Derry Birkett

September 9, 2015 — No Comments

Automating all the things

Everybody has heard Facebook's mantra "Move fast and break things". Some people might even subscribe to it. The more time I spend moving fast, the more I realise I cannot move fast enough by myself. I've spent plenty of time sharpening my point to point computer control, and I've spent time organising my workflow so that I can move close to the "flow" of ideas to execution. The process is ongoing, and I'm pretty quick now (compared to how I used to be), and getting quicker. But it's still not enough. I need help.

Enter IFTTT or Zapier, Alfred2, and Workflow (iOS).

September 3, 2015 — No Comments

All the internet 3.0 is belong to developers

I'll state it here for the record: the businesses that build the "best" developer onboarding programs are those who will succeed in internet 3.0 - Derry Birkett

#fortherecord

September 1, 2015 — No Comments

Early morning research links

Hyperlinks - love 'em or hate 'em - they are there. I wake up early trying to build something, and find even more awesome things to make even more awesome in my new product (whatever that will be). Here are this morning's links. I might call these: Links with the Lark. Ahem.

August 11, 2015 — No Comments

This Morning’s Open Data Review

I'm interested in intelligent design, smart cities and open data. Here are some of my open data findings for this morning ( you know how it is, you find one link and then the next ).

August 5, 2015 — No Comments

Today’s web tech roundup

Hello. Today I was chatting with a developer friend about - well, developer tech. Sometimes you just don't realise you've found dev link gold until someone else isn't aware of them. So I passed him some links, and I paste them here too - for all my developer friends out there.

August 4, 2015 — No Comments

How I use Tasklist products

I use a variety of task lists every day. Many people might want to use only one app for all their tasks - but I've found it to be unrealistic, and possibly impractical. I've become comfortable using various different platforms to manage my different activities: some work better than others. Here is my low-down.

July 23, 2015 — No Comments

UX is the result of design

I read an awesome post today from honest people who really get it, and the following quote from it sums up the difference between UI and UX that many people still do not get:

great design is more than pretty pixels. Great design is more than the neat gradients of your header or even the fancy animations of your hamburger menu. Great design is about the experience. It’s about how people interact with the stuff you’ve built and whether it actually helps people achieve their goals or not. As a community we are shifting toward this paradigm and as we explored this we realized that there will be lots of important roles to play as this shift occurs.

As Steve Jobs famously said:

Design is how it works

I still talk with founders and consultants who think I'd be a great UX hire because they like my "style". My "style" (graphic style, I infer) has nothing to do with UX. This is when I worry about taking the job. Read more

July 9, 2015 — No Comments

Some Material Design Front-end Framework Options

I've been researching front-end frameworks based on Google's Material Design guidelines. I post here the most popular and developed I've found. At the moment they all seem to be in varying stages of advancement, with none a clear out-and-out leader (as Twitter's Bootstrap has become for example), and it is interesting to note how each framework owner interprets the defined guidelines that Material design recommends. Here is a short summary.

July 3, 2015 — No Comments

Invision making it happen

Quick heads up for anyone who might have missed these awesome UI resources: Invision offers a free UI kit and a quick tutorial on mocking up your dream app with Invision and Photoshop/Sketch: painless prototyping - now there are no excuses for delaying that idea you have in your mind.

June 19, 2015 — No Comments

Mission

"work on highly functional systems that are pragmatic and solve real problems for real users" - Teehan & Lax

June 19, 2015 — No Comments

Two of my favourite web engineering projects

I opened my Prismatic feed today to find it closed, and replaced with investor bumpf. Not the best start of the day - but I went on to uncover their blog and I liked how open they are about their API development - so I'm adding them to my favourite engineering blog projects: I like intelligent projects where engineering and design go hand-in-hand. My other favourite design/engineering project is Artsy.net. I paste the links to their interesting stuff inside this post.

June 15, 2015 — No Comments

Plain text is the best UX

As a UX designer I've evolved to understand that plain text, simple, humble text is the greatest possible user interface (yes, greater than voice - probably not so great as telepathy). Plain text, plain words, carefully constructed if possible - rich in vocabulary, and clear in intent is purest communication.

June 11, 2015 — No Comments

Ways, whys and hows of Start-upping

Today's surfing seems to have uncovered a trove of links and information about remote working and start-upping. If you're into that, take a look - there are some awesome links in here.

June 9, 2015 — No Comments

How I use my computer

I'm a mac power user - which basically means I use the keyboard a lot and have optimised my workflow using tools I researched to get things done as quickly as possible without losing my "flow". I'm still working on this process, but here's how I am currently doing.

June 2, 2015 — No Comments

What am I reading today?

Today's research and review session including some amazing finds - UsTwo, Google Cardboard (yes I know I'm late) and more.