Jason Najarro’s Posthaven

This is a test to see what it might be like to use the mobile app Momento as the starting point for my blog posts. My hope is to get in the habit of using the app as a bucket to capture my raw, unfiltered thoughts and ideas. Those worth expanding and sharing can then be pushed to Posthaven. I've tried to do this in the past with Evernote but didn't like mixing my private journal entries with my knowledge repository. For years I've promised to blog more but every year I fail. Here's to lowering the barrier for new habits to take root.

Added: Sunrise

Dropped: Magneto

D’s work finally framed and up on the wall

ShinyScreens.com is a project that I’ve abandoned and returned to numerous times over the last couple years.  The idea was to create a mobile UI pattern library (similar to pttrns.com or mobile-patterns.com) that featured recorded screen video instead of image stills.  It’s much easier to appreciate the designs by viewing them in action.  I used to record these videos using the Display Recorder app from the Cydia store on my jailbroken devices.  Since upgrading to iOS6 I lost the ability to jailbreak my phone and therefore ShinyScreens has received little love as of late.  Today I found new hope in an app called Reflector. It lets you airplay mirror your screen to your mac or pc and record the video! It’s nice because my device doesn’t have to be jailbroken.  The downside is it doesn’t show the user’s taps on the screen and I have record from a laptop.  It’s a good solution for the interim though.

Lately my coworkers have been raving about Wunderlist which has recently received a second life. I have not played around with it much yet but here’s a very small detail I liked about their side panel menu. Take a look at the video above.  Did you see that? There are two options along the bottom of the panel.  As the user scrolls the menu a faint dividing line appears above them help distinguish the fixed region from the scrollable region.  It’s very subtle but it helps keep the menu visually clean and tidy when not in use.

I just started taking an online personal finance class on Coursera. One of the first lessons is to write down your long term goals.  I came up with a 5 year plan once.  That was about… 5 years ago.  Perhaps I should think a little further out this time. Assuming I’m lucky enough to be around for another 10, I can picture it going a little something like this:

• Buckle down for next two years honing my design craft with the right company
• Live in another country for 3-6 to months. Spend the whole time exploring and working on a passion project.
• Get involved in education.  It’d be great to mentor young students interested in design.
• In 3-4 years move into The City and catch a second wind.
• Head a design team for a passionate startup
• Upgrade to a family sized place maybe 8 years from now
• All the while enjoying time with my family and best friend in life

Sometimes when I’m bored in meetings I doodle in my steno pad, filling in the grids with triangles of various orientations.  I realized the pattern would be pretty easy to recreate in Illustrator.  The result is kind of interesting.

Been some time since I attended a BayCHI presentation. Tonight Cyd Harrell was talking about mobile research - both how to usability test your mobile apps and how to use mobile as a tool for conducting research. Because mobile usage occurs practically everywhere and at anytime I’ve found it difficult to design realistic study prompts. I liked her idea of texting participants throughout the day to ask them to record their current state. The talk just kind of scratched the surface of how to go about designing a mobile study. I think I’d like to attend hew UXIM workshop.

Last summer I remodeled our bathroom with tons of help from my dad.  We finished about 95% of everything when I decided to take a break and finish the rest later. 6 months later I finally put installed the cabinet door to complete the sink vanity. Initially I was having a hard time getting the door hinges on.  Of course I blamed IKEA’s cheap quality. Turned out it was my aversion to reading directions that was causing the problem. After a quick re-read the door was actually pretty easy to install. To keep with the old cottage feel of the bathroom I used a porcelain handle that matches the faucet. I like how it turned out.