What (and who) smart locks leave behind

Earlier this year the property management for my apartment building gave us notice that all apartments would be upgraded with smart home technology by Smart Rent. We were given a brief notice via email and a meet and greet to ask a few questions. A few days later they replaced each apartment lock with a … 

 

Codea on Menus in iOS

I’ve been using an iPad Pro on and off for the past year and have yet to find a way to use it as my daily work machine. Some of this is due to missing applications like Sketch or Adobe XD, but also in the limitations of most iOS apps. Mobile apps are simple, accessible, … 

 

The quantified self: Wedding edition

Who says you can’t quanitfy love? I tracked my heart rate during our wedding ceremony in September and time-stamped a few highlights with the help of photos from family, friends, and our official photographer. I tried a few different tools for creating the chart (Google Sheets, Numbers, Sketch, etc.) but eventually landed on Plot.ly for … 

 

How Twitter solved the character problem for different languages

Great writeup from Josh Wilburne of Twitter detailing the challenges of designing for the 140 character limit across the world. Two major aspects that stand out: Automatic density-based adjustments With this in mind, we designed a system that defines two types of written languages, dense and non-dense, and expands the character limit for non-dense languages. … 

 

Commitments in the age of bailing

A recent New York Times article from David Brooks visits contemporary bailing culture, where it’s become easier than ever before to commit to something and then back out last minute. Before smart phones and the ever-present internet, canceling was so much more difficult and time consuming. I first noticed (and started participating in) the bail culture … 

 

Pinnacles

One of our major goals after moving to the west coast was to make sure to take advantage of the amazing geography out here. California is full of state and national parks worth exploring, including the United States’ newest national park, Pinnacles. It’s less than a two hour drive from the peninsula and makes for … 

 

Disney Channel’s AI is Better Than Yours

One of my favorite movies growing up was Disney Channel’s Smart House. Pat, the Smart House AI, could play the best music, make you a better dancer, and even kick out the bully when he started causing trouble at the party she organized for the kids without them even asking!

Today’s voice activated “assistants” like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa have been on the market for years now, but still seem to fall short of capturing the imagination like the voice-activated assistants inhabiting cultural masterpieces like Smart House and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Serving more as voice-controlled UI translators, today’s assistants match trigger words and phrases to fairly specific actions. Sometimes machine learning helps make these queries more flexible, but in the end we’re still asking a device to complete an action.

 

Daily UI #003

Over the past week I’ve started taking part in the Daily UI design challenge to showcase and improve on my design skills contained in the rest of my portfolio. Day 3 was a particularly fun challenge as it opened up the prompt to any landing page. I’ve never designed with video before, so I wanted to experiment with scenic imagery showcasing an elegant experience. I landed on the concept of creating a website for a helicopter tour company, mostly so I could use this beautiful footage.

 

Moving to San Francisco

I’ve lived in Boston almost my entire life. I was born in the city, went to public school in my hometown and then studied at Tufts University in Medford/Somerville, only 15 miles from home (perfectly in line with data from the NYTimes).

I’d entertained the thought of moving away to live somewhere new, but it’s never been a major priority. During college I struggled with this feeling of loving my home and my city, but also wondering if maybe I was missing out by not being somewhere new. Objectively Boston is a great place, a city where thousands of people come to study, many of whom stay after graduating. But there was always a question hanging in the air – is it really this great or is it just because it’s what I know?

 

Shoe Shining and the Lost Art of Maintenance

My shoe shining kit just arrived from Amazon. Until this afternoon I had never shined a pair of shoes in my life. I’ve worn plenty of shoes, but shining them never seemed like something that was worth the time or effort. Sure, shoes look nice when they’re bright and shiny, but they just end up …