Now all I need is the food and someone to cook it for me while I lay on that couch.
Garden Design i2
At Automattic we call new rounds of design work “iterations” and post them in the format i1, i2, i3, etc. These first few days of spring, I’ve been working with my garden designer Humzah Khraim on i2 of my garden. More pictures once everything’s done and the weather is nicer, but here’s a taste of some of the changes so far.
Here’s the before picture from one year ago.
Enabling Network Link Conditioner on iPhone and iPad
Network Link Conditioner is an Apple tool that lets you simulate adverse network conditions on your Mac or iOS device. For those of us who are lucky enough to have gigabit internet connections, it should be considered a required part of a designer’s toolkit; without it, you can’t possibly imagine what it’s like for people to use the websites or apps you create out in the real world.
Unfortunately, Apple makes it kind of difficult to find. My colleague John Maeda wrote a guide that walks you through using it on your Mac. I couldn’t find a simple, up-to-date set of instructions for using it on iPhone, so here’s how you do it as of iOS 11.
- Install and run Xcode on your Mac.
- In Xcode, select the Window menu, then Devices and Simulators.
- Unlock your iOS device, then connect it to your Mac with a lightning cable. In the Devices window, a message will appear stating that your device is being prepared for development.
- When it’s done, you can disconnect your device from your Mac. (You’ll only need to do steps 1-3 once.)
- On your device, open the Settings app. You’ll find a new option just above the list of app settings called Developer. Tap it.
- Then, tap Network Link Conditioner under the Networking section.
- Finally, choose a profile or create your own, then tap the Enable toggle switch to turn it on. Just don’t forget to turn it off when you’re done. 🙂
What about Android?
Unfortunately, there’s no equivalent of Network Link Conditioner for Android. (If you learn of one, please comment below!) But if you have both an iPhone and an Android device, you can enable Network Link Conditioner on the iPhone, create a Personal Hotspot, and then connect your Android device to the hotspot. Note that this option will use cellular data. There are also options to simulate poor connections when creating an Android emulator, or to connect an Android to something like Charles Proxy which can throttle connected devices, but I’d really love to find a solution for Android that’s as easy as Network Link Conditioner.
As always: if you’re an empathetic product or marketing designer who loves considering the needs of the real people who use your work, Automattic is hiring.
Winter Garden
Go Vote.
In 2004 I voted for the first time. I was so excited that year, because it felt like we were on the cusp of change. Needless to say, that election was a letdown. I spent that night at Huc-a-Poo’s on Tybee, surrounded by Bush supporters, trying to forget about the weight of my disappointment.
But two years later, I voted again. And Democrats took back the Congress. And two years after that, I voted for Barack Obama. The progress that LGBT people made during his presidency was astonishing, especially to a young gay kid from Alabama who never thought he’d be treated equally under the law.
Last year was the most soul-crushing election I’ve ever experienced, and that’s probably true for some of you, too. However badly I felt in 2004, 2016 was an order of magnitude worse. But I can’t help but remember how fast things changed after 2004. With every election, we have the chance to make our government a little bit better, and more responsive to its citizens. We have the chance to support incumbents who truly care about their communities. We have the chance to lift up new voices and to give them power.
Today, I’m proud to cast my ballot for Cathy Woolard for Atlanta mayor and Natalyn Mosby Archibong for my city council representative. If there’s an election where you live, and you’re able to do so, I hope you’ll go vote today.
Running an effective remote design team
Around this time last year, I got an interesting call on Slack.
Automattic had recently organized its mobile teams into a new division called Hogwarts, and our new division lead Cate Huston had embraced her new identity. I was coming off of several weeks of time off after surgery to repair a nerve in my hand that I severed during a cooking accident. Feeling down and sorry for myself, I was having a hard time getting back into the rhythm of work. But I was jolted out of my inertia by the reason for Cate’s call: to talk about forming a mobile design team within Hogwarts, with me as its lead.
Designing Login for the WordPress apps
Earlier this year, a project squad in our mobile division set out to work on a surprisingly tricky task: creating a simple login flow for our mobile apps that works with any WordPress site.
Improving Accessibility in WordPress with Dynamic Font Sizes
At Automattic, I lead a team of three designers dedicated to our native apps. We focus our time on the design of WordPress for Android and iOS.
Over the last few months, the developers and designers who work on our apps have been improving our support for the accessibility features available on mobile devices. This includes ensuring our apps properly support features like VoiceOver on iOS, and TalkBack on Android, which make the apps accessible to blind users.
One new feature I’d like to highlight is support for dynamic type sizes. This lets users choose larger (or smaller) text, to find the size that’s most comfortable for them to read. We recently made a change to the text used for blog posts and pages on iOS to make it even more readable. Now, no matter what text size the user prefers — even the largest sizes, which are huge — WordPress responds as the user should expect. This makes the app accessible to users with low vision, in a way that wasn’t possible before.
If you use an Android device, you can customize your device’s font size, too.
We’re continuing to perfect this feature, so if you notice parts of the apps where it doesn’t work quite right yet, drop us a line, and stay tuned for future improvements.
For more information on adjusting the font size on your device, see these articles:
- Change the font size on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch from Apple
- Android font size and display size from Google
Originally published on A8C Design.
Just a Bunch of Silly Pictures of Me and my Dog, on the Occasion of Her Adoption Day
Exactly 11 years ago, I brought Maggie home for the first time. A few days later, I took this picture.
This was the first in a long line of silly pictures of Maggie and me.
Eventually, I realized how much she hated being picked up, and I found new ways to make her hate being photographed.
The past eleven years have had many ups and downs, but the constant source of happiness, stability, and love is this pup.
I took this one on the scariest day of our lives together; the morning I dropped her off for her cancer surgery.
And took this one once she was home.
We’ve both got a little more gray in our beards these days, but we’re going to keep taking silly pictures every chance we get.
Maggie D, you’re the best. Happy adoption day, little bear.
Springing
The garden is getting even more fun as things begin to bloom and grow.
Maggie is just happy that winter, and construction, is over.
The Big Reveal
After much planning, estimating, digging, hauling, welding, grading, planting, adjusting, and obsessing, my back yard is complete. I’m thrilled with how it turned out and am excited to share the first pictures of it today. But before we get to that, here’s a 2-minute timelapse video that shows where we started, and how we got here.
Before:
After:
Shouts out to Humzah Khraim of Seasonswood Group here in Atlanta for a beautiful design and a job well done—if you’re in Atlanta I highly recommend working with him.
Now… I’ve got to buy some furniture for this back porch. 🤣
See more in #House
It’s planting day!
We’re getting so close, I can taste it. This will probably be the last photo I share until we’re done, to preserve a little element of surprise. Can’t wait to show the finished result.
See more in #House
Leveling out
Steel going up
Haven’t posted in a few days because not much has happened for a few days. But today, things really started to take shape. Before, my back yard undulated like hills on a putt-putt golf course, for reasons passing understanding. The new layout deals with the slope by terracing the yard with this cool cor-ten weathering steel (you can see the same stuff used in my neighbors’ garden on the left).
I’m still kind of blown away by the changes, though it’s still basically just a mud pit. But I can finally visualize the end result now, and I think it’s gonna be good.
See more in #House
Progress, generally
Well, we’ve reached the point that I’m having to take the pups to the front yard to do their business, as the back is a muddy wreck. But it’s pretty exciting to see it happen. I bought the house and moved in while they were still finishing the original back yard, so I’m familiar with Georgia red clay. This time I’m so much more excited about what’s coming next, I don’t even care.
This guy’s not impressed, though.
See more in #House
