I’ve been working on this for a while, but let’s make it official: I started a little Tumblr-like microblog about software craft and quality!
You can sign up via RSS or a weekly newsletter digest. There’s already almost two months of content in there, if you just want to check it out.
Hope you like it!
I will occasionally link to a post from the blog that I feel really good about, if you don’t mind!
From this morning, a review of the documentary Koolhaas Houselife, ostensibly having nothing to do with UX design:
https://unsung.aresluna.org/movie-review-koolhaas-houselife/
A post about the pretty inspiring and strange software that is Strudel, sort of a command line/text editor for music. I want my CSS authoring to feel this way.
https://unsung.aresluna.org/we-can-go-deeper-by-patterning-inside-of-our-pattern/
An appreciation of one tool that does screenshotting in a really interesting way, plus the history of how ⌘⇧3 and ⌘⇧4 ended up where they are.
https://unsung.aresluna.org/how-to-shoot-a-screen-using-a-board-of-keys/
I learned about this cool exhibit at ACMI in Melbourne today, and immediately had to write about it.
It simulates working at a help line for a videogame company in 1993, complete with fictitious games, and a physical 300-page binder of various documents. Amazing.
https://unsung.aresluna.org/this-sounds-completely-impractical-and-we-love-it/
I wrote a little bit about molly guards, or UI that protects you from other UI!†
I’m very curious if you have other examples I missed.
(† Not related to the street drug.)
In which I celebrate the craft of Flickr’s original, amazing URL scheme: https://unsung.aresluna.org/unsung-heroes-flickrs-urls-scheme/
I don’t know if this is spicy (I honestly don’t even know what “spicy” means anymore on the internet), but wrote what I learned about making a bug process work for more people than just engineers: https://unsung.aresluna.org/how-to-make-sure-a-designer-never-files-a-bug-again/
For my 150th (!) post, a look back at Apple’s breathing lights: https://unsung.aresluna.org/just-a-little-detail-that-wouldnt-sell-anything/
A little post about Beagle Bros, perhaps the most fun 1980s software company. https://unsung.aresluna.org/our-programs-are-fun-to-use/
Had fun listing all of these interfaces that are aware of the hardware’s dimensions or buttons or other physical properties, so they can do fun things with pointing to stuff.
Please send me more if you can think of them!
@mwichary idk if it's in AOSP or just on Pixels but the phone screen lights up from the source of the unlock, if you touch the screen (or the fingerprint sensor) it's a circular wave from that location, if you lift the phone it originates from the bottom of the screen etc. It even supported the back fingerprint sensor on older devices back when they did the Material You redesign
@noiob Thanks, although that all feels relatively generic maybe? That doesn’t feel like the software needs to know about hardware for any of this – but lmk if I’m misunderstanding it.
@noiob Ah, ok. I didn’t connect it to the lock button. Thanks!