What led you into design?
I used to draw a lot as a kid. Mostly invent my own Pokemon (no joke) and draw existing and imaginative cars. So much so that I was convinced I would become a car designer.
Around the same time, I got deep into the Apple bubble, so I started delivering newspapers and saved every penny for two years straight to finally buy my first iMac (the 2012 model with the super thin side profile). I still remember the delivery guy handing it over to me.
From here, my passion for drawing, creating, and imagining merged with my interest in computers and well-crafted software, which resulted in the first mockup I've ever created: An unsolicited redesign of the Facebook newsfeed which I, god knows why, decided to print out.
I still have it. It looked amazing and I have no idea why they didn't do it exactly like this.
What does a typical day look like?
During my time at Bento, my day would usually start fairly late at around 10am. I know, so good. After some coffee, breakfast, and checking notifications, I would jump on the train to the office where I would meet the rest of the Bento team. We were very flexible and worked when and where we could work best, but I'd say 80% of the time we were all in the office.
Nowadays, I'm working on a new project, so I mostly work at home by myself while switching back and forth between couch and desk. I sometimes try to sprinkle in some walks or gym sessions to get away from my laptop for a bit. In recent months, the type of work I do has shifted dramatically since I now spend 80% of my time in Xcode and use Figma only for some rough explorations and to draw icons.
I usually spend the evening with my girlfriend which, during winter, often means cooking dinner and watching whatever great show just came out. During summer months, we like to grab a drink and enjoy the evenings on the balcony or head out to our favorite Japanese restaurant here in Berlin.
When she goes to bed, my night starts. I put on my favorite podcasts and jam in Xcode and Figma until 4am or so. There's just something about knowing that the world around me is sleeping that allows my brain to get creative. During these nights I produce 70% of my work. Sometimes I also just play Mario Kart.
What's your workstation setup?
Where do you go to get inspired?
For me, inspiration can come from all kinds of places.
A walk, the commute, the shower, a conversation, doing laundry, cooking. Whenever I'm not sitting at a desk.
Sometimes it feels like I do the majority of my work subconsciously throughout the day, and sitting down to implement them is just a formality.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
When Fede Sanchez gave me a walkthrough a while ago I felt like I saw how software creation should have worked from the beginning.
For those that haven't heard about Play: Think Figma meets Xcode. It appears like a traditional design tool (infinite canvas, layers panel, inspector, etc.), but instead of drawing rectangles, you're working with actual SwiftUI components. This allows you to work with iOS system features like camera feeds, live map views, date pickers, you name it. And the app itself is a rare mix of a beautifully crafted experience and super powerful functionality.
The only thing that's missing IMO is a way to push to and pull from a GitHub repo.
Go check them out!
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
Over time I noticed that what I intuitively strive for is not just to come up with something useful and beautiful, but also to design something that's somewhat unique or novel, a new take on something. Life is short and I want to look back at all the crazy ideas we explored instead of all the times we played it safe and followed best practices.
That's why I'm really proud of what we built at Bento.
We took full advantage of the open web by creating custom-designed widget previews for all the links you paste into your Bento, without requiring you to log in to any of them. And the nature of the grid allowed for such playful interaction details that created a really fun experience.
I liked to believe that there wasn't anything quite like this out there which created an opportunity to try new things. And we had an awesome time.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
One of the most important design principles we had at Bento was to go for direct manipulation whenever possible.
We tried to avoid things like dedicated edit modes or unnecessary menus and instead made things editable on the spot. You could edit any text or move or resize any widget on your Bento by just clicking or dragging. No need to look for the edit button and then hunt through menus to find the element you just saw on your page and wanted to edit. After all, Bento was about expressing yourself, so there should be as few barriers as possible between your idea and its execution.
This could be challenging at times since all the editing controls needed to live on the same page as the elements they're affecting, which could create conflicts. But the resulting ease of use was always worth it.
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
Find projects you're so excited about that you really want to make them happen, and then try to make them happen.
It gives you a reason for why you need to figure out how to make something work. And it keeps you going and continuously improving which is the only thing that matters. After just a couple months, you'll look back at your progress and be really proud of how far you made it. And you also made a lot of progress on that project.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
We recently announced a new product we're working on. Check it out and join the waitlist at whatiftheresabetterway.com
Also, while they really don't need me to promote them, I want to give a shoutout to the team at Humane.
It's definitely early days, but features like that "laser-ink" display that projects UI onto your hand and uses hand gestures to control it, are really exciting. It also just feels like a much more desirable vision of the future to have computers move more and more into the background and be easily accessible on request. After all, they're meant to be tools to augment and improve our lives, not take them over.
They've created a new type of hardware category, and the only new gadget in years that I really want to play with. Keep questioning the status quo!
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