Do You Compute?

In this bizarre era we’re living through, it might seem inappropriate to spend time reminiscing about the past but I personally can’t resist at least a little bit of that as an escape from all the … | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Afternoon in the Pandemic

It was unseasonably warm and bright in Brooklyn at the end of the workday yesterday, so I took myself for a walk around the neighborhood. Like a lot of people I’ve been working from home for the pa… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Afternoon in the Pandemic

It was unseasonably warm and bright in Brooklyn at the end of the workday yesterday, so I took myself for a walk around the neighborhood. Like a lot of people I’ve been working from home for the pa… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal, a study in extreme symmetry. The structure itself, built from non-porous Indian marble, is built with painstaking exactitude to be almost perfectly symmetrical. The landmark’s ground… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Movies Watched, January 2020

Yes it’s the last day of February, but I’m posting this roundup of what I watched in January anyway. Early in the month I got out to theaters to see “1917” and “Little Women,̶… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

The UX of Podcasts—A Critique of Wireframe

Listen to “Adobe's Wireframe Podcast and the Need to Create Brand IP, Not Just Content” on Spreaker. The logline for the podcast “3 Clips” plants the show firmly in met… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Wuhan on Lockdown: Drone Footage

Just reading about the progression of the coronavirus is frightening enough, but it sent a new kind of chill down my spine to watch this drone footage of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, on lo… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Movies Watched, December 2019

December seems like a long time ago but I’m only now recapping my movie watching for that month—and for all of last year. Time flies. Amid a bunch of travel, I watched twenty-four films and got out… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Merry Christmas, Here’s a 10-year Old Album You Missed

As a Christmas gift to you, I direct your attention to singer-songwriter Joel Alme’s “Waiting for the Bells,” a beautiful, nearly forgotten album from the very beginning of this decade … | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Movies Watched, November 2019

There’s a lot packed into Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” even beyond its generous three and a half-hour runtime. It would almost be enough that it gives us a tour of decades of gangst… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Shortcuts and Screenshots on iOS

Periodically I’ll find myself fascinated for weeks at a time with Apple’s Shortcuts automation app for iOS and iPadOS, tinkering endlessly on shortcuts that are ostensibly intended to save me… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Three

Floor signage in the stairwell at M.S. 839, Brooklyn. | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Movies Watched, September 2019

No one asked, but my one-line, all-in assessment of Marvel movies would be: “They’re lowering our standards.” Over the past decade or so their potent mix of CG-driven spectacle, nominally interwove… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Movies Watched, October 2019

No one asked, but my one-line, all-in assessment of Marvel movies would be: “They’re lowering our standards.” Over the past decade or so their potent mix of CG-driven spectacle, nominally interwove… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Passwords Are a Design Problem

Like a lot of urgent advice, this terrific article about best practices in creating strong passwords, written by Jon Xavier of Fleetsmith, feels both necessary and tragic. Necessary because, as the… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

Passwords Are a Design Problem

Like a lot of urgent advice, this terrific article about best practices in creating strong passwords, written by Jon Xavier of Fleetsmith, feels both necessary and tragic. Necessary because, as the… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 4 years ago

My Favorite Podcasts

The makers of the podcast app Castro were recently kind enough to invite me to share five of my favorite podcasts, and this week they published that list as a feature story in their app. If you don… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, September 2019

Just as in August, I wasn’t able to make it out to theaters to see a single movie in September. I try to go at least once a month, so this is a bummer for me. But work—and more specifically traveli… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe S2 Episode 6: Falling in Love with Good Design

Our sixth installment of season two of “Wireframe” is here, and it’s all about a topic that I knew absolutely nothing about at the outset: the world of dating apps. Well to be clear, I did know tha… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe S2 Episode 5: Faking Good Design in Movies and TV

We’re in the back half of our second season of “Wireframe,” the documentary podcast about good user experience design hosted by yours truly, and we have a couple of killer episodes line… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe S2 Episode 4: When Everything Looks Like Good Design

We’re back from a brief hiatus in season two of “Wireframe” with an all new episode. You should definitely listen to it because it’s great, but the returning podcast that you really don… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, August 2019

Halfway through August I realized not only that I probably wasn’t going to get out to see anything in theaters—it’s rare that I don’t go see at least one movie—but also that almost everything I was… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe S2 Episode 3—Sounds Like Good Design

I’m a little behind this week due in part to my participation in World Interaction Design Day this past Tuesday, but a new episode of “Wireframe” was released this week and it’s all abo… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

The Secret to Supermarket Spaghetti

And now for something a little different: this particular blog post isn’t about design or technology or even movies or media, but rather food. You may be busy designing the heck out of the future, … | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe S2 Episode 2—Privacy, Trust and Good Design

This week’s installment of “Wireframe,” the documentary podcast about the design of digital products and experiences hosted by yours truly, dives into the shadowy world of designing for… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe S2 Episode 1—A Prescription for Good Design

Here is the first episode of our second season of “Wireframe,” our documentary podcast about the design of digital products and experiences, hosted by yours truly. This season we’re loo… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe Season Two Is (Almost) Here

We’ve been hard at work for the past three months or so on season two of “Wireframe,” the deeply researched, high-quality documentary podcast about design hosted by yours truly. The fir… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Get That Hot Borg Look for Your iPad

Apple hardware designers are rumored to cringe at the idea of encasing their beautiful phones and tablets in protective cases, so I can only imagine what they would think about BoltHub, the “invisi… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, July 2019

Most period movies get made with the goal of bringing the audience back to whatever era they take place in. But Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, “Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood” seems to … | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, June 2019

By the time I got to the theaters last month to see “Booksmart,” actor Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, it had already engendered a ton of hand-wringing over its poor box office perfor… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

How I dropped Dropbox

There are so many Dropbox integrations available that the service seems essential, or at least difficult to imagine doing without. Over the years I’ve hooked numerous apps and services into my Drop… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Paperclips for the One Percent

A box of a hundred jumbo paperclips costs a little less than US$2 at Staples but the folks at gift and home accessories brand Areaware sell a box that will set you back more than ten times that for… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

How I Dropped Dropbox

There are so many Dropbox integrations available that the service seems essential, or at least difficult to imagine doing without. Over the years I’ve hooked numerous apps and services into my Drop… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, May 2019

Oof, June got away from me. It’s nearly over and I still haven’t written up the movies I watched back in May. Well, here it is, my list of all twenty-five. Two of them I watched in theaters: “Pokém… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Bumpr Updated with Custom Rules, Browser Plug-ins and Keyboard Shortcuts

Longtime readers may remember that a little more than two years ago my friend Scott Ostler and I released a Mac app called Bumpr. Well today we have a major update in the App Store. Before I go int… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Writing Content vs. Writing Writing

The folks at Creative Mornings recently interviewed me about blogging, which is a topic you don’t really hear a lot about these days. They did this in collaboration with WordPress, who are of cours… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business Ranking

Somehow this happened: I’ve been included in Fast Company’s 2019 ranking of The Most Creative People in Business. This is largely based on the work I did to bring voice features to Adobe XD last ye… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, April 2019

I got out to theaters twice last month to see “Shazam!” and “Avengers: Endgame,” both jam-packed with super-hero action and special effects (and, incidentally, virtually indistinguishab… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Thanos: Super-Villain and Terrible Designer

Here is a presentation that I made last week about how to understand the design process, explained through the lens of Thanos, that lovable scamp from “Avengers: Endgame.” (Mild spoiler… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Scapegoating User Experience Design

An article published yesterday in The Washington Post demonstrates the danger of design’s failure to broaden popular understanding of our craft. It tells the story of hackers compromising Nest Cams… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Scapegoating User Experience Design

An article published yesterday in The Washington Post demonstrates the danger of design’s failure to broaden popular understanding of our craft. It tells the story of hackers compromising Nest Cams… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, March 2019

I almost didn’t get out to the movies at all last month, and really, I may as well not have at all, because the only thing I watched in theaters was the moribund “Captain Marvel,” the e… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Old Media for Young Kids

My news consumption has been so thoroughly digital for years that I honestly never expected to subscribe to home delivery of The New York Times again. But two years ago the paper started running a … | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Wireframe Bonus Episode: What Good Design Sounds Like

We’re officially “on hiatus” between seasons of “Wireframe,” my podcast about how design shapes technology to fit into our lives. But that didn’t stop us from recording a new episode, a… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Movies Watched, February 2019

Last month I took my kids to go see “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” which was totally fine. It’s not exactly one for the canon, but I’ve come to the conclusion that anything that th… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

VPNs for All

I don’t know a lot about security but I do know that when I use public wi-fi—whether on my phone, tablet or laptop—I should be protecting my traffic with a virtual private network. For those unfami… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

Design vs. Movies

Today’s post is the latest in my regular movie-watching roundups. Wait, yet another post about movies? I’m very conscious of the fact that, as it becomes harder and harder for me to find time to wr… | Continue reading


@subtraction.com | 5 years ago

My 2018 Movie Diary

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@subtraction.com | 5 years ago