I was working on an improved home page today among a few other things. Just trying to make everything more balanced after getting some notes from @ethan. The videos at the bottom can be videos of users explaining how they use FL. Perhaps under that I can just provide some simple highlight information that comes up often. It seems the focus of tomorrow will primarily be design so there might be some good space to finish some things and catch up on stuff.

It's 8:11PM and I'm in good shape to cut it early tonight. I had a few good design sessions last week but I'll need to pick up design work this week on a few things and also pick up work on other dimensions of Futureland. It's going to be one of those weeks where I need to be locked in. I'm in good shape to cut it early tonight so that gives me a chance at making a morning creative / design session happen. Let's see what happens this week.

Today I just did a bunch of little tweaking work on these two interfaces I want to ship soon. One is an updated home page and the other is a concept for the links page of news.futureland.tv. I'm thinking about playing with a larger width on the home page just to see if I can make things feel more balanced. The widescreen journal interface on the home page kind of throws everything off so let's see.

It's 11:20PM, in a later cycle of down times. Just some quick design work tonight. I'm going to update this sketch of the home page over the next few days with a clear concept (it'll be interesting to see how long it holds up), just calling Futureland a new kind of journal. It's difficult to be specific about every exact element of it in a single sentence lol.

Also just made some quick updates to this link page for news.futureland.tv. That little project is very much an experiment but I want to finish up any remaining work on it to see it through and see if its helpful in some way. I think it could be.

This week (and last) there's been a lot of thinking and experimental type work and much less direct product design. It's also that I've been sleeping later and that eats into my morning sessions for creative work. Especially on weekends so I need to work at pulling all of that together. Overall my output is pretty good though and I'll keep at it.

Quick updates to this news.futureland.tv concept. Starting to work on link and comment pages. Routine is major off today but all good.

It's 2:39PM and I'm on a good clip today. That means I'm in a good place with my daily output before 3PM. That's a scenario that allows me to transition more easily into hanging with family and just open ended thinking not related to anything specific. The latter is hard to do in general because I'm very motivated by the questions I have in my head. I ask myself big questions and it bugs me when I can't answer them. But yeah I'm working on it.

Most of my design work right now seems to be more 'thinking' work more than it is 'interface design' work which makes me wonder what this journal is and should be about. Originally this journal started off as a documentation through the regular practice of learning interface design. But after a year of that I wonder more about design generally not just interface creations. Although I think that's a super dope medium to translate deep thinking into. I never think I'll be the best interface designer. I'm too curious about other things. Cross-disciplinary patterns. Maybe that's the wrong way to think about things. I'm not sure. I do think it's super cool that you can through interface design you can essentially strengthen the part of your brain that things about creating tools for others and I like that with interface design there's no material cost to production. In the construction and imagining of these tools, I never like run out of metal or wood or something. That's what I love so much about computers, no material costs. As long as you have battery life, you're good.

But yeah, now I use this journal as more of a reflection on my practice in design more generally. And I think I need a place for that. Like a place for me to journal about translating ideas or thoughts into multi-disciplinary realties. What's it like to design a book, a chair, some music, (documentary) films, software, video games, companies and so on. What are the patterns in each of them? What discipline am I working in this year and why? Do certain disciplines converge in interesting ways or more often then other ones? What might that mean? This is the kind of stuff I think about and I wonder if it makes sense to start writing about it here while also dropping in process work whether that is interface design (which it probably mostly will be right now) or something else. I would definitely need to rename this journal. I'll think about it. Hm. On that note my fav journal title on FL without a doubt is @kristen's 'sense-making' but looks like she changed the name of it haha. It's just really cool when you combine words like that and turn them into themes. 'sense-making' made me think of film-making and then my own words like pattern-finding and other ones like Buckminster Fuller's comprehensive anticipatory design science. That's a long way of saying I'm not sure what I would rename this journal to, but naming what I'm trying to do seems to feel more accurate when I combine words into new ones.

It's 10:13PM in Toronto and I'm just about to cut it for the night. I very quickly mocked up a concept for some kind of link sharing experiment. Our own little version of HackerNews if you will. This didn't take me long at all, but it was cool to just quickly start throwing stuff into sketch to see what would happen. Let's see if this ends up coming to life in some way and what happens.

It's 8:53PM in Toronto. It's cool getting back into some design work and a bit unexpected it that this 'black hole' experiment (the name I'm sure will change soon) is the reason for it. I started working through the 'profiles' for this concept and Wikipedia was an important reference. Thinking about it from the perspective of encyclopedia started to give me a lot of ideas in general. Especially in terms of like establishing your own mythology about things. It's interesting, an encyclopedia is a kind of nomenclature or documentation for 'a world'. And anyone can just create their own in a way. It's kind of neat to think about that there's nothing stopping anyone from creating their own public encyclopedia. Pretty cool.

It's 5:12PM in Toronto. I was able to get back into some design work for 'working on the black hole'. It's interesting working this way. Like in general working through this in parallel with @marco just feeling things out and trusting the process. But also just in general with this interface design stuff. Just throwing stuff around in the tool and seeing what happens. I think most of my most surface level ideas will be the first ones and that's ok. I think it'll be really important to think about this from first principles though. Like how do I turn down the volume on any ideas or programming I am bringing into the work I am doing before doing it.

All in all, it's fun to be making something visual. The more I practice this stuff the more I think I need to practice drawing. My skills still really limit what I can explore visually.

It's 11:53PM which is absurdly late for me but I had to help a friend. No real design time in today because I was feeling unwell but I'm going to package this up for @lucas right now so he can implement and we can see how it feels. If it's the right direction, we can close it out pretty quickly.

It's 1:31PM. I got a bit of design time in today, just trying to get this home page into a kind of state where I can move on to the next thing. The continual challenge with this home page is just finding a way to present FL in a visually compelling way. I don't like the way the screen recordings feel right now. This home page is a definite improvement from what we had but it's still far off from where I think things need to go.

One of the interesting things about working with @marvindraws on the visuals was that his work allowed us to stay in a more 'conceptual space' as we talked about the project and I think that's important because of how much Futureland changes and evolves each day. In a project that updates this quickly, it becomes challenging to make video assets that are supposed to 'last' at all. It's a bit surreal. I'll make a video on a Tuesday and by Wednesday it is out of date (lol).

So we have to figure out a broad and open way to visually show Futureland. I really like the progress we've made on describing it in its current state. 'Tools to help you repeat things and store process'. I find myself saying 'store process' more often in my day to day life now. Those words seem to accurately capture the gap I felt while trying to express my experiments through other tools. It's interesting how much of 'design' is thinking about stuff like this. Finding the right words. Describing something in a way that makes sense for its intended purpose.

I also think that this is why audio seems to be so well suited for this project. In audio, you can keep things in a conceptual space. Speaking on values and philosophy. Those elements are much more lasting. Futureland continues to rapidly change and transform, but our values and philosophies do not.

I'm just packaging up this simplified version of the homepage for @lucas and I'll chat with him about it tonight. I'm going to move on to finishing the Examples page now.

It's 8:16PM. I spent a lot of time catching up on community work today and then transitioned into design later in the day. I don't mind the switch. The main 'designing' I am doing right now is designing little video assets for this home page. I try to just make sure I get through one section each day and send it off to @lucas which I just did. The video asset I created today is a tight focus on the timeline component of journals. I'll need to re-do it because I want to cut between the comments and a clean timeline, I'll revisit that later though. It's not as important as just feeling out how this video works in a real interface. I'll work on the next section tomorrow and just stay at it.

It's worth noting that yesterday, I broke my streak on this journal. It was pretty late and I was behind on a bunch of stuff. So I optimized for sleep, which I have done one other time since surpassing 365 consecutive days on this journal. I obviously really don't like breaking my 'streak' on specific journals and this is one of them. There's a bunch of benefits to repetition in terms of heightened creative states and a bunch of annoying drop offs in creative states without it.

All good

It's 12:58PM and I'm just wrapping on interface design for the day to move into other 'states'. I have been creating the video assets for this new homepage and then expanding on the page vertically. I included a visual of Daily on iOS today for the section, 'Structure your day for flow states'. I think the visual here can be better but we can adjust later. The visuals every where can be better right now.

I've been in a pretty focused state today, just accepting what I need to do and doing it. There's a lot of rendering and exporting videos right now but that's fine I'm just moving through it, until each section is done. I packaged the latest work for @lucas so that he can implement and fill in the blanks. I'll do the same tomorrow with the next section, "Store your process in public or private over multiple years". I imagine the visual for this will be some kind of zoomed in visual where you see entries moving up the screen and then it cuts into the timeline where you can see the date shifting as the cursors hovers over it. Something like that I think.

Spent most of my time fumbling through some new video assets but I packaged this strip down version of the home page and sent it off to @lucas. I'm trying to get some momentum behind this new home page right now, so we're just going to start shipping in-development versions of it to production. There's a chance that when I wake up this might be the new home page.

The way this concept is structured is that it builds vertically. If you have followed the process a bit on Futureland, there's other sections to this and also an 'Examples' page. As I build out each of these sections and create all of the visual assets for them we will just keep adding them to this in-production home page.

In other words, the home page might be changing (hopefully improving) every day this week. <3

Other things worth noting are, I definitely felt out of flow today. I think it mostly has to do with some hiccups while rendering and exporting video assets for these interfaces, a common theme over the last few weeks. But I think I'm slowly figuring out how to work around it. In general, it might be worth studying how to 'kickstart' flow, it might be interesting to practice that specific part of my day in some way.

It's 8:25PM right now. Design time was super limited. In general my time on weekends for creative work is limited unless I'm up really early (5:30AM latest, which I'm trying to work out). I made some tweaks to these profile concepts and I'll pick up design work again tomorrow morning <3

It's 10:15PM tonight. On a tight timeline! I had a few notes on these profiles so I sketched them out and stored process on Futureland. Basically I think it's important of us to make the profiles very customizable in terms of how things are positioned on the profile and the size of everything as well. Perhaps the user can change the colours of their profiles and other customizations. We can set some grid restrictions to make everything feel snappy and elegant while also giving the users the ability to do things like personal or exaggerate elements.

It's 10:10PM. I started my design session a bit later in the morning today so it was a shorter session and I found myself transitioning into a lot of community work and writing for the rest of the day. Today I experimented with switching the visual display of FL to a wide screen window and then playing with unexpected positioning on this grid system just to see what happens. I'm curious if by using the grid systems you can make things feel surreal or unexpected while still feeling elegant and functional. I'm still a super amateur designer, but I learn a lot by just experimenting like this and thinking through things in my own way and seeing what happens.

One thing that we could do with this Interface is create it with static media first to see how it all feels, ship it to production and then slowly work on 1 video asset at time which should just be a moving version of the static media already in production. Something to think about for future interfaces that integrate videos into them.

It's 9:54PM. I need to get to bed immediately (lol). Design wise, I spent most of my time today fiddling with video stuff. It's a slow day working through this stuff trying to figure out the best way to handle video assets on the new home page. The biggest insight has been to use some kind of accurate reference point for 'media' when you are designing layouts.

In a layout a 360 x 360 pixels box that says media looks just fine. It seems like more than enough space. But what I was planning on displaying in that box was a safari window displaying various journals. Those dimensions are not big enough to display the journal in a meaningful way. Whether it's an image or video it never has the effect. The dimensions are more than fine for other things say, displaying a mobile interface. But there's a lot of little details on the Journals so it seems like it takes a larger richer visual to really capture all of it. It's something I'm going to have to think about.

The cool thing though is now I have an Apple script now (ty @lucas) that allows me to set any window to a pre-defined set of dimensions, so I can see how our interfaces look at various window dimensions, take screenshots and then build the interfaces around those screenshots to get a sense of how it might feel. It's been a tedious few pomodoros working through this stuff but it is what it is.

It's 10:01PM right now and I could have wrapped earlier but I hit a flow state or something and could not figure out how to walk away from my computer and stop using Sketch. Most moments away from my computer I was thinking about @ethan and @christian's notes on these designs. But I need to wrap cause I haven't cracked this by any means yet but I'm getting some ideas just moving things around and thinking about it. I definitely hit flow states today.

Something I'm kind of enjoying / experimenting with right now is understanding the underlying principles of something and then trying to work as fast as I can with my computer to stop my brain from thinking. I notice that I do this with other disciplines as well. I'll try to work faster as a means to stop thinking and then just see what happens.

It becomes kind of hypnotic, just working super fast and continuously dragging things to Futureland and writing about what I am doing as I am doing. The writing process serves as a sort of thinking time. It's like I'm moving things in the application, then writing about the decisions I just made then moving things in the application, then again writing about the decisions I just made but I'm doing this at a high frequency and this process does something very positive to my mind. I haven't been able to figure out exactly what it is but when I work this way it definitely seems to kind of conjure up flow or something.

Got a ruler to measure pixels so I can start doing more interface layouts by hand

It's 1:39PM right now. I spent some time designing some video assets for the new home page but playing with the dimensions is a tedious process. Every time I want to experiment with new dimensions I have to export a new video and I'm also definitely not quick enough (or skilled enough) at navigating front end development changes on this version of the tool. So to make it through those videos I think I'll need to jump on a back and forth session with @lucas, which I'm hoping I can do tomorrow if he's around 5:30AM EST (lol).

I moved on to the next thing I need to which is making some adjustments to the 'Join' interface. This is what a viewer will see after they click 'Join' from the home page. We will probably need to re-work this thing a bit when we move over to an invite only system but the fundamentals could probably stay the same as long as this is performant enough. It's a simple form to create your identity on Futureland. While you are creating it the background oscillates between different video entries from Futureland. As we discover new ones that we like we will add them to the 'playlist', so new viewers will see them while creating identities.

It's 9:12PM and I'm just watching 'Last and First Men' by Johann Johannsson in the background while I get through a couple of things before I sleep. I'll probably need to finish the film tomorrow afternoon. It's pretty awesome so far :)

My design session was a shorter one today but I think I got the essential done. Tomorrow's session will be a longer one. I spent the time I had today putting together a quick little interface that helps users easily upgrade to Futureland+ if they would like to. I sent this interface over to @lucas tonight and he will fill in the blanks and implement this.

Tomorrow my focus will be on designing the video assets I need to close out the new home page.

It's 9:07PM right now. I spent most of the day with family and my design time was limited today but I still got just a bit of interface design work in. I need to be more disciplined about protecting and nurturing my morning design sessions when I move into a different environment. It's something I'll need to think more about whenever I see my parents again, but that might not be for awhile now. The COVID numbers are rising here in Canada and it's likely that we will moved into a heightened lock down with increased restrictions.

I started reading a bit about Wabi-sabi today and it's something that resonates with me. I'm not sure what to call all of this stuff yet, but I find myself really connecting with Japanese philosophy (if you will). Zen Buddhism, Wabi-sabi, just anything that helps me keep my focus on the process and not the outcomes. It's probably super obvious but I am very focused on designing my life in a way that is entirely focused on process and just "seeing what happens" in terms of outcomes.

With the time that I did have to design today, I started reworking this Examples page to match the grid system and spacing of the new home page we are working on. I might create just a couple of quick variants here but I'll finish this part up quickly so we can get it into production and move on to the other things we need to finish.

It's currently 9:55PM right now, so I need to get to bed soon (lol) if I am going to wake up early enough to get a decent creative session in. I had very limited time for design today mostly because it was an important day for my family. I spent the morning catching up on some community stuff on Futureland. Let's see what happens tomorrow morning. It might be a session that's more focused on writing and I can pick up design work in a deeper way on Monday.

The work here focuses on adjusting the Examples page to match the grid and spacing of this new home page concept. In general my understanding of grid systems and spacing has increased but I am still very much an amateur (lol). It'll take me a bunch of studying and practice to learn more about this stuff and try different things. I wouldn't feel comfortable right now, say, giving recommendations on the grid systems we should be using Futureland wide, but maybe one day if I keep practicing that's something I'll be able to weigh in on in my own way. <3

It's 3:46pm and I am trying to wrap up early today like I did yesterday. I still suck at cutting off design time. I kind of walk around my place thinking all day then I sit in front of my computer again to design more then I step away to think and come back. It's good to be really into whatever it is that you are doing but the down side is that if you don't cut off on a specific portion of your day then the other areas of focus suffer. It's something I really need to work on. It's all about optimizing for that first 4 hour chunk of the day and cutting design time once that chunk is completed. I'll keep experimenting.

I spent a bunch of time working on video assets today for this new home page design and videos take me longer to create than other things. I mocked up a version of this new home page design with less videos. Perhaps this can be used as a temporary page that more accurately communicates Futureland and we can integrate the videos as we finish them.

It's 1:34PM and I am just trying to wrap up earlier today to have an earlier down time. It's also part of trying to force myself to hard cut on specific elements of my day. I mentioned this in a previous entry but I let my design time kind of linger because I want to keep working through stuff and I have a difficult time stepping away from specific problem sets when I feel like I almost got something (lol). I added a bunch of new elements to this daily focused home page, which seems to be becoming just a home page concept for Futureland itself. The design right now features a bunch of squares that say, "media" and I will need to fill those in with videos that really capture the essence of this tool and its potential. That's something that I will start working on tomorrow morning.

It's 9:47pm right now which means I am running behind schedule. I got a decent design session in this morning. I could have increased the number of pomodoros in this morning's session but my mind got tripped up during meditation with some frustrations so it took longer to transition right into design work. There was probably a lag time of 30 mins (1 pomodoro). I had what feels like a bit of a break through in this morning's design session. A few days ago, I was in the shower and I was thinking about Futureland (which is almost the only thing I think about), and a sentence just popped into my head. "Tools to repeat things and store process". I kept that tucked away and experimented with it today in the design session and it seems to feel really good. @lucas has a bunch of packages so there might be some cool stuff popping up from him soon to play with and build on.

It's 8:29pm. I got up around 5:30am today and got some design time in this morning. I sent a few packages over to @lucas and that's something I'm trying to bring into a regular cadence. It might be useful to try doing that daily, even if that means sharing only small components of works in progress.

The other thing I have been thinking about is (1) separating my day into 4 hour chunks and getting good at one chunk before moving on to the next and (2) switching between ON and OFF states during the day.

The primary creative activity within an ON state would be designing and the primary activities within OFF states would be things like researching, exercising or anything that gets me to relax. My design time is currently in the morning and I imagine it will stay that way for a long time. So something I have been thinking about is structuring my days in a way where I 'perform' at the highest level I can while designing in the mornings and then use the rest of the day to kind of rest and prepare for the next design session. I do not know for sure (I am studying) but I imagine this is akin to how an athlete lives during their regular season. I have been reading through various scientific papers to form a better understanding of the use of rest in expert performance. Haven't found anything yet, but I'll share when I do.

I spent just a bit of time designing today. Mostly I was reading through this book. I read through it digitally but I find with stuff like this it’s much better to process the visuals through physical copies where I can validate measurements myself and make notes right on the paper. This has been a good pick up and thinking a lot about the measurement and proportion of things has changed how I perceive the world around me. I think my understanding might grow once I start drawing more of these layouts on paper with a ruler and seeing not just the intuitive visual patterns but some of the mathematical patterns behind certain things.

It's 11:16pm, so I am up a lot later than I usually am. I spent time with family tonight and that's one of the only situations I let myself go to bed later. My routine will suffer tomorrow morning for it! I spent some time designing today and make some tiny break throughs in my understanding of spacing and layout. I was feeling a bit down about not being able to understand and apply some of this theory. Today felt like a bit of a step forward, which was motivating! Still a lot to learn man! :)

It's 8:14pm today and I got my design time in. No major break throughs yet in my understanding but layout, spacing and proportions are definitely things I am starting to think about a lot more. I'm trying to form my own fundamental understanding of these things and it's process. Sometimes it takes me a bit to drive concepts into my head. I'm basically trying to figure out fundamentally how things should be positioned, why they should be positioned that way and what are the effects of positioning in those ways vs. other ways. I'm stumbling through this stuff right now but slowly making progress.

I started getting into some deep work around 5:30AM today. Throughout the day there was a heavy focus on Pomodoros and I spent all of the studying design. Specifically trying to form a better understanding of grid systems. There's a bunch of things in my subconscious right now and even more things I do not understand. But I can tell when I need to study the fundamentals of something because I ask myself the same kinds of questions while I am working. I essentially do not understand why I am doing something or why something isn't working. Usually when I go through a process like this it leads to a few fundamental insights about the discipline I am working within. But who knows (lol).

The other thing I did was I ordered a few supplies to start drawing interfaces on paper instead of just digitally. I want a more tactile understanding of layout and I think working with pen and paper will help me achieve that. I want to really practice the skill of quickly understanding the information and media I am working with then imagining all of these elements in various grids. I also want to get better at building a component based design system but I'm not there yet. I think a lot of this studying will help me understand why those systems are even created in the first place and what separates a good one from a not so good one.

I'll continue reading and studying for a bit and then slowly start applying the things I am learning or thinking about into these interfaces.

Good night! <3

It's 8:21PM and I'm trying to wrap up for the night. I still have a few little things to do before I can entirely shut down. I got up around 5:30AM and I was able to spend a decent part of the morning working through this Examples page. I ran into some issues with spacing and positioning while working on this today. It wasn't really anything specific to the design of these Interfaces, but it just felt like I was asking fundamental questions about how things are spaced / placed and why and I didn't have the answer to these questions. I asked some friends for advice and @jchangsta recommended a book. I picked it up. I'll start studying these fundamental concepts a bit more. Forming a higher understanding of them seems like something I'll need to do to push these designs further.

:)

I got up around 4:26am today and got a good little design session in for a few hours. It's nice to be designing again and it's something I really missed doing. Making interfaces is currently my primary form of creative output (outside of writing) so I find it really balances me out. I always like to be outputting daily in some kind of media format, whether that's audio, video, design, code or something else. I don't know why but something about making things with my computer really calms me and gives me a sense of purpose.

I also looked up the definition of design recently and it was, "to conceive or fashion in the mind". I found this interesting. In a way that's like saying to design is to think. And perhaps that's also a way of saying to design well is to think deeply. It's something I find very interesting because every time it felt like I was 'designing' I was never actually in front of the screen moving things around. It's when I walked away from the screen to think or write about how something should be done that felt more like design. But I would always think that part was just 'writing'.

In that sense if:

to design is to think
and to write is to think
then to write is to design.

Yeah I don't know. Just stuff that is floating in my brain. lol

good night :)

It's 10:30pm on Wednesday night. I got a pretty good design session in today. I spent all of my time further developing Futureland's onboarding experience. I need to see how it feels in the browser, but on a conceptual level it seems like cutting from a black background to full screen video on the background (in special moments) seems to hold up. When I do it in these sketch files, it feels like I'm cutting a doc or something. I'm sure in a lot of moments it will be cool but excessive. For now it seem like it will be fun to play with.

A few additional notes.
My routine is starting to pick up at home. I repeat things so much that now there's little signals I can pick up on to tell if my day is off. My water intake decreased the past few days while I was trying to get set up again at home. It's a little thing (a drop in glasses) that indicates my state of flow. When I'm in flow with my routine, my water intake is high. I'm at 8 glasses for the day right now so things are picking up again. Another signal is the time I eat lunch. If it's like 11:30am and I'm thinking "hm, what should I eat for lunch?", that means I'm definitely having a high output day. To ask a question like that, my mind is aware and ahead of the day. On a lower quality day it might be 12:30pm and I'll think, "ah man I gotta get lunch!". It's an obvious thing but it feels like I'm developing a higher level of precision in my thoughts from just repeating the same day so often.

Running late tonight. I'm still sorting out my flow in terms of design time and routine since getting back from the lake. I thought the flow state would transfer but not exactly the case (yet). A quick little concept. The idea is to have a 'How to:' link on the right side of the interface (maybe you can dismiss it) and it drops down a bunch of interesting things you can explore about how to use FL. For example, how to learn a new skill, how to see through a creative project. This might be a softer implementation of onboarding/documentation to consider. Not sure yet though.

Took the day off today for the most part. I just got back home from deep week 1. I'll try to swing back into my regular routine tomorrow. :)

Just a very quick sketch here, testing how playing with opacity might feel in an interactive tour.

It's 10:55pm on Sunday night. Tomorrow is my last day here by Lake Huron. My family has joined me here so I'm on an adjusted schedule until I'm back home tomorrow night. It's been a really cool vibe here and it's taught me how useful this kind of space and time is to me. I'm super stoked I got to do this and it's something I'll try to keep doing. A 'deep week'-ish once a month would be so incredible lol

I spent a bit of time tonight progressing through this onboarding work. Right now I'm making various sketches of an interactive tour through Futureland. There's so much stuff work to do under this problem set but I think it will be really useful to new people trying out these tools. It might be something that has a lasting impact.

It's 10:02pm on Saturday night. I'm still here right in front of Lake Huron. My family has joined me now so my schedule will adjust a bit over the next few days. I was alone most of today outside of a virtual conversation with @bierlingm, which was super insightful.

I made some progress on the improved version of onboarding (which is basically nonexistent right now! lol). This is going to take a lot of sketching to get right and I'll give it a crack each morning over the next few days. Tomorrow my time will be limited though. The idea here is that it might be useful to let new guests choose between a guided and unguided first experience through Futureland. A lot of the material we produce for the guided experience will also probably need to be available at any point for those who just want to read stuff before running experiments.

(Noting this for myself tomorrow) Another simple idea could be displaying specific links in the right navigation. These activities like, 'I want to learn a new skill' could be displayed on the right side for new guests in a way where they can explore or dismiss it. That might be a simpler way of handling this to start and then build off that. It's going to take a bunch of experiments. I think people need to understand what a journal is and all of the components of it but then also understand what's possible with these kinds of tools and behaviours. Just need to keep putting time into this!

Good night for now. See ya in the morning! :)

It's 9:45pm on Friday night. I spent most of the morning and afternoon working through designing a new onboarding experience for Futureland. There's still a ton to do and I'll get another session in tomorrow morning. I had a few break throughs today in terms of making the experience more visual.

I think what happens next is we either take the guest through an interactive tour of FL so they can see and explore a journal in its end state or have them create their own journal and publish an entry or perhaps you show them other journals to explore or all of that. This will require a bunch of thinking and sketching. I think this will be interesting.

Other notes are at times I'm finding it difficult to concentrate. Morning's are easiest to meditate drink water, drink espresso and then get into some deep work. As the day rolls on it becomes more difficult to stay focused. There's nothing that takes my brain out of the loops of the problem sets I'm solving. Like even sitting here alone listening to the waves my brain will continue to try and puzzle together something I am thinking about. Meditation helps a ton but I find there's also value in like things that overwrite my brain in a way like video games. I didn't bring a console set up here but I find that works super well for me. Oscillating between deep work sessions and then quick video games sessions to over write any thought patterns and loops.

I spent a bunch of time working on onboarding today. Most of the time was spent thinking and studying and less time specifically designing. I was thinking a lot about how Futureland should be described. What are the things that someone needs to know when they first start using Futureland? Why do they need to know these things? I think a lot of this work is a good cue for tomorrow. I think tomorrow morning, I'll start by simplifying some of the work I did today and then start sketching out some interactive components of the onboarding experience. Maybe creating a journal and producing its first entry is part of it. Maybe suggesting some journals to explore could be another part of it.

good night for now <3

I made a few new additions to these profiles. Playing with icon sizes, positioning, and a new message icon. There's a lot of work that needs to be done here. @lucas shared a bunch of feedback that I have to factor in to the design of these profiles. I'm on limited design time today as I get settled into this new location. Things should pick up tomorrow though. I'm trying to get some good sleep tonight to start strong tomorrow.

The other thing that might be worth noting is that starting tomorrow, I'll be putting most of my time into trying to improve onboarding on FL. So it will be interesting to see how that affects what I spend my time 'designing'. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

I got up around 5:10am today. I made some espresso and then got right into design work. I got a few hours in and it was good. I focused on trying to get these profiles done. I'm about 2-3 more deep work sessions away I think from closing out a complete draft.

When I woke up this morning I saw that @lucas had created a Deep Work journal. This reminded me how important pomodoros are in my process. A lot of the valuable work I have done has come out of that technique. I have kind of drifted away from it over the last little bit. My process has adjusted a bunch as I work through FL. I feel working through FL puts me in a kind of hypnotic state. Continually creating and reflecting. I brought back the pomodoros this morning and it made a huge difference in my output. I'll continue with that and I think using it in combination to working through FL will help me jump into flow states faster. I'd love to see deep work tools integrated into Futureland itself for quick access. A deep work mode that you can easily toggle might be neat.

Deep weeks

I'll likely write more about this on Futureland, but tomorrow morning I leave for a house by the water that's about 3.5 hours north of where I live (Toronto). It's an experiment to see what happens if I isolate myself from any distractions and immerse in deep work for several days in a row. While I'm there I'll be focusing on improving FL's onboarding, writing and reading. It'll be cool to see what happens and of course I will share the process here. I'll likely have a bunch of open time to think, if anyone is around over the next few days we can video chat and I'd love to hear your perspectives on FL. <3

See you here tomorrow!

It's 10:11pm on the night of Monday September 28 2020. I got up around 6:30am and spent most of my morning / day writing an email that was sent out to all of our subscribers. It's part of an experiment in trying to understand the most useful way to communicate with our users in a period cadence. The point is, today is another day where my design session happened in the evening. In this case my time was very limited. I spent just a bit of time filling out this list view of journals to see if it still feels any good or if something isn't working. Sometimes doing simple stuff like this gives me time to think. I'm wondering about how open journals should be displayed on profiles. If they should be marked in some kind of official way. Open journals belong to the entire community not just a single person, I wonder how we could show that visually. It's still not entirely clear that you can 'join' open journals on Futureland. There's a lot we need to work on.

On Wednesday morning, I'll be heading to a house by a lake for a few days to dive deeper into my creative work. No interruptions for multiple days. It will be interesting to see how my creative output changes while I'm there. I'm hoping to spend most of my time there working on FL's onboarding. I think the set up might be conducive to recording audio and making videos.

I'm going to get some sleep now. Let's see what I can do tomorrow.

It's 10:42pm on Sunday night. I can wake up around 4am/5am every other day because I go to sleep just before 11pm. In other words, I currently make up for the sleep I lack every other day. Today was one of the days where I get up later. So I'm designing now at night while watching a documentary about Buddha. I spent a some time sketching out a way to view all of a users' journals in the format of a list. I also made other little tweaks to icons and opacities on the interface. Let's see how tomorrow goes. :)

It's Saturday night at 10:17pm. A brief but design session tonight making some incremental improvements to the sketches of these profiles. I adjusted the the size and placement of the list icon. It feels better now. I added opacity on all private Journals to differentiate them from the other Journals in the grid. It's funny even these brief sessions add up over time and I often get little ideas that I note and build on later in longer sessions. Integrating this 'daily cadence no matter what' has transformed all of my creative work. I can never predict exactly how a project will get realized, but I know by just throwing some attention at it every single day no matter what it kind of always stumbles towards progress.

I started today's work around 5:30am today. Instead of designing though, I did a bunch of writing about Futureland and got back to everyone who emailed us this week. I'm glad I was able to get back to everyone. I have a bunch of video chats set up and I'm super stoked to learn from everyone about FL. If you want to hang this week or soon and chat about FL or share how you use it and I can share how I use it let me know.

Maybe tomorrow morning will consist of a deep design session. Hard to say. Since I go to bed around 10:30pm / 11pm each night, I find I can only wake up around 5am every other day. Let's see what happens in the morning.

See you in the morning :)

Simple icon addition to this profile sketch. My design time was limited today for two reasons. I got up around 7:30am and my mind was racing with a lot thoughts about Futureland. As I mention almost every day, I do my best design work early in the morning before anyone else is up when I'm still groggy just stumbling over to my Mac. Some days when I start my day without that morning session, my mind is ZOOMING with different ideas for FL. Different insecurities, excitements, confusions. I have a lot of ideas for Futureland, I'm still processing deleting twitter and the experience from our recent email to subscribers. It's putting my mind in a bit of whirl - I'm finding all of it really interesting and it's peaked my curiosity.

Another quick note about waking up that I noted in Early rising. It's not realistic to wake up around 4am or 5am if I go to bed close to 11pm. I can do it one day, but then I'll need to catch up on sleep the next day. So it's just something I'm going to have to keep practicing as I try to move my design time to that early morning session.

It's 10:01pm now. Let's try again. I'll see everyone tomorrow. Thanks for everything you're doing.

I got a decent design session in this morning on new FL profiles. I started by populating these Journals with real information, which lead to adjustments to spacing and the position of text in each of the Journals. Then I started working through how highlighted journals might be displayed. It feels natural that the first row is dedicated entirely for highlighted journals. When a journal is highlighted, it takes up the entire first row with room for 3 more highlighted journals. If no journals are highlighted, the first row just functions as a normal row. I'll continue working through other elements of this tomorrow.

I write a lot about sleep and wake times here because it ultimately determines the quality of my work here. My down time yesterday was 10:37pm and my up time was 4:46pm. The down time is ok, the up time is really good for me. I was able to get a few hours of uninterrupted work in before things start to get more noisy and distracting in my life. I'll try and cut off in the next 10~ minutes and repeat an early start tomorrow.

I am starting to think more about concentration. So many of the things I am working on right now have to do with concentrating my attention in a specific place to work something out. I wonder about how to further develop my concentration. What I could practice that could increase it over time.

Lastly a note on breaks. I think by taking breaks while working on something (entirely letting go of the material I am working on) helps me work on things for longer periods of time and often leads to break throughs as well. There's a bunch of science on the benefits of continual rest and stress cycles and I won't try to link to it now. I can say that the best release for me outside of high intensity cardio is playing video games (which I don't do that often). But it's something I tried to bring back this morning. I set a timer for 25mins to work then take a 5min break. The best 5min break is a quick video game session (I set a timer for this again). I'll have my Nintendo switch on my desk and then I'll just play something and it entirely takes my mind off the work. Then I return to the work once the 5minutes is up. I have specific thoughts on the types of games that work best for this kind of break. Basically anything with very small problem loops. If you're on a 5min break and you're playing a game where you need to travel across like a vast landscape before anything happens - not good. I find the best games for this purpose are ones that give you immediate and rapid little problems to solve.

I have another variant of a redesigned profile developing. There's still a lot to add but it might be coming together in an interesting way. This might seem like simple visual tweaks to the existing profiles but the hope is that all of this is building up to an interesting way of exploring someone's identity 'in process'. Especially, as we allow for the exploration of each others' Stats. I'm just taking it one component at a time here as I give these profiles another pass.

Like I wrote yesterday, the quality of my design output or the quality of my practice in general is ultimately correlated to the time that I go to sleep and the time that I wake up. The earlier I go to sleep and the earlier I wake up, the better everything is. I work best when I start at 4am or 5am. When it's still dark outside. It gives me the feeling of working at night (which I love) but it's ultimately more sustainable for me over the long term. Last night I got to bed pretty early, but had to handle some personal stuff in the morning which threw off my schedule a bit. I'll try to get bed as soon as I can tonight and give it another try. It's already 9:54pm. Better hurry.

I spent a bunch of time today answering emails, which is rare for me but in this case pretty fun! (lol) That means my design time continues to happen in the evenings. Today I spent a bit of time creating a few more variants of journals that could be displayed on a redesigned version of FL profiles. I spent a bunch of time thinking about stats as well but to move this forward in a more tangible way I'll need to put a few more hours into design.

A few additional notes:

I use Futureland a lot myself and through the day I note ideas or quirks I experience. Friends here send me all of the quirks and bugs they find too (which is super useful) and then I process all of that when it's time for me to design. Some times I find it can be helpful to just grind out a lot of design variants as a means of understanding something. Other times, if I do not know 'why' I am doing something I can get immediately lost and confused. When I do not know why I am doing something there is no gravity. Nothing to measure the quality of my decisions. The more I think about the problem set, the more I ask FL users what to do and the more I use FL myself, the less time I need to produce quality design when I am on my MacBook Pro. Kind of interesting how that works. I think that pattern applies to other aspects of working on FL as well.

Also weirdly, the quality of my daily process and therefore my design work depends entirely on when I sleep and when I wake up. I have written about this in this journal a bunch but I think I do my best design work very early in the morning (4/5am), a time which I usually never wake up (lol). Also through repeating the same routine each day, I can see big differences in my work from when I go to bed at 9:30pm vs. 10:30pm or 11:30pm. Waking up super early and finishing most of my routine before lunch seems to yield the highest quality output for me. And I feel the quality of my practice drops a lot in the afternoon and into the evening.

Got into some design at the end of the day today. Building out the profile view in a grid format which is a refinement of the current profiles. In this design, each of the journals is slightly smaller and all of the information is pulled together in a simple way. The user can drag journals around and order them however they would like as well as highlight specific journals. When the user highlights a journal it gets a thicker white border. There's a stats button which will allow you to see a user's public stats which might be an interesting way of exploring what someone is working on.

I wonder about this grid format, I feel like some combination of these large journal icons and a list might be ideal. When you have a lot of journals it can be a lot to scroll through. But maybe that's something that doesn't matter right now. Perhaps adding search functionality here might be useful. I'm not sure yet. For now it might make sense to stick with a refined grid layout. I'll sleep on it.

Sunday night, just a little bit of design time on these Join buttons for open journals. On weekends my time can be limited, but I'm working on it :)

It's Saturday night and I'm just about to go to bed. I spent just a bit of time designing tonight. I still haven't figure out how to unlock those early morning (4am) sessions consistently. With this pandemic, it's likely the easiest it ever will be to figure out. Each day is kind of the same. For tonight, I sat in front of my computer for a few moments and threw a 'Join In' button on a sketch of our interface for journals on Futureland. The idea is to make it more clear that you can join open journals and participate in that process with others. I'm surprised people figure out how to do this on their own. Currently it's revealed through clicking the expand (…) button on the side bar of journals. Not everyone figures it out, but some people do. It's 11:17pm now, so I likely won't be making that morning design session tomorrow but it still feels like I'm on my way to figuring it out. :)

I put a little bit more time into tweaking the full screen entries tonight. Minor adjustments to the text in passive and active states. I still need to adjust how the left and right arrows are displayed here, but I think by the time I wake up in the morning @lucas will have already worked out something cool. With design sessions I find what makes the most impact is time of day and energy levels. Interface design doesn't necessarily flash to me in an instant or something like an insight. I might get an instant insight for something new we should add to Futureland, but the process of actually sketching it out is something that requires concentration. I just need to grind out a bunch of variants over days to figure out the best way to do something. So if my design session happens in the afternoon or in the evening, it's usually a wash. I like stumbling out of bed very early in the morning, making an espresso with my eyes half open and then sitting in front of my Mac barely awake with my head phones on. That's how I get my best work interface design work done. I'll try and make it happen tomorrow.

Adjusting the spacing. I find it is so much easier to design on an external display than on my MacBook Pro. At least when I am doing desktop design. I find the dimensions of everything seem to click better on this larger display.

A slight adjustment to the spacing in the top right section.

Added left and right arrows. Removed the entry count from the top right corner. It said, '1/11 Entries'. I'm not sure how useful that is. I'll need to adjust spacing in that area now.

Added an X icon to exit the full screen view

Added the entry's text to the top right in a larger text. Not sure how I feel about it yet.

I did not like how the comments were being separated. Feels better with just a black pane.

Adding in another comment and separating them a bit visually

Just starting to sketch comments here on the right. Text size is currently 16px.

Might need to tighten up the side bar here a bit more but I'll do that in a different variant. I want to see through a wider one first to see what happens and how it affects the feeling of reading and composing comments.

Sketching out some thoughts on full screen entries to share with @lucas

Just experimenting with how these look. I'll cut the grid out for now as well. I don't think it will end up making sense to show it by default.

Sketching more variants of Journal 'units' on FL Profiles. Nothing I really like yet and that's ok. It's still very early.

I'm starting to work on variants of the Journal units for new FL Profiles. Still a ton of work to do here…

Just working through variants of these Journals on Profiles, might start a new file just to run through a bunch of these variants.

One of the hardest parts about creating these profiles is going to be working on the units for Journals. Just starting to sketch out ideas. This will be a grind because I need to just push through a lot of variants with this to make sure I've thought of everything.

Trying to space this grid of little squares correctly. It feels as though this grid should only be triggered in a certain instance and now by default.

Sketching out how Journals can be listed out on this profile. The height here of these bars is 56px. The draw back of this approach is how do you handle users that have tons of Journals. Perhaps there's some kind of search functionality and the ability for the user to pin specific Journals to the top of their profiles. A lot more thinking to do here.

Perhaps the profile picture can be moved to a new position.

Developing this variant of a new Futureland profile out a bit more. I've added in a profile picture, username, total entries, total journals and total marathons. The spacing feels pretty good right now I'll continue sketching and see what happens.

This is one layout. In looking at these three components I think the first one can be tightened up a bunch. Let's see.

Starting to think about lay out options for these new profiles. Other components that will require deep thinking are, what elements should be included in these profiles and what elements should not be included. Obviously when you visit a user's profile you need key information, profiles need to function as a way to explore the Journals the user is connected to and perhaps they also need to be a way to understand a users activity. Similar to GitHub perhaps you can see some interesting data on the user's creative output.

Just starting to work on a new design for Profiles on Futureland. It's been a long time since I have had a chance to work on these and Futureland has developed a lot since we created the first Profiles. I want to work through a lot of variants on these so this will be a process. :)

Sharing these updated Journal interfaces with @lucas for feedback. I wonder how much he will hate the dotted borders lol :)

Maybe something like this is more appropriate for the 'Shadowing' state.

Perhaps the border is solid when you are Shadowing. I'm worried that the black and white here is a clear enough distinction from the default shadow button. Hm.

Shadow button hover state with a dotted border

I'm experimenting with a dashed border on the 'Shadow' button, sorry if you already hate this.

A simple hover state for this new 'Shadow' button on Journals

This is how Shadows could look when you trigger it from this side bar. Also here the separation is clearer and how to toggle between seems clearer too.

Some updates to this side bar after some great feedback from @lucas. Making it clearer how to switch between Daily and Shadows. Also removed the date to clear up this interface. Feels a lot better now.

Sending a package over to @lucas for some feedback and discussion.

When you toggle over to Shadows. I like the idea of the background changing shades when you toggle between Daily and Shadows to make the different in functionality more clear here. Might be more pleasing to use this way as well.

Working on an initial way of handling 'Shadows' on Futureland. This interface will function as a kind of 'Home' view. It will show you all of your recent entries as well as entries from collaborative Journals where you are a contributor. You will be able to access Daily here (Journals you want to return to regularly) and you will also be able to use this view for Shadows, journals that you are shadowing. It's tough to know how to integrate all of this into our interfaces in a cohesive way. A good starting point is putting these elements in their own place for now to launch the functionality and learn more.

I took 'Daily' out of the menu in the bottom right. I think it is useful that we have this form of prioritization. Users can still navigate to a lot of different things with a single click, but in terms of importance we can put the most used things in the top navigation of the Interface and the less used things in the bottom navigation of the interface.

Added the edit button into the 'Daily' side bar and adjusted spacing a bit. I also added another icon for Daily into the top right navigation. So now there is an icon for Daily and Shadowing. The idea is that you would click them to trigger their respective sidebars on any interface. They will be persistent until the icon is clicked again. You can also trigger these side bars by using your keyboard.

Testing this 3 column layout without a border separation on Daily.

Trying a 3 column layout here, where 'Daily' can be persistent as you are navigating around Futureland. And of course toggled on and off with a keyboard shortcut.

Trying a different approach where everything moves to the right (and closer together) when the daily side bar is trigged into a kind of 3 column layout.

Trying out another variant of this daily side bar but I'm not sure if it is going to work. Instead of being an overlay this one completely blocks out the elements below while still showing some of the elements to encourage the user to retract the side bar once they are done with it. Might not make sense. Hm.

I'm experimenting with making this 'Daily' interface something that can be triggered on any interface in Futureland. This version here takes a blurred overlay approach. Might be too much for right now and I'll try other variants. I'll also try integrating 'Shadows' into the same sidebar. You'll be able to toggle the information easily.

3 icons at the top right of the screen. 'New Entry', 'New Journal' and now 'Shadows'.

Adjusted the icon for Shadows. I could not find anything that was appropriate so I had to make my own icon for now. We might be able to do something neat when a user hovers on this icon.

I was experimenting with an open book icon for 'New Journal' on the top right menu. I reverted it back to the closed book. I also added in a new icon for the shadow side bar. Although it's probably a confusing one to use since Journals have side bars as well. I'll try something else. The idea though is that you can click a third icon at any point and it would show you all of the Journals you are shadowing for easy travelling and reviewing.

Created another variant of 'Daily' on desktop with adjusted text sizes and spacing to more accurately match the other elements on desktop. Hm. Feels better I think.

Adding in missing elements to this sketch of Daily on desktop + adjusting spacing based on using test version. Specifically here I added in the 'Edit' button to rearrange the order of Journals in your daily. I missed that and I think I improved the position of it for this context. All of the elements in Daily feel a little too big to me. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I'll need to use it more and see what others think to understand.

I am trying another side bar variant with the 'Shadow' button. Here the Shadow button is positioned on its own and everything else has more vertical space as a separation. I think I like something like this better.

I'm starting to experiment with integrating a 'Shadow' button on Journals. I moved the expanded menu button up to try and reduce clutter but I don't feel too good about that. I'll need to play around with the position of these a bunch. I will try as many variants as I can to see what makes sense.

It's likely very difficult to notice, but I added a grey vertical line to increase the feeling of separation a bit from the rest of the Interface.

I'm trying a different shade on the Shadow side bar to see how it feels

A sketch of Shadowed Journals on the left. You would have to click some a side bar icon to trigger this part of the interface.

Adjusted the position of the Entries, added Shadowed Journals on the left side

Adjusting this additional 'Shadowing' side bar concept to 200px to match the Journal side bar. I'll need to then center the Entries appropriately. Just seeing this through to see how it feels.

Trying to see if I can tuck the list of Journals you are shadowing into another side bar on the left. I just think it's important that you can navigate between all shadowed journals very easily. I imagine something like how Google Reader used to feel. Where you can see everything that has new updates and then quickly cycle through them seeing each Journal pop up on the screen. I do not like the idea of having too many of these tiled views on the Interface so it's going to take a lot of experimentation and just working through this to figure it out.

I spent a bunch of time today thinking and writing about different components of Futureland. Thanks to everyone who is always messaging me and sharing feedback on using this thing. I'm starting to sketch out an improved version of the Activity view, in this concept there's something called 'Shadowing'. Users would be able to Shadow projects, which means they can opt-in to updates on them but the creators will not be notified of it. This would be a careful step in understanding how concepts like 'Following' or 'Subscribing' should or should not work on Futureland.

Daily on desktop
This variant is narrower and with smaller text. It's hard to really know what makes sense at this point. It's probably time to start playing around with this and seeing how it feels.

Daily on desktop
I am working on one narrower variant of this before I send these Interfaces over to @lucas for feedback and experimentation.

Daily desktop
Adjusted the sizing of text here and spacing. The text of the date and total daily entries is larger now. The text of the Journal title is a bit smaller. I increase the distance between the last Journal in the list and the Add Journal icon. It might be worth playing around with this a bit now.

Daily desktop
Tweaking the size of the text in the Daily sidebar. Adjusted the spacing of everything in that space. I also decreased the width to 360px and adjusted everything on the right side accordingly.

Daily desktop
Adjusted the text size of the Daily sidebar on the left side. Now I need to adjust the size of the other elements. Maybe the Daily sidebar should be draggable. Maybe that's something we can think about later.

Decreasing the width of the Daily Log here. I centered the feed of recent entries accordingly

Daily on desktop

Playing around with more stuff. So the text on the left in the Daily log can probably be smaller across everything. That whole interface can be smaller. I can decrease its width too. I added the entries in here on the right side of the Interface. A realization I had while dropping these entries in is that this side of the Interface can display your own recent entries AND also all recent entries from Journals where you are a collaborator. This might be super helpful for team based Journals.

Daily on desktop

So much to finesse here still but this gives me a 'feel'. Who knows if that will or will not mean anything as the minutes progress.

Daily on desktop

So much to finesse here still but this gives me a 'feel'. Who knows if that will or will not mean anything as the minutes progress.

Daily on desktop

Yeah something like this probably makes more sense. The width of the Daily log is now 480px here. Also it would be great if I could tag these entries some how like quickly on the fly. Like I don't want to have to write Daily on desktop at the top of each entry but I do need a way of associating this with something.

Daily on desktop

Trying a 48px distance between each Journal on the Daily log. Maybe that's too large, maybe that works I am not sure yet. It's one of those things I think needs to be felt out through use. Immediate thoughts now are that it is very unlikely that I need to split this down the center. So I'll play with some other dimensions.

Daily on desktop

The Interface is split into two. The icons and menu will of course continue floating on the right. I think I will experiment with putting the Daily log line on the left side and then a feed of recent entries on the right side. Immediate thought is that the space in the left side might be larger than I need.

I am starting to work on design variants for 'Daily' on desktop. I'll experiment with a split screen kind of view to start where you see your Daily Journals on one side and a stream of recent entries on another side.

How ‘Occasional’ might look when you expand it. The title highlights in white. The chevron becomes white as well and flips down and then reveals the Journals you’ve added to this section. You can see Add Journal in Occasional as well. I wonder if this is the best way to handle this.

I’m experimenting with displaying an Occasional section in Daily. The way it could work is it defaults to a collapsed state and then when you click the title or the chevron it will expand revealing any Journals you’ve added to ‘Occasional’. You’ll be able to see streaks on all of these Journals and you can move them to Daily whenever you’d like. Or move Journals from Daily to Occasional.

I'm starting to sketch out ideas for a section in Daily that is marked 'Occasional'. Perhaps it is a place to put Journals that you are not entirely focused on but want quick access to. There's a lot of Journals like that for me. Ones where I am interested in them but they are not part of my daily output (yet). I'm experimenting with making the circles and Journal names smaller for ones in the occasional section. I'll need to play with this a bunch more. I'll try keeping everything the same size and perhaps hiding it at first as well. Perhaps you tap and then it reveals any occasional Journals. The other thing I will need to work out is how to add them to the Occasional section. Maybe @lucas has some perspective on that. Once this is done I will start working on improving the design of Daily on desktop.

Hm. Adjusting my approach here a bit. If a user collapses a Journal's side bar, I think we can interpret that as the use indicating that she understand what this Journal is about and wants the information to get out of the way. So the only essential things that the user would need (if she has all the information she wants about a Journal) is the ability to perform strong actions. Viewing a Journal's store, viewing the Journal as a grid or accessing the deeper menu if she wants to share the Journal or access its settings.

Adding the logo and icons into the collapsed side bar, I will experiment with adding the live user icons here but I might need to increase the sidebar width to 80px.

Here's an early look at a Journal's timeline sitting on a side bar with a width of 72px and the Entries in an adjust center position.

So I'm just starting to experiment, let's say that the collapsed side bar on Journals will be 72px and I'll build that out and see how it feels.

Alright, I think I got it balanced a bit more now. Hope I'm right about these dimensions. Back to that collapsed side bar now.

I am sure you won't notice this but I increased the width of the left side bar by 4px. :)

Working on the Journal side bar in a collapsed state. I'm noticing a few little issues with the spacing in my designs. I'll need to correct them before I can really move on from this.

Experimenting with adding a helpful message in the bottom footer. In this case the message is describing what a Triangle is on the Interface. I originally thought these would be like persistent messages but now I think we can actually display these dynamically as additional context depending on what the user is hovering over. We might be able to create a cool experience where a user can learn about anything on the Interface just by hovering over it.

Perhaps when you hover over a triangle (bookmark) it increases in size and displays a preview of the Entry's text like how a Comment works on the Timeline. I worry about two things. Can we get buy with a triangle as a symbol for 'Bookmarks'? Maybe. They can be things like important pieces of information or important events in a Journal. The other thing I'm worried about is whether everything on this timeline is too small. It might be something we need to play around with through use.

What if a Journal's bookmarks were triangle on the timeline? If there's text perhaps when you hover of them they could rotate and then point to the text. Right now Bookmarks are given titles but perhaps they should just display a preview of the text from that Entry. That would make creating Bookmarks much easier. You could just do it from within an Entry menu with two clicks.

I realized something. In terms of noting our own positions on a Journal's timeline, we can use the same symbol as a live user icon. Why should they be different? When you are on a Journal and see the icon of another person live on the timeline it kind of feels like you are in the same space. Why would you not see yourself in that space? We can indicate our own positions in the timeline in the way we indicate someone else's :)

I had to reduce the size of the profile icons when you hover over them on a Journal's timeline. I found this little bug where if they were too big they would collide with the live user icon to the left. I wonder if this size increase is enough. I wish they were bigger but not sure what to do just yet.

If we hover over a comment on a Journal's timeline, how should it look with multiple lines of text? I kept the width of the text preview at 80px and the height is currently 36px (not sure if that makes any sense). Perhaps as this interface is expressed through smaller dimensions the way these comment previews are displayed changes.

Maybe when you hover over these profile icons on the timeline they could look like this. They increase in size by 200% and then you see the comment text in white. I wonder if we should use white or one of the greys we are using on the other parts of the Interface. The text is small so perhaps white is the optimal choice and the entire component functions as a 'link' to that Entry so perhaps using white in this context makes sense. I will need to try and see how this should look with longer text.

Experimenting with an adjusted way of displaying the day as you hover over a Journal's timeline. Here a small circle is used instead of a rectangle. Perhaps a circle fits better with everything else. The date is displayed in white. I'm worried that both the circle and the date are too small. It's interesting to see circles and lines pop up often in these sketches.

Adding in the icon to create a new Journal. Adjusting the icon we are using to see how it feels. I made it grey instead of white to keep more focus on the icon for publishing new Entries.

Seeing how this Interface looks with a longer Journal description. I also changed the link area to 'Website' from a url to keep an exact width. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. I like seeing the urls but this works for now.

Making the icon on the top right bigger.

Experimenting with putting the text based menu on the bottom right of the Interface and key icons at the top right.

Taking out the right menu just to understand how it feels and what happens.

Ignoring the floating text on the right navigation and centering Entries based on the right edge of the screen instead.

Adding this little live user icon of @pasquale back into the interface. Everything is feeling so much better to me.

Changed the position of the store and grid icons in the left sidebar. It's closer to the title of the Journal since the icons trigger the some of the strongest actions on the Journal. I also added the 'more' icon into that little group of icons. I'm really happy with that decision because it is out of place in our current design. It feels much more balanced and intuitive here.

Adding the timeline in with circular profile icons to signal that there is a comment on that point of the timeline. You can't see the contents of these little circles but I think the various colours of users profile icons might make this looks pretty cool.

Added this footer in which provides tips and shortcuts for users. I feel good about the positioning of the text. It's aligned with the menu above, 16px from the right edge.

Two Entries here. I need to test this with a variety of Entries but I will come back to that!

Adding Entries back in now and adjusting the dimensions of them while trying to maintain visual balance everywhere.

Narrowed the side bar on the right. Adjusted everything else accordingly.

Playing with the left side bar here. I added 16px to its width and then adjusted everything else accordingly.

I'm working through each component to see if I can make the entire Journal feel more visually balanced. Been thinking about / tinkering with this for a few days now. I'm very slowly starting to form my own understanding of perception and balance. I have a lot to learn. I was looking at the counter in our kitchen the other day and I realized it has similar lines to our Journals. I need to study this kind of stuff more.

Experimenting with spacing

Experimenting with putting little profile pictures in each of the circles. Same effect when you hover over. The profile icons will get bigger and reveal some of the comment.

Experimenting with signalling comments with circles instead of the profile image for a cleaner timeline. When you hover over a circle it will display the profile icon and comment.

Experimenting with showing collaborators as text based names instead of user icons.

Fixing a little bug I just noticed with the side bar line overlapping the footer line.

I reduced the size of the icons in the side bar and increased the spacing of them. I think they were taking up way too much space. I also 'slightly' adjusted the grey that we use for body text and in other parts of the Interface.

Experimenting with a little footer on Journals that display keyboard shortcuts and other little updates for users.

Adjusting the dimensions of entries to see how that feels.

Seems like things are starting to improve here…

The power of internet friends (@pugson)

Like @pugson suggests, centering entries in this space might be useful.

Some insight from @pugson

Still a bit too dumb to know why this rectangle does not look centered. Ignore how crammed the left side bar is.

In the process of moving things around to see if I can make Journals look more visually balanced.

Updating user settings, focused states

Updating user settings interface, hover states

User settings interface

Working on an updated user settings interface

Adjusted the typography in this 'Thank you' to the same as the 'Upgrade' page. Again a smaller header with larger body text.

A hover state on this little upgrade component. Again not entirely happy with this yet either. I think perhaps the interaction should focus more on that 'Upgrade for' text. I will need to come back to this as I study more.

Added a header. The header is smaller than the body. I am not sure if I am happy with this right now but it is a pattern I noticed on Apple's website I thought I would try it out. I don't feel confident enough yet to make strong decisions about these mechanics so most thing remain experimental. The more I work with this stuff the clearer it gets. I also put the 'esc' for exit' back at the top because we will not be implementing that footer concept this week.

With persistent footer on the bottom. I'm not entirely happy with this yet because I wish the side bar was persistent in some way. Or something. I'm not sure yet.

Playing with indenting the text to see how it feels.

'esc to exit' displayed on the bottom of the interface. If we implement it this way, it would represent the first integration of a monospaced font since last year.

This is likely hard to see but I am experimenting with a persistent footer on all desktop interfaces to give users tips, display keyboard shortcuts and other processing based notifications. This might help us take some stuff off areas where we display or compose content.

It might be hard to see but this is Jim (@wwwjim)'s interface for Tree Explorer on his writing tool, Reading Supply. You can play around with it here: https://reading.supply/explorer. I have to share this here because it is going to be a major inspiration in the things I sketch right now. I have such huge respect for Jim's work because I feel his interfaces push aesthetics in a cool way while retaining focus on its core functionality. It's rare that I come across a balance of those two things in a way that is executed this well.

More variants of this page. Experimenting with removing the header and moving up all of the text. This gave me the idea of putting all little tips and hints on the bottom of the screen in a bottom bar. We explore this on the publishing interface with word count on the bottom (if you haven't noticed) I think there's more we can build on there.

Trying a variant with larger text and stripping away elements. I have a lot to learn. I think for me producing more variants of everything is essential because it's not just about getting this stuff done but I need to actually go through the process of making this stuff over and over again until it clicks and I understand it on a deeper level. I need to find a way to increase my intensity while working on this :)

Interesting how much text is here. Webpage for the iMac.

Turning up the volume on this notification to see what happens.

When a user tries to publish over 50 private entries without Futureland+, thought this could be a simple way of of notifying them. The content drops down a bunch of pixels and decreases its opacity. Then there's a simple message at the top notifying the user that they need to upgrade if they want to publish more than 50 Private Entries. It is probably worth noting here that unlimited public entries are free in case they want to adjust their Journal to public instead of upgrading.

Just making this quick before I forget to try and make another variants of the Journals that is a bit more visually balanced on the screen. I'll come back to this and I'll also need to find a way to maintain that balances across various dimensions.

Working on a 'thank you' that is shown after someone upgrades to Futureland+. You will notice that there's a rectangle here that says, 'Futureland+ onboarding film in development'. This will likely be included in the design of the page. In certain instances, I would like us to include more unfinished aspects of the Interfaces on the screen like this as a way of signalling what we are working on and also as a way of allowing users to visually see the tool develop. This might be cool if we can do it in a way that improves instead of taking away from the experience.

Working through this new upgrade component

Giving myself a bit of a break tonight. :)

Getting this concept for a 'plain text' personal website out of my head.

Just starting to think through how a user might switch to Futureland+. A lot to think through here. I actually have no idea how to design this. I need to see how other software has handled this…

This is obviously missing a bunch of elements. I am trying to form a better understanding of when the Entries feels central and in focus and when they do not. So I am stripping away all elements and starting to slowly put them back in to better understand how each element is affecting the Interface.

Made the collaborator icons a bit smaller to fit with the other icons. Changed the date and time convention on the Entry component and made the text smaller. I am trying to figure out how to make the Entry component feel a bit tighter.

Removing the live viewer icon on the collapsed state to tighten the sidebar further into the side of the Interface.

Trying to further tuck in the collapsed state of the side bar to the side of the Journal's interface.

Seeing how this might feel with more text.

Just seeing how this might feel with Interfaces between the text. Most of finishing the home page is just writing each section, which in this case is the hardest part. It's kind of helpful to sketch out a few Interfaces right now but more useful to just keep writing.

I removed the large sign up text from the bottom of this page since it is already in the top right menu. I think we can highlight it in a more interesting way. The top right menu is also a persistent location available to the user as she reads through all of the materials. I'll think about a more interesting way to highlight. Something moving on the screen would be very nice.

Imagining more new sections on this Home Page

I added a bunch of opacity to the Futureland logo, adjusted the inactive sections to be a deeper grey and change the little highlight icon from a circle to a square which I think works better. I increased the line-height of the text to 28px and adjusted everything else accordingly.

Moving everything up a bit. Not sure how I feel yet. Perhaps other things could be more visually balanced as well.

Adding more sections to see how it feels.

Imagining a how a user might navigate to different sections of this homepage. I wonder if it makes more sense to put this little list based navigation on the right side of the Interface.

I love this. https://hundredrabbits.github.io/Dotgrid/

Working on a new home page for Futureland. This will be updated modular. There's a bunch of things to explore and add.

I'm starting to work on a new 'home page' for Futureland. The way I see this project is that a home page is essentially a visual table of contents to navigate the conceptual elements of this project. It's a way of presenting all of the information someone might need to form a complete understanding of what Futureland is. It's presented in a specific way and should eventually be visually appealing while always letting function dictate its form.

I'm starting to work on some improvements to the settings menu for Journals.

Adjusted the width of the media to 480px and centered. Feels better like the media is 'framed' which makes sense if you are just publishing something with out any notes. Once you start typing the media will transition to the left side of the Interface to make room for writing.

Perhaps with no text the media takes up the entire width and is now below the text prompt. If you type something the media will hug the left side of the Interface as in the other sketches.

Portrait media. Now for when there is no text.

With 1:1 media.

Trying out putting the media on the right side with a few details about the file so that the focus can remain on the writing. Feels right. I think this should only be triggered when you start typing though.

Starting to adjust this publishing view so that it can accommodate more media dimensions. It also displays the file name and file size now. I am not sure how I feel about this yet because it's kind of cool, but also kind of unnecessary. I'll try another approach where I really tuck the attachment into the side. I also think it should only ever be tucked in when you start typing or if you have already been typing.

Just playing around with this. Definitely does not feel like it is working! lol

Very experimental right now. Having Daily pop out on the right side of the screen on Desktop when you click its icon. Perhaps it can stay there persistently if you want so that it does not take you away from the current screen you are on. There's a bunch of information missing here, just trying to get a feel for if this makes any sense. I will probably have to design a dedicated desktop one to know. Seems like that much screen for this kind of interaction might be overkill on desktop though.

Experimental. Putting the menu in the top part of the Interface to see what happens. This opens up the right side of the screen, which can be used to expand and collapse 'Daily' so you can see it without ever having to leave the screen you are on. Not necessarily liking this. I'll try and integrate the side bar Daily with the existing icon based menu and see what happens.

Much better with the Publish button highlighted in green.

Dimming the publish button when you haven't typed something. Going to highlight it in green just now to make it clearer and more functional. A suggestion from @pugson.

With media added. It's 720px with decent spacing between the header and the body text. I think we should maintain the auto play aesthetic when you add a video. I've always loved that part of FL.

Increasing the line height of this text a bit. Feels a lot better like this I think

Typing here caused the Journal's name to brighten and increase in weight. FL is no longer inferring that you are publishing to the 'Interfaces' Journal, now it IS the Journal you are publishing to. You can click the Where field any time you want and delete the Journal there and enter the name of a new one.

When you push the 'New Entry' button on one of your Journals or a Journal that you are a collaborator on, FL will infer that you want to push to this Journal. You will notice that in the 'Where' field 'Interfaces' is a dim grey. I can change the Journal by clicking on the Where field and typing in a new one.

When a Journal is inferred like this the body of the Entry will be in focus, so you can just start typing or adding media right away. Once you add media or type the Journal's name in the where field will brighten (become white) and its font-weight will change to bold. I'll show you that in the next screen shot.

Starting to work on these improvements to the publishing interface again. Adding this adjusted menu in to see how it feels. I'll start working on the 'body' part of the interface now.

Had a good conversation with @lucas this morning. Making improvements to this new menu. Increasing the size of all icons, working on different states. Inactive, Hover and Active. Got a good feeling about flow state today.

With a more prominent selection component

Maybe something like this is better so that 'Selection' feels more prominent.

Perhaps if you are viewing a Journal in which you are a contributor and have a streak in your contributions, that streak will show up at the top of the Interface for only you to view. Here it is displayed as, '211 consecutive days'.

Experimenting with adding store, grid and video chat icons to the collapsed state of this new side bar.

Experimenting with adding the grid, store and video chat icons into the side bar instead of in the body of this Interface

I'm working on creating space for live icons on the new timeline. Once this is in a higher quality and stable space we will start moving it into production and then we will need to start experimenting with timeline position on other places on the Interface to see how it does or does not open things up! :)

Integrating collaborators into this mobile view. Feel way too small to be functional right now. I’ll play with it.

An empty state. I'll need to create a way to exit this once you click it.

Including Add media and Publish to the right side of the interface to see how that feels. Balanced the date to be in line with those elements.

Trying text based Add media and Publish buttons on this inline entry component.

Added a Publish button and Add file icon. Not sure how I feel about them yet. Generally feel like they need more work.

Adjusting the order to match the mobile interface. I'm not a big fan of that link icon, but let's just roll with it for now.

I adjusted the order of key Journal details, moving the URL higher up so it’s more related to the title and description. I adjusted the spacing of every element to make everything feel more balanced, easier to read and interact with. Also added the number of collaborators above the collaborator icons.

Reducing the size of the icons on the top right. They were too big before and this seems to look cleaner.

This view shows detailed information on a Journal. It is triggered when an icon is tapped. You can leave it by tapping the icon again. I wonder if that’s intuitive enough.

There’s Settings and Share buttons on the top right in case someone wants to edit or share the Journal.

Added a little link icon beside the URL in the side bar. I hope this is not getting too noisy.

I adjusted the order a little bit here. Changed 'First entry' to 'First' and moved it closer to the total number of entries to make it easier to draw the connection. I increased the spacing of the url and the collaborators as well to accommodate the change.

Adding some details about the 'First entry' in the side bar. It gives you a quick insight into when this little digital space started, which is always nice.

A quick adjustment. I remembered that we need to include some icons on the top right that allow you to globally manipulate the entries in a Journal (put them in a grid) or interact with the Journal in a different way (support or purchase something off the Journal)

Adding a large Journal icon and collaborators icons to the top of this Interface. I imagine right now they will all trigger the same thing. A full screen view that includes more details on the Journal. I tried to make these icons large to consider the contexts we use our phones in. I use the other icons 'comment' and 'more' a bunch on mobile. I think they are too small but they don't bother me that much right now. It works for now but it's something we can definitely tweak to make it a bit easier to use. In time.

Adding grid, video chat and store icons to the Journal. Not sure how I feel about this yet but it should work for now.

Adding some missing components to the side bar. I have included a space for the url and also added an icon for an expanded menu that will reveal things like, 'Copy link', 'Tweet' and 'Settings'.

Imagining a simple hover state on this arrow. When you hover over it with your mouse the arrow will turn white and the word 'Collapse' will appear in a satisfying way. Perhaps similar or the same as the way the entry menu is revealed.

I'm making some subtle tweaks to this. The timeline is now shifted to the right of the entries a little more. I'll need to continue o play with this and to really know if it makes sense we will need to implement version of it to get some tactile feedback. But I like how we can more deeply connect the timeline to the entries and also remove it from the far left placement that suggests that it is a global set of controls.

I also added a left arrow under the Journal information that allows you to collapse this information so that the interface is more focused on the entries and the timeline. I'll need to work on a collapsed state. I'll get to that in the morning.

Experimenting with @pasquale's notes. A pretty interesting effect!

Quick tip from @pasquale, moving the timeline closer to the entries. He also suggested messing with adding it to the other side real close almost hugging the entries.

Killed the outline around the Journal icon to differentiate it from the collaborator icons and to not muck around less with people's work.

Expanding on this side bar concept. The idea here is that this opens up a lot more space on the screen. You can hide or show the details on the left of a person or a journal.

Slight adjustment to the position of the menu on the right that you probably won't notice!

Moving the profile icon and the section titles to the left. Feels more like a desktop application this way. Might be a better use of space

Adding this timeline component in so I can get more of a contextual view into this. I need to find a way to show the profile icon, stream and journals in relation to this timeline a more. Profile icon needs to be bigger.

Trying to create more balance on the screen…

Moving the profile icon and the section titles closer to the content to see if everything feels more balanced on the screen.

Making it a bit clearer whether you are on Stream or on Journals.

Stream and Journals back on the side with an adjusted weight and size. Profile icon is now the focus removed user name for a cleaner view. I adjusted the size of the + button by the right menu to match the profile icon on this interface.

Information on a user can only be revealed through a click. It is not permanently displayed. It's interesting to see but it is not the purpose of Futureland. There's a lot of implications to what we show here so it's something that we will need to play with and have the courage to kill when it's not working.

I moved the Stream and Journals section links back to the top with the icon and user name shifted to the left. This is starting to feel right but I need a degree of implementation to see how all of this feels. I also adjusted the menu back into the top right. I raised it a bit into the top of the Interface. Also need to see how this feels but I want to tuck things into the sides as much as I can to slowly work towards making this feel more like a desktop creative application.

Lowered the menu on the right to see how that feels. Might be interesting and perhaps more useful don't know yet.

Spreading out the elements across the screen more. Seems like this is moving in a better direction.

Sketching this stream view on mobile dimensions to see if it gives me any ideas. Kind of does. I increased the text size of the output/entry header to match the larger text on the rest of the interface. It makes me want to hide those icons some how or adjust them in some way.

Increasing the size of everything in this display of Journals to see how it feels

Adding support for editing and deleting entries in this expanded menu.

A menu is trigged with the expand icon is clicked. This is something we can build on and improve but could be useful to design this way for now as we are learning.

Adjusted the sidebar icons to be in the top header of the entry which seems to be more intuitive and cleaner on the screen. There's two icons now. One for comments and another to trigger and expanded set of actions. This is helpful because we can put new interactions in that little menu as we learn more about how people want to interact with each entry. I think we can make that little icon that triggers the expanded menu kind of fun to use!

Adjusted the date and project component on the entry header to adopt our existing style which is simpler and cleaner.

Needs work! Trying to figure out how to best represent this Journals on the screen. I can use no icon, an icon or the media from its contents. the current version shows media and I think it's cool

Adding a spot to search through someone's Journals. It is text that simply states search and the user's name. When you click it, it will highlight white and blink with a cursor to signal it is ready for input.

Changing the word Projects to Journals

Just starting to think about how to organize a person's projects (or Journals) on Futureland. It's a bit of a tough thing to figure out because we're moving in a direction with the volume of someone's creative output is expanding exponentially. What is the right way to organize all of that. How do we use projects to express our identity? Why do we use projects to express our identity? What is a project? I'll need to write about this a bunch tonight before I can start some more squares on this thing!

Adding a simple little highlight on whatever section of a Profile is selected. 'Stream' or 'Projects'.

Adding a profile photo to the top, I thought I could get away without it but doesn't feel right for some reason.

Added three icons to the right of the entry now. Increased the width of every line of the comment icon.

Adding a link button below the reply button. So now there's kind of a tray of little icons beside each one of the entries. Could work.

Experimenting with variants to the comment button. Chatting with @pugson for ideas.

Adding comment buttons. Not sure how I feel about this yet.

Experimenting with moving the publish button to just below the top right menu on FL.

Just starting to sketch out ideas for updated Profiles on Futureland desktop… need to get my thoughts down first

I really enjoy the design of https://reading.supply and I'm a huge fan of Jim's (@wwwjim) work in general. I often find myself GEEKING on whatever he's making!

I enjoy this interface a bunch. I like how it uses the entire screen and it feels a bit like a desktop application or a creative tool. It's something I'd love to see us do more on FL.

Getting some thoughts down on removing projects from the Log.

Made improvements to the spacing and text size of this interface. Events should be more independent and readable now in this variant. I need to make a comment badge for these little reply / comment icons.

Just a subtle to the text when you make a new output / entry to a project. Reverting to shorter text.

Making some more simplifications to this interface. Adding some descriptive text back in and adjusting the placement of everything. Also a new comment icon. I will try and make another variant that highlights how many comments there might already be in a discussion.

Another variant. Trying to reduce focus on ‘self’ by removing profile images. Maybe this puts more focus on the content and less focus on the presentation of identity.

Trying to integrate a reply / comment button. This seems like it might be working.

An output / entry takes a large part of the interface. I might be fine with that for now. I like the increased focus on conversations here. Telegram was a useful reference.

Feels like improvement

Still working on this Public Activity interface. I’ll need to get this top bar right and perhaps everything else will fit into place from there. I’m trying to value conversations over outputs / entries in these variants to see what I learn.

Just starting to experiment with putting more focus on comments / conversations in Public Activity on Futureland.

- Maybe if you drop a single emoji on something, it displays the output in context. Usually when we use a single emoji like this, it's because we simply dig something!

- Maybe when you write a comment with more text, the text is given primary emphasis since you are now sharing thoughts and ideas which is its own contribution.

A couple of things I need to finish on the Mobile interfaces so we can get that out to users, but I need a bit more time to think about it. So I'm just starting to little file and sketch together in preparation for desktop improvements. In a bit of a rush tonight! See ya in the morning on this stuff!

Hm. Maybe I can left align everything in a way and see what happens.

Working on an update interface to start new projects on mobile screen. Been struggling with this one this morning, but maybe kind of getting somewhere now. Apple's files app is a continual reference.

Working on a new project component for mobile that's triggered from the Log and other places. Pretty obvious there's still a lot to do!

Making some adjustments to the colours of this stats view. Just trying to make this interface simpler, while amplifying interesting high points.

Started reading about Zen specifically, 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' by Shunryu Suzuki. I have been thinking a lot about how I can integrate some of these ideas into the way that I design interfaces. Many of the ideas are similar to what I experienced in my own learning experiments. But of course here they are much more refined and clear.

Slight adjustment to the spacing of the day, date and total outputs to try and create more symmetry. Something @pugson caught while looking at these interfaces. I think it looks a lot better!

In the Log, I am trying to increase focus on the present day and on your own creative process.

Focus on the present day

You will notice a large heading at the top which tells you what day of the week it is. Your total outputs for the day have also increased in size so you can quickly glance at it and see where you are at.

Focus on your own creative process

I've tried to make it easier for the user to focus on her own creative process by bringing images of recent outputs into this Interface. As the user is publishing through the day this interface will fill up with recent images from the user's creative process.

Also I found this green on @tmm's website: https://meagher.co. I like it a bunch.

Wondering how Futureland’s log might look if it was more focused on the present moment. It would be great if it also helped keep your attention on your own creative process and nothing else.

Haven't looked at this interface in awhile. It's cool and I think there's a lot we can learn from it. I'm super stoked to get back to designing for desktop once some more of this mobile web stuff is done. There's a bunch of ideas I want to try that might be interesting!

Also @tmm you had a huge jump in contributions from 2016 to 2017. What happened? lol

Putting stats on the bottom now opens this interface a bunch. I haven’t added a line that separates the bottom menu from the primary content yet. I wonder if it can work without it?

Cleaning up this bottom menu a lot. Adding a section for just Stats.

Experimenting with putting Stats in its own space to make the interface simpler.

Something I need to study a bunch more.

I'm enjoying a bunch of things about this interface. I like the sizing and layout of things a lot here.

hm.

Removing the top bar and adding labels to the bottom menu + adding a persistent floating publish button opens up the space on the screen a lot. I’ll play with this across the other interfaces. Seems like a big improvement!

A variant of that button, this feels better.

Experimenting with a new top bar. The hope is a more delightful visual as well as a clean integration of a back button. I don’t like using this purple highlight too much, I feel it’s a bit of an overdone kind of thing but it obviously works.

This is a simple take on a project specific stats view. It’s not the best variant yet but it might do the trick just to start. I’ll need to adjust how we think about the top bar a bit to make it easier to go ‘back’ on Mobile.

I find that documenting my progression through an interface like this is really helpful. Each time I try something new in any part of the interface I create a new variant. Every now and then I will zoom out and look at all of the variants. Sometimes I will take something from a previous one and integrate it into a new one. Or by looking at each of the variants I can see if what I am working on now is truly an improvement over what I did in the past.

Working on interfaces that show you more data on your specific projects on Futureland.

Adjusted the header here again and adjusted the icon placement of comments and share. I’ll probably play with this icon placement more. The heading seems like a bit of an improvement.

A more minimal header which I think might look better. Perhaps things fade as you scroll. Perhaps that’s a dumb idea for web mobile! Not sure. There's big spacing here from the content to the header. I'll need to play with that too. Sometimes looking at other stuff and then looking at these interfaces again helps.

Playing with a stronger separation of the top heading. Not sure how I feel about it yet! I’ll try variants with this for sure.

Experimenting with making spacing more clear in the activity view.

Starting to sketch out a few improvements to the Activity view on Futureland

Playing with the spacing of these two little lists. I’m not happy with this yet but it seems to work for now. Maybe they can both be converted into visuals similar to above. It might be more immediately useful that way.

In the Daily Active Projects section, I could probably move the outputs over by another 8px - 16px.

Starting to experiment with showing Daily Active Projects in the Stats view so you can get a sense of which projects you are focusing the most at any point in time.

Added a little moon to the Average Publish Time. Alternatively would be a little sun if the average was an AM. Not sure how I feel about it yet. It might be helpful to become more aware of whether your work is happening at night or during the day.

Some quick sketches on integrating a 'New Project' button into this Interface. Not happy with any of this yet!

I don’t mind how clean this screen is. I like the narrower selection buttons at the top. Also like how the top line is longer than the others. It’s a pattern I’m noticing in iOS lists. Maybe it’s everywhere but it makes sense.

Added average publish times to this Stats view of Futureland’s Log. This is something I’ve always wanted to know because I want to know when I’m working I. The night and when I’m working in the morning. I wonder if there’s any patterns here. The average time is useful to me because it serves as an overall indicator of when I’m doing my creative work. For a long time I’ve wanted to shift my creative time to very early in the morning like 3am - 9am to see what happens. I haven’t been able to do it yet but it’s something I think about a lot.

This interface needs a bunch of work. The Average Publish Time section might be useful enough in its current state but I’d like it it was more visual. If there was an immediate way to see if on certain days you’re working when the sun is out and others if you’re working when it’s late at night.

These lines feel too harsh I’ll probably try and ditch them tomorrow. I might add some kind of graph aesthetic behind the bars. Maybe not though might be over kill for now.

I’m done designing for today.

Adding a way for you to dive into more stats on specific projects. Apple’s screen time is a heavy influence.

Starting to work on stats within the Log

Experimenting with something I am calling dots. They give you the ability to quickly track anything you want in your Log. The ideas is that you can use this for things that you want to track data on but do not want an entire project for. An example could be water intake. The more I use the Log in my work and my life, the more I want it to reflect all of the things that are currently important to me. I want all of this in one place.

Added a toggle button on this interface to switch between your finder view and your stream (all outputs). Also changed the height of the toggle button to be more narrow. I might play with this on the log as well now to see if it works.

Adjusted the folder icon size. Increase the project name text. Thanks for the advice @pugson

Adjustments to this Finder view on Futureland to make it easier to manipulate on mobile screens.

Folder layout in the iOS files app. I enjoy the spacing and sizing of things here. Very large and useable on a smaller screen. When you contrast this kind of an interface against the the Finder view on the Mac, you really get a sense of how differently we manipulate interfaces on each of those screens.

Showing the size of your digital information in gigabytes on this Interface now.

Making subtle adjustments to the size of basically everything in this Interface.

Playing with an adjusted top menu now. I don’t particularly like text on top like that but it might make sense for now.

Experimenting with adding a third button to the bottom menu here. This changes how I think about the top menu a bit in these interfaces.

Making some minor adjustments to this overlay while on the phone. I adjusted the font size to be a bit more readable. I also added a small arrow to the left of one of the folders. I'll expand on this tomorrow. I'm designing with sub projects in mind.

This is a variant that is standing out to me right now. I've made a subtle adjustment to the radius of the buttons that most won't notice, but I think it's a lot better. The publish button gets a separate color treatment than the bottom menu buttons. I also reduced the weight of the line separators on the bottom and top menus. Again subtle but important to keep your focus on the middle of the interface while still creating a feeling of separation where it matters.

I moved the publish button to the top right of the Interface which opens up a lot of flexibility in the bottom navigation. This makes a lot of sense for our current requirements. Now I am sketching variants of this top menu. When I sketch out variants, I get a stronger understanding of all of the variables of the component. What matters and what does not matter. What I know and what I do not know.

What is the ideal design of the output component on Futureland? I'm starting to sketch out variants of the component to understand what makes the most sense. It's one of the core building blocks of these interfaces.

I also adjusted the top bar to have a smaller profile picture. I added a line separator as well. I'll try adding the publish button to the top right of the mobile interfaces to see how that feels. It should open up more flexibility in the the bottom navigation.

Getting closer I think. The text is probably too small for people who aren’t me!

I'm starting to sketch out other components of this updated Activity view on Futureland. Something about it is not working yet. I'll make some variants of this comments object and see what happens.

Adjusted the menu on the bottom to be simpler. I don't see a reason to exaggerate anything right now. Probably need to adjust that down arrow on the Log to something more memorable.

I am working on Activity in our mobile interface this morning. These are straight forward variants of the output component. The same as the existing component but with subtle visual refinements. Text size has changed. Character spacing has changed and I've tweaked all greys.

I'll start thinking about how else this can be improved now.

Dig the spacing here a bunch. The search bar specifically is cool w the black bg

Mix of grey and black. Cool how the line separators don’t carry all the way through to the icons.

Nice clean list. Inspiring use of spacing and separation.

Cool little tray.

I am still creating variants of each component. The menu tool at the bottom is far from complete, but I'm digging this change from green to purple to mark projects that have you added to for the day.

Starting to generate variants of each component in this Interface as a way of thinking about what works and doesn't. Or what works best and what works just a bit.

i Like this little component a bunch. Good sizing of everything.

Added an outline around the profile image, needs work. Playing with variations of how it might look if a particular icon is selected in the bottom menu. Not sure how I feel about it right now. Maybe it needs to feel more alive or something.

Adjusted the top buttons to be text instead of icons with a slider inspired by iOS. Starting to build out the persistent bottom menu. Not sure how I feel about the size of the + button yet. The profile image should link back to the user's profile but that probably needs to be more obvious.

Digging the way this outline pops or something. There’s a subtle shadow around the bottom that is nice. A cool mix of greys.

Experimenting with an adjusted menu button. And a tray of buttons at the top of the interface depending on what you are viewing. I'll need to see this on my phone to see how it feels. Might be a dumb idea but I'm kind of digging it for now.

Really dig the spacing and sizing here. I wonder if that little line separation has to be there. Button size is neat. I like how compact this whole component feels.

Starting to dig really round corners. Not sure why yet

Really dig the way this looks especially the shadow under the album cover. It hangs a bit lower than my brain expected. Makes me happy

Starting to work on reproducing the interface for Logic Pro X. This is going to take me a bit. On Mac applications the buttons follow the same pattern. There's a slight adjustment in Logic Pro X, the buttons are a bit lighter and larger than in other applications. The shape remains relatively the same.

There's subtle details on the buttons that I can't figure out how to reproduce. I can't exactly match the grey right now. And there's a flatness to the button that is hard for me to replicate for some reason. It's bothering me a lot. I'll keep messing around.

Just got a bit of time tonight. Adding visuals to 'Activity'.

Finishing up this reproduction of Safari. The difficult part for me here was the icons which I repurposed from other places. The most learning was in how you can use greys and gradients to create a metal like feel where the controls of the browser are. I'm just starting to see the parallels between industrial design and the interfaces of Software. Still have a lot to learn.

I was chatting with @pugson and he suggested adding a component to the top of the Profile stream that allows for composition and inputs. This seems to make sense. I am not happy with this interpretation yet. The right one will take some time.

A component like this might be useful on all of your projects as well.

I was talking to friends who use FL yesterday about the Log. A common note that came up was, "Why is my Log always empty?". It is not currently clear how to add Projects to the Log. Currently you click an arrow that points left and it reveals a drop down menu. I thought maybe using an equalizer icon might be more fitting. Maybe it should be on the right side of the interface instead of in the center. I have always seen the Log as something that allows you to bring your projects in and out of focus.

The Log works well for me and I use it every day. I think there's value in starting to slowly tighten it up. I would love to one day see a visual of the times I usually publish on Futureland. It might create a heightened awareness of my behaviours.

Starting to think through basic sketches of a grid that displays recent outputs from projects and people you follow on Futureland. I don't have much time today, so just getting something down for reference really.

A thing to think about is what might be most important. Highlighting a project that has been updated and letting it oscillate through outputs or displaying the latest output it self. The text currently displays a preview of the output's notes which I think makes sense and provides the closest relationship to the creator who published.