(Updated 27 March 2021 from Leeuwarden, Netherlands)
This is my now page. Aside from my daily creative direction work, here’s what I’m currently up to.
Writing
Over the past few weeks I’ve started writing publicly again. I never stopped writing in private—I just had a period of time in which I didn’t feel I had anything useful to publish. Now I don’t care. Here are a few posts from the last few weeks:
- Use workflow experimentation to challenge design choices
- Design review means asking questions
- Dates provide context
- Not all design opinions are created equal
I’m starting a book proposal for my second book. I’ve been toying around with a few ideas for years and I finally have one that has me excited to write it. If my publisher ends up not being interested, I’ll likely self-publish.
Gemini
Gemini is a relatively new internet protocol that’s somewhat reminiscent of gopher. Some might call it a “heavy” gopher, or a “light” web. The equivalent of sites in Gemini are called “capsules”. They’re written in markup that’s similar to Markdown. I think of it as a kind of document web. Not sure where it’s heading, but it’s not hard to publish my writing there as well as on the web. Playing with it kind of takes me back to 1995. If you have a Gemini client, you can view my capsule (very sparse—two whole pages!) at gemini://stephenhay.srht.site.
Reading
- Just finished: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. I’ve been a fan of Sivers’ work for years, but I had never read this book. It’s great. I think it should be required reading for UX designers, as it contains some nice little gems about what delighting customers is all about. The book feels quite honest about what worked for Sivers and what didn’t. It sparked some deep thinking on my part about the purpose of work, the value of relationships, and creative motivation.
- Just started: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson. I just started this one yesterday, so I have no thoughts on it yet.
Working on the website
I’m turning this website into a static site. I’m perfectly happy having my text editor become my CMS. With no self-imposed time pressure at all, I’m migrating the site to markdown files which I’ll then publish using Eleventy. I’m documenting the process for myself, but I’ll publish the notes. Despite having friends who have documented this process, I’ve found that I’ll need to do a reasonable amount of manual work to get the existing articles the way I want them.