Yosemite – Thoughts on blurriness and design ecosystems

The blurry window I reviewed OSX 10.10 over the weekend, and observed a new trend emerging on the design battlefield: It’s blurry, translucent, and vibrant. But it’s also incredibly expensive and

New year, new resolution

One goal for the new year was to make my personal site completely responsive. I’ve been doing more hiring for other designers as of late, so I’ve been looking at hundreds of design portfolios.

Working remotely from Portland

A new year in a new place! I’ve decided to go back home to Oregon and explore the city I grew up next to. My home office is still in San Francisco, which means I’m working remotely and learning a

Bitbucket

The redesign of Bitbucket was a huge milestone for Atlassian and for myself. I was responsible for each of the 70+ view, interactions, colors, and icons, etc. This meant everything from sketching,

The tell-all tale of Bitbucket’s redesign

Redesigning an entire application is a formidable undertaking with many risks and possibilities for failure. Brian Nguyen, one of our developers, already covered the challenges of Bitbucket’s

SourceTree

I had the opportunity recently to redesign/rebrand a mac app called SourceTree. I started with a new dock icon and let the influence grow from there into a new landing page. Check out the live site!

Dribbble

I’m on dribbble! Check me out.

Atlassian

I recently started my new job with Atlassian, in San Francisco. My wife and I and the two dogs packed up and moved from Oregon and we are loving it so far. The winter is mild, the tech industry is

Mac Tonic

I just got done working on a project with a great new client. The people at mac tonic wanted a fresh new site with a polished design for the new school year. They already had an established brand,

When to use an overlay

What I’m talking about are often called “modal windows,” “overlays” or “light boxes.”   there’s no official rule about how and when to use an overlay. However, I consistently see inappropriate use

User Experience in Scrum

Scrum is a form of Agile project management that I have been working with for over a year.  Our development team was the first in the company to adopt Scrum in favor of Waterfall, so everyone was on

LivePlan Launch

LivePlan has been my project since joining PaloAlto Software, Inc. in late 2009. From PSD mock ups, to prototypes, to finished product — I have nurtured this web app along through countless

How to ruin a browser with Personas

Chrome and Firefox have made it easy to turn your browser into an instant eyesore with themes and personas.  With one click, you can change all the colors of your tabs, blur the text, make

Full RGB Color Pickers Are a Bad Idea

There are very few situations in which you want to give users a full color pallet. This is a tool that most advanced users don’t even need. I am seeing more and more full color pickers  in web