S01E04: Cassie Evans - Behind the Source
This is a lovely little interview with Cassie—it really is an honour and a privilege to work with her!
Link tags: clearleft
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SofaConf 2020 - a technical write-up | Trys Mudford
Trys describes the backend architecture of the excellent Sofa Conf website. In short, it’s a Jamstack dream: all of the convenience and familiarity of using a database-driven CMS (Craft), combined with all the speed and resilience of using a static site generator (Eleventy).
I love the fact that anyone on the Clearleft events team can push to production with a Slack message.
I also love that the site is Lighthousetastically fast.
Home | SofaConf 2020
You don’t want to miss this! A five-day online conference with a different theme each day:
- Monday: Product Strategy
- Tuesday: Research
- Wednesday: Service Design
- Thursday: Content Strategy
- Friday: Interaction Design
Speakers include Amy Hupe, Kelly Goto, Kristina Halvorson, Lou Downe, Leisa Reichelt and many more still to be announce, all for ludicrously cheap ticket prices.
I know it sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet because this is a Clearleft event, but I had nothing to do with it. The trumpets of my talented co-workers should be blasting in harmonious chorus.
(It’s a truly lovely website too!)
It’s OK.
This is for everyone at Clearleft, but I’m sharing it here for you too.
Visual Design Inspiration from Agency Websites–And Other Tangential Observations | Jim Nielsen’s Weblog
Tyring to do make screenshots of agency websites is tricky if the website is empty HTML with everything injected via JavaScript.
Granted, agencies are usually the ones pushing the boundaries. “Pop” and “pizazz” are what sell for many of them (i.e. “look what we can do!”) Many of these sites pushed the boundaries of what you can do in the browser, and that’s cool. I like seeing that kind of stuff.
But if you asked me what agency websites inspired both parts me, I’d point to something like Clearleft or Paravel. To me, they strike a great balance of visual design with the craft of building for an accessible, universal web.
Prioritising Requirements | Trys Mudford
Over the past few years, I’ve given quite a few workshops and talks on evaluating technology. This methodical approach to evaluation and prioritisation from Trys is right up my alley!
In any development project, there is a point at which one must decide on the tech stack. For some, that may feel like a foregone conclusion, dictated by team appetite and experience.
Even if the decision seems obvious, it’s always worth sense-checking your thought process. Along with experience and gut-feelings, we also have blind-spots and biases.
I feel like there’s a connection here to having good design principles—the kind that explicitly value one facet over another.
Workshop Countdown Clock
Here’s a nifty little progressive web app that Trys whipped up so that Clearlefties running workshops remotely still get to have their beloved countdown clock.
Getting your priorities right | Clearleft
A ludicrously useful grab-bag of prioritisation techniques from Chris—so, so handy for workshops and sprint planning.
Variable fonts’ past, present and future, according to Dalton Maag
In this interview, Biance Berning says:
Cassie Evans from Clearleft is an interesting person to follow as she combines web animation with variable font technology, essentially exploring the technology’s practicality and expression.
Hells yeah!
We’re only just scratching the surface of what variable fonts can do within more interactive and immersive spaces. I think we’ll see a lot more progress and experimentation with that as time goes on.
Self Treat
It’s been an absolute pleasure having Holly, Laçin, and Beyza at Clearleft while they’ve been working on this three-month internship project:
Self Treat is a vision piece designed to increase self-management of minor health conditions.
You can also read the blog posts they wrote during the process:
The rise of research ops — a view from the inside | Clearleft
I moderated this panel in London last week, all about the growing field of research ops—I genuinely love moderating panels. Here, Richard recounts some of the thought nuggets I prised from the mind casings of the panelists.
Jon Aizlewood · Agile and design — How to avoid Frankensteining your product
Jon’s ranting about Agile here, but it could equally apply to design systems:
Agile and design is like looking at a picture through a keyhole. By slicing big things into smaller things, designers must work incrementally. Its this incrementalism that can lead to what I call the ‘Frankensteining’ of a digital product or service.
Why your design system should include content | Clearleft
Rachel makes the case for integrating content design patterns into component libraries:
Instead of content design systems and visual design systems existing in isolation, the ideal is one design system that accommodates everything, marrying the content and design together in the way it will actually be used and experienced.
The Patterns Day Edition | Amy Hupe, content designer.
Amy’s talk at Patterns Day was absolutely brilliant! Here’s an account of the day from her perspective.
The evident care Jeremy put into assembling the lineup meant an incredible mix of talks, covering the big picture stuff right down to the nitty gritty, and plenty in between.
Her observation about pre-talk nerves is spot-on:
I say all of this because it’s important for me and I think anyone who suffers with anxiety about public speaking, or in general, to recognise that having a sense of impending doom doesn’t mean that doom is actually impending.
Patterns Day
Here’s a nice little round-up of Friday’s Patterns Day.
Weeknotes #16 | Trys Mudford
Just look at these fantastic pictures that Trys took (very unobstrusively) at Patterns Day—so rock’n’roll!
Patterns Day notes
Stuart took copious notes during every single talk at Patterns Day—what a star!
Our intern program is returning for 2019 | Clearleft
Know any graduates who’d like to take part in a fun (paid) three month scheme at Clearleft? Send ‘em our way.
Earth day at Clearleft
Isn’t this just lovely?
Cassie made a visualisation of the power we’re getting from the solar panels we installed on the roof of the Clearleft building.
I highly recommend reading her blog post about the process too. She does such a great job of explaining how she made API calls, created SVGs, and calculated animations.
UX Workshop | Trys Mudford
I’m so, so happy that Trys has joined us at Clearleft!
Here, he recounts his first day, which just happened to coincide with an introductory UX workshop that went really well.