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partlysean

71 karma · joined December 17, 2010

Principal Product Designer at project44.
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partlysean··on On Having Enough Socks (2019)
I’ve found that left/right socks are more common for activities like running, where they’re knit to support specific parts of your feet.
partlysean··on Palantir demos AI to fight wars but says it will be ethical
Makes me think of the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon” where a computer simulates the outcome of a war and its causalities, and then those civilizations actually go to murder that number of people in real life.
partlysean··on I made ChatGPT and Bing AI have a conversation
As it’s been noted, these bots don’t comprehend what they’re saying. But I thought ChatGPT saying ”How can I assist you today?” and “I'd be happy to help with any questions or information you may need.” in the beginning of the conversation really reinforced this. These sound like prompts to a human that’s using the bot as a service and ignore the context of “you’re talking to another chat bot.” You wouldn’t say that if you’re meeting/learning about someone.
partlysean··on Visual design rules you can safely follow
I prefer to call it “optical” and “mechanical” alignment, rather than “mathematical.”
partlysean··on What's Good About the Arc Browser
Left a bad taste in my mouth when I was required to create a user account to just browse the web. Didn’t go back to it much after that.
partlysean··on The self-taught UI/UX designer roadmap (2021)
Completely agree. Content Designers should be part of the conversation just as early as Product Designers and Researchers.
partlysean··on Show HN: A desktop game about money questions
Reminds me of the party card game Pricetitution.
partlysean··on Ask HN: What are your must have apps for iPad?
I use GoodNotes for all of my note taking and non-artistic sketching. Syncs with my iPhone and Mac, so it’s easy to have them everywhere.
partlysean··on Monster Mash: A Sketch-Based Tool for Casual 3D Modeling and Animation
Should have named it Monster Mesh.
partlysean··on Figma to React
It’s not necessarily a feature comparison, but I’ve found it much easier to just “try” things in Rhino. Solidworks is best when you already have a clear idea of what you’re building. In that way, our industrial design team would use Rhino and then hand it off to the mechanical engineers to rebuild it in Solidworks.
partlysean··on Figma to React
I think a good parallel of this is Webflow, which I find to be an incredibly powerful tool and gives design teams a lot of freedom to build and deploy their designs, however it’s incredibly cumbersome if you’re using it to mock up options and explore iterations. That work still happens in Sketch for our team, and when it’s approved that same team brings it into Webflow and “does it for real.”

I expect exporting from Sketch/Figma into React components would be cumbersome in this same way.

If I may pose another example from my days of industrial design, Rhino is a great tool for rapidly iterating designs and building CAD for renderings, however when your design is approved you really need to rebuild it in Solidworks for it to be made.

The real solution here is for companies to adopt a Design Ops/Design Systems Manager that can design and code in the front end. This would remove burden from the engineering team so they don’t have to worry about doing tiny design tweaks, etc.

partlysean··on Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon
Safari for all my personal and work usage. I do pop into Chrome and Firefox to perform browser QA, but Safari is my daily driver.
partlysean··on Audi announces end of combustion A4, A6 and A8 models
I'm right there with you. Our condo building is just over 100 years old and has 2 parking spots for 6 units (we're not one of the lucky ones). We'd love to own an EV, but it's just not practical.

This gets to my big complaint with companies like Tesla. They designed an impressive, game changing EV, but their solution ecosystem works best if you have a home with a garage in the suburbs. I don't have a garage to install a Tesla Powerwall that's charged by a Tesla Solar Roof for me to park a Model S.

If Tesla wanted to truly address climate change and get more electric transportation to more people, they'd solve city charging and start designing commuter transit.

partlysean··on Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon
It’s little things like this that keep me from using Firefox. Context menus, various micro-interactions, visual design decisions—they all feel so non-native.
partlysean··on The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process for Creating Half-Life (1999)
NPCs in Half-Life 2 mentioned a number of times that Gordon doesn’t say much and is a “man of few words.” I’m sure this is a nod to his silence in the first game as much as it’s a storytelling device.

I’ve always liked that his character never said anything—feels like Gordon can be anyone. Same goes for the lack of cutscenes that take control of the player’s camera. You always feel like you’re looking from your own POV vs. being pulled out of the immersion.

partlysean··on Self Hosting Email Server
The other commenters here are right about the importance of text contrast, but there is a consensus in typography that pure white on pure black contributes to eye strain and decreased stamina when reading. This is especially true for people with astigmatism who experience a glowing effect around the letters known as halation. While there is room here for both personal preference and accessibility needs for a true 21:1 contrast ratio, a better default would be to use a white on a dark gray background. Supporting a dark mode design is a lot harder than just inverting the colors, which this site appears to fall short on.
partlysean··on Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal
I just bought from Newegg for the first time in probably a decade and was surprised to see third-party sellers. I went there specifically because I remembered them being reputable, but came away with a different feeling entirely.
partlysean··on A-Shell: Terminal for iOS
How about Prompt from Panic? https://panic.com/prompt/
partlysean··on The Invention of the AeroPress (2014)
I have an AeroPress and like it a lot, but I also love making a pour over every morning precisely for the process (and taste). Bringing the water to the right temperature, weighing and grinding the beans, blooming, managing the flow rate… the ritual is very calming.
partlysean··on Switching from Sketch to Figma
Design version control has actually been a big win for our design team and the handoff to engineering. We use Sketch + Abstract to do this. WIP projects live in separate branches that we can share out to get feedback. Once the design is locked in for that milestone, we push to Master and hand that off to engineering where they can inspect the mocks right in Abstract.

We don’t mind using multiple tools if they’re all really good at what they do. Our core toolkit includes Sketch, Abstract, and Marvel. Sketch Cloud has supported prototyping and commenting for a while now, but Marvel is a bit more robust.

Obviously each team has their own needs, but this has worked for us.

partlysean··on Travelling with 24” Monitors
When I was in high school I worked for our district’s IT department. There were a couple of Power Mac G5s that were shared, but the students working in that department were using eMacs. One year I bought the first generation Intel iMac (my first Mac), which was significantly faster than the eMacs we were allotted. I got a carrying bag for it and biked into work with it each day. That said, I wouldn’t dream of doing that in a public cafe.
partlysean··on Lego ISS
LEGO announced that by 2030 they want their bricks to be made sustainably and from recycled materials, so we’re getting there! https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/responsibility/sustainabi...
partlysean··on Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
I’ve run into something similar when naming loadouts in Call of Duty. “Assault” is never accepted presumably because it has “ass” in it. It’s not even something other players can see, like a username.
partlysean··on U-Haul to Implement Nicotine-Free Hiring Policy
I agree 100%. Thanks for putting that in a way my comment didn’t fully reach.
partlysean··on U-Haul to Implement Nicotine-Free Hiring Policy
I reject that premise. Embracing cultural homogeny encourages isolation and resentment, not unity and community.

A nation can’t operate at its best without embracing diverse cultures and language. To do otherwise would leave us with incestuous, tired ideas. Stripping away unique cultural experience for the sake of “integration” hurts everyone. There is nothing to be gained and a whole lot to lose.

partlysean··on Why spiky shapes seem angry and round sounds are calming
It would be interesting to see how different materials factor into these perceptions. They mention the straight lines and sharp edges of brutalist architecture, but if constructed out of wood instead of concrete, for example, I would expect the forms to be perceived as softer and more organic.
partlysean··on Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet
> It’s honestly a very immature tweet. It’s something I wouldn’t say today. I have personally grown past the hate of the two party system. I feel like I have a clearer and more mature view on American elections…

Congrats on your new political maturity, but no mention or reflection on the deeply sexist language you used makes me think that you haven’t grown at all.

partlysean··on Drama – Draw user interfaces and create interactive prototypes
Studio is still being developed and is live, though it’s not reliable enough for mission critical work. Still very buggy and quirky.

I wish apps like InVision Studio and Framer X would focus less on being a place to do all your designing and more on being a really powerful prototyping tool. I don’t want a half-baked Sketch replacement.

partlysean··on What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
What I find deeply frustrating and unhelpful on Stack Overflow are answers that don't offer a solution but instead give reasons why the OP shouldn't be doing what they're doing in the first place. Q: How can I do this in jQuery? A: You don't need jQuery. You should be using vanilla JS for that. Q: How can I hide scrollbars using CSS? A: That's bad UX and you shouldn't be doing that in the first place.

The lack of regard for the context of the problem the OP is trying to solve/trust that they have their reasons and project constraints for doing so is annoying and disrespectful.

partlysean··on Just Landed
I did a screen recording of the app as it tracked a real flight and during the editing process I made sure to stay true to the times.
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