I’m a founder, principal product designer, and photographer based in Narrm. I care about building a kinder Web.
Design systems operate under one of the following governance models: centralised, federated, or hybrid. All approaches have different benefits and drawbacks, swaying the decision-making scales depending on organisational priorities, maturity, size, and resourcing. Not all decisions are made the same, as one of these models stands to upend what design system teams care about most: cohesion,…
One day not that long ago, on a tram, my boiling frustrations with what the Web is becoming were particularly unbearable. Little rights, many wrongs. Is this what we’ll let it be? It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We can’t turn back…
For the last seven years (four of which as a co-founder), I’ve been working with Ben↗ on Calibre↗ , a software as a service platform for web performance. It’s been the most challenging, rewarding and informative time of my entire professional career nearing twenty years. Several months ago, I made the toughest decision yet—to leave the company I helped build . Founders departure is still a taboo…
In 2020, I read 32 books out of my 40 goal . The pandemic year brought swings and roundabouts: sometimes I’d escape reality by reading as much as I could, sometimes I was too exhausted to even think about consuming words. 81% of the books were written by women , up from 68% last year. In no particular order, here’s the list. Show Me Where It Hurts: Living with Invisible Illness # Kylie Maslen ∙…
In 2019, I’ve read 44 books, which is 83% more than last year (not having a hyper-stressful job for half of the year definitely helped this goal). I consciously focused on reading women authors, which took up 68% of all books. The statistics on race could be better though (frankly, it’s challenging to assume writer’s race and ethnicity, but by my calculations it oscillated around 7-10%). In no…
This is the second time I’m writing a year in review. Still trying to find the best format for reflections and a framework for goal-setting for the year to come. If you’ve never written one before, I strongly recommend it as a great form of remembering your own achievements (and struggles!). The way I can sum up 2018 is: it’s been a year . Work # In April, after wrapping the last CSSConf↗ and…
In 2018 I’ve managed to go through 24 fantastic books —a little less than I’ve planned, but anxiety got in the way. The prevalent theme was undoubtedly feminism—especially touching on systemic racial oppression. Second most read subject was the effect of technology on humanity—an equally important issue. In no particular order, here’s a short commentary that might be useful if you’re looking for…
I haven’t done any year in reviews in the past, but I believe it’s a great way of reflecting on accomplishments and hardships I’ve managed to overcome. Without further ado, here it goes. Work # Being in tech hasn’t been great for me in the last two years. In Australia, I was tied to a job that didn’t allow me grow, and even worse, actively discriminated against me when I’ve attempted to apply for…
Now and then I have a conversation with someone who’s interested in pursuing public speaking but too afraid of endless requirements and pressure correlating to doing so. My goal is to enable those individuals to try it nonetheless by debunking some of the common myths relating to the fundamentals for becoming a presenter. I base this on my own experience as a seasoned speaker and event curator.…
This article is inspired by my own experience and an insightful conversation with two lovely women — Susan Wu and Sarah Moran. I’ve been in the industry for roughly ten years (you can read about it in detail here). I’ve recently fully realised why my career isn’t where I want it to be. For the last five years, I’ve been heavily involved in community work; from meetups, workshops to established…
I don’t take speaking at conferences lightly. Firstly, it comes with a significant time commitment — on average it takes me over 90 hours to complete a talk (including transcript, slides and rehearsal). I allocate evenings and weekends to do so, sacrificing downtime. The goal is to deliver a high-quality presentation, not only packed with actionable information but also presented in an accessible…
⚠️ Trigger warning: the narrative includes mentions of harassment and depiction or discussion of discriminatory attitudes or actions. If at any point you feel uncomfortable with the content, please stop reading and take care of yourself ❤️ I’m a CIS, white woman almost in her thirties, born in Eastern Europe. I’ve been lucky to receive all levels of education including university alongside a…
Over a year ago I wrote on the subject of empathetic hiring and how we’re still failing to make it efficient, respectful and inclusive. Changing employers can be frequent in the rapidly growing tech industry, and it’s reasonably easy to hear fellow developers opinions about what went well and not so great: Overall, I found the process to be dehumanising, stressful, chaotic, inaccurate, opaque.…
There are probably thousands of tech-oriented events being ran each day. From casual meetups to full-blown, multiple-day conferences with large budgets. A significant amount of them sources their speakers through an often anonymous, Call for Proposals process. Thanks to platforms like Lanyrd, Call to Speakers or Callback Women it has become fairly easy to browse through potential speaking…
Receiving beautiful, functional emails from companies and services that we we use is hard to come by. We reviewed emails from our favourite products to see how their transactional emails looked, we were often surprised and disappointed by what we saw. There’s a discrepancy between stellar marketing sites (or interface design) and crucial communication mediums. What’s being forgotten is that the…
What does remote mean? # There’s a lot of misconception about the meaning of remote. Two of the key identifiers are being juggled around— asynchronicity and distribution . Neither of them alone describe the complexity of fully flexible work. Co-workers can be effectively asynchronous while sitting in the same office—when working on multiple projects or taking extended amount of time to reply to…
Yesterday I was working on a progressively enhanced user interface (without JavaScript) — a scenario that we cater to very frequently at a company I’m currently employed with. Accidentally, it completely slipped my mind to flip the switch and enable JavaScript back. A door to entirely different Web was suddenly wide open. Let me tell you—I didn’t like what I saw. It took me a good minute of…
During over ten years in the tech industry I went through the hiring process at small startups, mid-sized agencies and well-funded corporations at least a dozen times. I’ve seen colleagues struggling when interviewing and being under tremendous amount of stress and so was I. At the beginning of my career I assumed that seeking employment simply cannot be a pleasant journey—it’s one of those…
This post was inspired by a conversation about Open Source↗ between Adam Yeats and James Seymour-Lock and an article↗ by Remy Sharp. Please read them thoroughly before continuing. Open Source software is a thriving market that supports thousands of startups and gets them off the ground — freeware with a “small” price of a few dependencies. Anything can be open sourced; from the smallest code…
Some of my friends ask me for advice on how to find a job. Every single time I feel extremely flattered by the trust they have put in me. They may all have different goals, expectations and experiences, but they all deserve one thing—a chance for quality employment. This can be hard to come by these days though—in the world of overworking, chasing after money, and lack of respect for yourself and…
Democracy is an ideology we’ve grown to love and historically fought for (still fighting in some cases) over the years. As human beings we share our opinions which need to be acknowledged and sometimes, incorporated by others. Unfortunately while democracy flourishes in politics it can be quite dangerous in the design realm. Remember the saying “Too many cooks spoil the broth”? With too many…