Ask DN: What side projects are you working on?
over 7 years ago from Andy Leverenz, Product Designer
Well, lets have it. What are you working on these days?
over 7 years ago from Andy Leverenz, Product Designer
Well, lets have it. What are you working on these days?
My side project is Graphical Cooking – a new way to display cooking recipes. I've been redesigning my favourite recipes and some classics as beautiful infographics. Check it out here: http://graphicalcooking.co/
That's awesome!
Thank you Pablo!
cool idea!
Thank you Austen :)
Very original!
Thank you :)
Have two of them in my kitchen. Great work!
Oh really? That's great to hear! I want to see a photo of course! :)
Cool idea. 8)
Thank you Phil! :)
Man, I registered only to leave a comment how awesome your idea is! Please continue working on it.
Wow, now I'm flattered :O
Great idea! I really love it!
BTW, I don't know if you know this and if you care (or if I should post this here) but your website is hijacking the back button. It happens when you click on any of the download buttons. I'm using Firefox Developer (48.0a2) but it happens on normal Firefox (42.0) too. I really hate that :P
Thank you Julio! That's good to know, didn't expierence that yet – will check it out!
We built a way to connect people for 10 minutes of one-on-one advice: http://www.officehours.io. It’s a handy way to access some quick insights.
Wow, this is great. Did you design the illustrations?
Thanks—glad you liked it!
I did the illustrations. They’re pretty basic, but keeping them that way helps me adapt them as needed (there are a lot of them in the videos we’re working on).
That's a good strategy. Share the video when it's ready!
Thanks—will do. :-)
You deserve another "unraise" ;)
Thanks!
And depending on how long it takes for us to make this profitable, I might very well need to do that. ;-)
Wow! This is a really great idea. I'd love to use this to give Swift Advice.
Nice—thank you!
And please do join, if you’re inclined to do so. We’d love to have you take part. :-)
Friend, I'm so impressed with Your product. So flipping good. and blazing fast too. Could I schedule a session where you just talk to me about how you build this thing?
Thanks Karl—I love hearing feedback like that!
I’m happy to chat with you. You can book me here: https://officehours.io/people/karj
That said, I mostly work on design/UX tasks.
If you want to talk more about development, you should speak with my business partner, Eric Shelkie. You can find him here: https://officehours.io/people/shelkie
I just finished my first Office Hours! Someone booked my time and it was great. This is such a great idea.
I also booked your time and Eric's time, I'm really excited to connect with you two. Office hours is great.
Nice—glad to hear the session went well!
I look forward to speaking with you, later in the week!
Hey Eric, I registered back in the beta phase, as I've been researching feasibility of an enterprise solution for something along similar lines. Interested in a 10 minute chat?
Happy to. You can book me here: officehours.io/people/karj
I'm working on a bot that tells puns... it's called Pun Bot... I know, it's dumb. Right now it's kinda working on Slack: http://punbot.com/
I've been working on a new video portal for leaning all things web development. It's called the DevDojo: https://devdojo.com
The cool thing is I get to learn about cool new technologies at my day job and then relay all the things I've learned in my videos :)
This is really impressive. Is it only you working on this?
Thanks man :) Yep. I've been working on it for about a year now. Hope to make this my sole source of income one day.
Nice! I've been working on something similar - thinkosaur.com but keep stopping because it is really disheartening to see almost no traffic. I need to be more smarter about how I structure and market it.
I'm working on a small website giving essential travel information—http://citadela.io
I've been steadily working on Heythere.ca A site dedicated to highlight the best of Canadian design and creativity. I usually interview some top talent every few weeks, and then do smaller blog posts daily.
I'm working on an eCommerce solution called, "VendoMarket". I've been frustrated by the available options for my own online shop, so I am simultaneously working on VM and doing a redesign. When it's done, I'll open-source it for the developer-minded folks and I'll create a hosted solution for people who don't feel like dealing with servers.
I have spent the last year and a half writing "Tragic Design: The True Impact of Bad Design and How to Fix It
It all started with this Medium post: How Bad UX Killed Jenny
It has been quite a journey, there is a huge difference between a Medium article and a whole book but its taught me to think deeper and to back up what I write with supporting arguments and examples.
I really hope it achieves the goal of getting the attention of designers to think about ethics in design and where design is badly needed.
P.S. If youre interested in hearing more on the topic and get alerts about the book launch, you can sign up for my newsletter here: http://tragicdesign.us10.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=b2a9f2c796e250794d7fae7de&id=f9eaf83819
I'm so glad you delved deeper into that subject. That post was an eye-opener and made me realize how much design CAN really make a difference. Thank you for writing it and looking forward to reading this book!
I recently finished 100 for 100, an email newsletter turned book:
And now I've started Shape.Cool, a podcast on the stories and cultures behind designers. Here are the first two episodes:
This is pretty awesome man! thanks for sharing
Thanks Irving!
I have always wanted build iOS apps. Mid March this year I set out to build 10 iOS apps, I am working on 7th. I hope to be done with all 10 before July.
Man, that's amazing. Can I ask what apps you've built? :)
They are nothing special just basic ones, I have them up on my GitHub https://github.com/nashvail/X-Days-of-Swift
That's really awesome! How did you get started? Do you have a computer science background at all? I've toyed with the idea of some apps myself but always felt like it was out of my reach.
I have taken 2 MOOCs, Stanford's CS106A and CS106B they've come in very handy. I started out with iOS by following this Udemy course with the name "The complete iOS 9 developer course".
I built themacindex.com last few weeks. I always have a habit of comparing prices of any Apple products in different countries, just in case I can get currency advantage at a country I'm visiting. So I decided to take a crack at it.
Sweet.
My side project is Abito, a free WordPress theme and you can use it for blog or portfolio websites.
You can find it here: http://abito.fedeweb.net/.
Please let me know what do you think :)
I'm working on a generative art project – Silk 2 for iOS: It's the app of my several-years-now side project, http://weavesilk.com.
Our side project is Otter, an app that reduces conflicts at schools by allowing students to resolve disputes on their own. We're currently piloting it at a charter school in East Palo Alto.
I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been integrating what I learn here into the site. Thanks!
So many great ideas here! I'm working on too many side projects.
SwiftBits, Which is a Video Course that teaches the basics of Swift to complete beginners. It's different because it doesn't assume prior programming knowledge, you can take the whole course just from the lesson notes if you want, and you get mentorship and feedback from the course teacher: me. This is launching in a couple of days.
DesignRocket, which is a code name for a change in my freelancing where I work for a reduced rate or for free for Independent Artists and Designers. I want to work on really cool stuff, especially the creative kind of stuff that either impacts the world in a positive way, or is super artistic and silly. I'm also launching a podcast this week related to this.
I'm also working on refurbishing and improving Cheddar, which I recently bought, and Pendium, joint invoices for collaborating Freelancers, which enters beta this summer. I'm working on most of this stuff with my Designer Friend Daniel Mui, Who's a Gun of a designer.
So much yes!! So excited!
I'm building an app for having Agile retrospective meetings. We have remote team members where I work, and after attending a conference and hearing about how we're not quite making them first-world citizens in our team, we just built one.
Also, a hugely experimental app for having a video chat room like a drop in room; you share the url, and whoever is around can log on. Works on some browsers (hey, I built it in one evening!), and chrome on mobiles (not sure about iOs, but probs defs Android)
https://remoteroundtable.herokuapp.com/
(Heroku is great for staging ideas... before paying for a server for them!)
I've been building Polidex, a site which helps Australians keep track of their politicians. I've been making the site with React, which has been a fun learning experience. The site uses some public data sources for it's info, so it's been an interesting challenge integrating external resources with my design. You can take a look at Polidex
This is really cool.
I was playing around with an idea similar to this. I've often thought that this is an area that is just begging for better tools and resources to be built.
Given how toxic the whole political process has become in the last few years, its nice to see something that distills it all down to simple points and removes a lot of the emotion floating around some of these issues. Since I just don't have the dev chops at the moment to pull it off, I'm glad someone is having a go at it.
Forgive me if this is unwelcome feedback, but there are a few things I think you could include that would really make this an even more useful resource for people. Especially since most people wouldn't know the first place to look for election info other than the vox pops on the news.
I could be missing it, but it would be nice to be able to filter/select by electorate or state and provide the direct contact info for that MP and office.
Possibly allow some way to filter or compare by policy, so you can at a glance see which MP and Senators are for or against a particular piece of policy, and even possibly compare two MPs head-to-head.
The colour coding for each MP and their party/affiliation is a little hard to pick at first glance, so perhaps give that a bit more emphasis?
It would also be nice to see how long the MP has been their seat for.
I'm guessing this would take a fair bit more work, and would probably be going a bit beyond the scope of what you're building but it would also be nice to see others who are contesting a seat and where they stand on the issues.
Closing the popup is a bit unintuitive. Using ESC is fine, but maybe add a close button and making it so that clicking elsewhere closes the box.
The pop up is also a bit too small on large monitors.
Anyway, again, you've done a really great job.
I'm going to make sure I pass this around. Maybe it can go some way to stopping some of the bile that is being thrown about.
Thanks! That feedback is great, I'm still working away at the site, so definitely looking to improve what's there and build up the features. We just went 'live' on the weekend, so there's definitely still a few rough edges I'm keen to fix (like the popup closing thing haha), but figured it'd be good to get some eyes on it in the lead up to the election in July.
Actually the current feature I'm about to start work on is electorate/state maps which provide another interface for searching for politicians. Definitely agree that filtering by electorate/state would be a useful addition.
The ability to compare politicians/policies is actually something I've heard a few people say they would like, I might need to start thinking of how I might be able to implement that.
Thanks for spreading the word, hopefully the site is a little bit useful :)
I've been giving free workshops on Sketch, prototyping tools, and UI animation in San Francisco. They're called Sketch Together. Join us if anyone is interested in learning cool stuff :)
I am working on http://getlaps.com, opened closed beta, fixing bugs / ux issues = usual weekend.
I am working on a minimal desktop app for medium.com. MediumDesk extends medium.com’s experience to desktops. It is built with no intention to modify/replace any experience. I ❤︎ Medium as it is. But a desktop app can do a few little things that a web app can’t and it gives a permanent home for Medium in my desktop. That is what MediumDesk is for. Every new feature will be selected based on this question : “Would Medium do it, If they built a desktop app?”.
My side project is a daily icon diary for the 2016 year. I've been creating a icon a day, based upon something relevant to my life, in hopes to practice design and technique. See it here at: www.365cons.com.
Font Pair (fontpair.co) - It helps creative people pair fonts together. All the fonts are Google Fonts so they are free and easy to download and test out. I am currently developing the second version of the site now! I'm jacked its going to be awesome.
Thanks for asking! :)
I'm currently:
Redesigning my website Creatix.io
Redesigning my actual side project, a business-focused blog for freelancers, Freelance Jump
Creating more videos for my YouTube Channel
Also, I'm really diggin a lot of projects in this thread! Keep on creating!
I'm working on a Web Design Inspiration Gallery
I'm actively developing https://fromscratch.rocks, a super simple note taking app with as minimal a ui as possible and autosaving notes. releasing a new version soon that has (hidden until you need it) note-folding.
I occasionally work on my Zelda-like (Nes/Snes) in-browser action RPG engine to get better at pure JavaScript, so no use of pre-built engines or frameworks like JQuery.
If not that, I'm trying to stream video games, design and art on Twitch!
This is pretty experimental for me (I'm not even really a designer, I just like reading here), but I'm making this notebook thingy: http://1rick.github.io/paperkanban/
I have two:
One is a modern webring: https://hotlinewebring.club Anyone can join for free! The other is an app you can subscribe to Github pull requests: http://pullfeed.co
We are working on https://craycases.com (thin iPhone cases). Launched MVP beginning of the month, we received enough traction to justify rebranding the website.
How are these different from Peel?
Hey Wojtek, Our cases are precisely made for each version of the iPhone (not universal), 0.4mm thick, and it's slightly raised around phone jack and volume control.
We also include 2 normal screen protectors and 1 tempered screen protector free of charge.
Shipped worldwide (we use tracked & signed service) + Free shipping in UK.
You and Peel clearly have the same sourcing. That's totally fine. That's how white label manufacturing works. I'm just a bit confused about your unique value proposition here. I was hoping you'd be cheaper (I'm actually in the market for one and get one for my friends birthday), but there's little incentive to purchase from this site. I would definitely look at adding more value of some sort.
Nothing against you or your site, just wanted to give some blatantly honest constructive criticism.
Hey Adam, no problem at all. Our cases are precisely made for each version of the iPhone (not universal), 0.4mm thick, and it's slightly raised around phone jack and volume control.
We also include 2 normal screen protectors and 1 tempered screen protector free of charge.
It may look the same, but it's not the same.
I recently finished writing my first Slack app Emogiphy which turns emoji into GIFs. The images making up the GIF on the landing page was my first time using Sketch. Now I'm writing a tutorial on testing AngularJS apps.
Being a recent college graduate without an agency job yet, I've been keeping myself busy with a lot of freelance and side projects. Currently, I'm working on...
A Snapchat filter marketing service right now. I'm currently building the marketing site for it and organizing some college friends to help me design filters while I focus on lead generation.
A simple tower defense game, because college friend wants to experiment with game design—so why not?
That said, I'm always looking for things to work on if anybody needs any help/feedback! Excited to see what everyone else is up to.
Your snap filter service intrigues me! I recently designed/published a geofilter for the Vancouver DN Meetup, and the process was pretty painless. What services will it offer?
Thanks, Kieran! The goal is to act similar to how conventional marketing agencies do, but focus in the niche of Snapchat/millennial interests. Right now, we are just going to start with geofilters but hope to scale up to actually make the video ads that big companies like Coca-Cola and such have done. There's several people out there doing custom filters for consumers, but our target market will be small businesses, festivals, clubs, etc. or really any business that doesn't have the in-house team to do this sort of thing themselves. And—of course—five star service and top-notch customer care will be included!
Our domain will be snapfilter.me, but I need to finish and publish it today! I'll link it here when it's up!
My side project is new app to discover the best attractions, guides and itineraries of the world. – We want help people living memorable days. We've already released an app for android and itunes, if you want to try it and giving us feedback would be great. The app is called Blink - Travel guide or you can visit https://www.blinktravel.guide/
My side project is Truffle, a graphic design lifestyle brand: http://thisistruffle.com. After working all day on screen, it is nice to run a physical product project at home! It has also been a fun way to learn about marketing and the challanges entrepreneurs face.
Currently, I am trying to write two Sketch plugins
Hope to release both of them next week.
Some great projects here. Already bookmarked a few.
My second side project Dayzzie.com just launched today(no mobile stylesheet yet - but not built for a mobile audience). It's a really basic site where you can download a new high res texture everyday. I built it to force me to return to using my DSLR.
My blog/photoblog ( http://paulstamatiou.com/photos ) is my continual side project. From working on a new article, to redesigning the photo collection section, or making a photoset from a recent trip, it's not often that a weekend passes that I don't spend time on it in some form. Keeps me sane!
I'm running Sketch Talk – a friendly Sketch app Community. I started it about a year ago and am constantly working on it, redesigning and tweaking the experience. It has been a super learning experience for me, as it involves community building, technical aspects, "growth hacking" and a bit of marketing — all things I didn't know much about when I got started. It is a very rewarding site to have. Not very stressful and a pleasure to see all those people help each other! Check it out: http://sketchtalk.io/
Just bought Puretrancefm.com and will build a podcast streaming service focused on electronic music.
Also, I'm producing music, which is sort of a project: https://soundcloud.com/martin-leblanc-eigtved/solarcoaster
Hey guys, I'm working on Webstash — Webstash surfaces the most beautiful websites, every day. It's a place for webdesign enthusiasts to admire today's best designs.
You can leave your email right here: www.websta.sh so I can notify you when Webstash launches :)
Any rough idea when this will launch?
Not sure yet, I'm testing with an alpha version right now and it should go into beta soon. I'm pretty busy with a lot of other stuff so not much time to work on Webstash right now. If you want to be a part of the beta please leave your email at www.websta.sh
I have.
Cool, then you'll receive an invite for the beta when it's ready. :)
I built CardShare, which allows you to share contact information via QR codes similar to the way Snapchat does it.
Enjoy!
I'm working on a chatbot related with sneakers: http://sneakerbits.com
That's really cool. What platform are you using?
Thanks! I'm using Chatfuel. Despite being a bit limited in terms of features, it's easy to set up. Perfect to quickly test some ideas.
Any feedback about the chatbot is welcomed :)
Thanks for sharing :)
An Android game, helped me learn some Blender in the process.
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