype that pulls data from the @unsplash API, which you can then dynamically browse.
I wouldn’t have dreamed I could do this 4 weeks ago! 🤘
#ReactFramerChallengeSubmit
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When you're working on the same thing every day, it's hard to see progress. Sometimes it's important to take a step back, so you can see how far you've come.
@Pitch in January vs today. This workflow is now twice as fast!
TLDR: How it started how it’s going.
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I joined @Pitch because I believe people deserve a presentation tool they love rather than merely tolerate. Excited that we're launching publicly today!
And we're just getting started.
I’m proud to share that @Pitch is open to everyone.
We started Pitch to redefine the way teams work with presentations. Today’s launch marks the biggest milestone in that journey, with many more yet to come. 🚀
Read more 👉 pitch.com/blog/pitch-launche…
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I wish more products would unify their login & sign-up flows, so they're not 2 separate things. I often end up in the wrong flow when using Google/SSO to login.
I love that the team @Pitch who worked on this just merged them, avoiding any weird dead ends for the user. 👏
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Back in 2018, @nikolasklein gave me and the team at @frogdesign a demo of @figma.
I still remember most how on-point the messaging was.
It was incredibly simple: Here are the problems you have, and here's how we solve them.
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I really wish @figma had hobby tier pricing for personal projects.
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Well, this is taking off. @steveruizok is that what PMF sounds like? 🚀
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I don't have a SoundCloud, but we just released a pretty awesome AI presentation generator this week, would love if you checked it out ♥️
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I've been using Figma to mockup imaginary bike lanes, to help lobby local government to build them.
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When you're using a design tool to design a design tool, things get pretty confusing.
Here I am editing our selection box component in Figma, and it's messing with my brain what's actually selected at any given moment 🤪
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I love that the FigJam copywriter let their inner 5-year-old loose when writing the labels for text that's very big or very small 😍
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Less obvious career tip for designers:
Look to work in places where design is a value creator rather than just a cost. Choose the companies that get the highest value from designers.
Here are some things to try understand if that's the case:
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Weekend experiment. I combined learning german and learning @framer to create a mini tool for browsing German prepositions and their corresponding cases.
c1eec.codesandbox.io
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@Luas @DublinCommuters
Berlin's tram lines are starting let the grass grow longer as part of a 'rewilding' scheme, to encourage cleaner air and biodiversity. Would be cool to see in Dublin too!
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As an Irish person living in Germany for many years, this stuff speaks to my soul. 👏
Do Germans & Irish people's approach to crossing the road next!
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In my ongoing efforts to learn German, I still often struggle with understanding article genders and grammar.
I started exploring what it could be like if you could inspect written text to understand the sentence structure.
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Attention Dublin transport enthusiasts! 🚍
I've updated my BusConnects comparison tool, so you can now compare all the versions of the planned bus network redesign, from the first version, to the final one recently published. Hope it's useful to you.
kevin.ie/sandbox/busconnects…
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The Switzerland that's part of the single market, you mean?
If you look at the NI and RoI border it's not a real border and never has been. Real people's live will be affected. It's a place that where people were killing themselves not so long ago. There's a delicate peace.
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Love the compression analogy!
I wonder if this will end up with emails being very complicated, or if we just give up and write super short emails!
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Logically it makes sense, but you start to get into these fiddly situations with overlapping interactions.
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Here @Pitch, we're competing against software that's been around for decades. On some days it's hard not to be intimidated by the big feature set.
But on other days I try out those products and realise how rough they are in places.
Is just caring more about the details a moat?
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Breaking News:
nytimes.com/2005/04/19/techn…
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Hard to understand how this was possible. Basic things like tooling etc. take considerable amount of time.
Was there some prior hardware they were building on top of I wonder, or had there already been a lot of internal r&d?
Was it truly from zero?
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When I moved cities in 2019 to join a small pre-launch startup I honestly wasn't even sure we'd launch!
So, I'm incredibly happy (& relieved 😅) to see us hitting milestones like this! 🚀
Over 1 million teams now use Pitch. 🤯
We set out to make it fast, easy, and fun for anyone to express ideas through presentations. We love seeing so many people doing just that. 💜
Explore how some of the world’s best teams are using Pitch → pitch.com/blog/one-million-t…
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Building AI features is hard, here @pitch we shipped out first major AI feature this week.
The difference between a cool demo and production level feature is huge, and often feels like one step forwards, two steps back, it's been an interesting, but challenging journey.
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Just been trying out @framer Sites for a few hours, I'm and really excited by it. It's the first webdesign tool I've tried in a long time that's actually fun to use.
Congrats to the team - you've built something special!
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Should we build this?
Inspired by the @tldraw demo me and @mishakarpenko did a little experiment of turning sketches into slides.
WDYT, should we build this @Pitch?
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Curious about how startups are navigating the AI whirlwind? Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what we’re exploring @Pitch.
We’ve been experimenting to see how AI can create real value for our users.
The one thing we're sure of, the world doesn’t need more bad presentations.
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Figma is slowly but steadily recreating a modern version Flash.
I think I've pushed @figma's new Variables and Advanced prototyping to its limit...
I present a fully working version of Flappy Bird!! 🔥
Featuring:
- Scoring + highscores
- Pseudo-randomised pipe placement
- Physics based movement
- Uses 46 variables
#Config2023
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Machine learning for style transfer is really getting wild. Check out this result.
(used ostagram.me)
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Anyone interested in a Berlin Design Tools get together sometime next month?
There are quite a few people working on design & creative tools in the city. I thought it'd be nice to connect.
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Love this. Question in a German newspaper from a 7 year old.
"Can a man also be Prime Minister?"
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Just published a new article about designing for products in the physical world. Hope it's useful to anyone facing similar challenges.
Beyond Pixels: Ergonomics & UX
link.medium.com/JrA9xvj7A0
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Can share some of our learnings:
- Single letter shortcuts 👍
- Shift and Alt = good modifiers 👍
- CMD shortcuts 👎 (with some exceptions)
- If you do override browser, be context specific (e.g. CMD+K for links)
- Have a Windows user on your team to avoid MacOS bias.
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We've been working super hard on this the last half a year, so happy to see it live ✨
If you struggle with your current presentation tool and want something that you and your whole team can truly enjoy using, check it out!
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Very excited to show a little bit more of what we've been working on here @Pitch 👀
Time for an update from @Pitch. 👋
We’re super excited to give you a peek at what we’re building. Pitch helps teams create, collaborate on, and distribute presentations faster and more effectively than ever before:
pitch.com/blog/our-plans-for…
How? Read on ... 👇
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All the Invision discussion has reminded me of a talk I saw @koenbok give in 2018, where he predicted the consolidation of most design tools into one, and it played out exactly as he said.
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Lately I've been thinking how the concept of Pace Layers applies really well to designing products.
Some parts of a product can and do change quite often, whereas others are big bets that you may never be able to change.
It's key to focus on the right part at the right time.
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This led to some fantastic conversations with the tech team like:
"Does a normal lightbulb need a login? Then why does a smart lightbulb need one?"
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Big news for all of us @Pitch today.
Very excited for what we've built so far and where we're going next 👏
A new chapter of Pitch begins today: We've raised $85m to build the first complete platform for presentations. 🚀
Our founder @christianreber on our new funding, our expanded product vision, and a few initiatives you can expect to see very soon ➡️ pitch.com/blog/pitch-series-…
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Design flashback.
Me, 2009:
Working on a smart lighting product. To factory reset, turn the light on/off quickly 10 times in succession. We thought that was pretty hard to do by accident.
Me, 2023:
I have a young kid who factory resets the light once a week 😅
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Making progress on a side-project launch checklist with @mateuszsiek91
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Myself and @jvuillermet (a world champion at Counter Strike BTW) are working together on productivity features here @Pitch and he's just published this great article about how we think about mouse & keyboard shortcuts should play together!
pitch.com/blog/from-counter-…
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Just got quoted in an Ars Technica article, live goal unlocked.
Thanks @tldraw for letting me ride your wave.
AI-powered drawing app stuns developers by turning sketches into functional games trib.al/00BZRQG
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We're experimenting with Ai text tools @pitch and came up with this weird idea of 'semantic resizing', where you resizing the content dynamically.
Not sure it makes sense, but it's definitely quite interesting that GPT allows us to treat text as a flexible material.
Doing some AI experiments @Pitch. What do you think of "semantic resizing"? 🤔
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What's the current thinking on this?
Should buttons & icons display the state they're in, or the state they'll go to when pressed?
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One of the original design principles of the Figma UI was that it was purposely utilitarian, neutral and out-of-time, so it's interesting to see them go away from that and actually take a stance on a specific design style.
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It's pretty incredible how Arc from @browsercompany enhances products.
It adds features to your existing tools, such as fast user switching, favorites, and quick view – features that we don't have natively yet! 🤯
Since its launch, @browsercompany’s Arc has completely changed how I use @Pitch ✨
Here’s how Arc helps me make the most of my favorite presentation tool:
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