Writing

April 13, 2024

Productivity

How Retrospectives Are More Than Just a Corporate Jargon?

The primary goals of retrospectives is to make incremental improvements periodically and learn from the past. What went well? What didn’t go well? What can be done better?

November 29, 2023

Design

I Designed a Colour Palette from Scratch For My Personal Website

As part of my ongoing attempt to clean up my website under the hood by building and using systems for colours, typography, class names and more, I built a colour palette from scratch.

November 18, 2023

Design

Understanding Colour Usage On My Personal Website Before Cleaning Up

This article is about understanding the existing colour usage, auditing colours used on each page, their purpose, and narrowing them down so I can recreate a new colour palette

June 28, 2023

Design

How Real-World Inspiration Shapes Architecture, Industrial Products, Digital Design and More

Did you know that velcro’s design and function was inspired by a plant? Or that the passive cooling found in termite moulds inspired the design of Eastgate Shopping Center in Zimbabwe?

June 20, 2023

Travel

Solo Bike Ride to Yercaud, Tamil Nadu | TVS Ronin 225

Went on a solo bike ride to Yercaud, covered 500 Km, rode in scenic hairpin bends, dropped bike on my foot, got locked out of my hotel room at 3 AM and got hit by a bus (no injuries)

November 19, 2022

Productivity

My Writing Process with Obsidian and Notion

In this article, I write about my writing process. From capturing ideas, writing, editing and finally publishing pieces on my blog.

November 6, 2022

Productivity

My Journey of Building a Reading Habit

After a few failed attempts, I managed to build a habit of reading books regularly. I read 35 books in 2021, and 25 so far in 2022 using the Goodreads Challenge, habit tracking etc.

October 14, 2022

Productivity

How I Export, Organise and Refactor Kindle Highlights

I write about my workflow of exporting Kindle highlights, formatting them and refactoring. This makes them easier to re-read, and improve over time.

October 10, 2022

Productivity

How MOCs Help Organise and Link Notes Together Better Than Folders

Maps of Content (MOC) are the new, modern and efficient way to organise and connect notes as compared to folders. Let's look at how that is.

August 25, 2022

Productivity

Why Daily Standup Meetings Don’t Work for Designers (or anyone?)

The original intent of a daily standup was to meet everyday for 15-min (ideally even shorter), identify issues and resolve them before they can have any major impact, but not anymore.

February 26, 2022

Book Notes

Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton | Book Summary

Hatching Twitter is a thriller-like journey through Twitter's initial few years – from naming the company to power struggle for the leadership.

February 20, 2022

Tech

The Story Behind Twitter’s Origin and How It Was Almost Called Twitch

Twitter was conceived as a desperate measure to save a failing company and the company's name came up through dictionary-browsing by one of the co-founders.

January 23, 2022

Design

Areas Where Design Thinking Doesn't Work

Design thinking helps when both the problems and solutions are less known. It works when human emotions are involved. But where does it not work?

December 22, 2021

Book Notes

Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado | Book Summary

“Miracle in the Andes” is a first-person account of the Andes crash and rescue after 72 days written by Nando Parrado, one of the survivors and hero of the story.

October 20, 2021

Design

The Secrets Behind Apple's Product Development Process

Apple has been the company behind some of the most iconic products in the past few decades. But what are the secrets that lead them to produce with such efficiency?

October 16, 2021

Design

Algorithms vs Heuristics

Writing about the difference between algorithms and heuristics, and how a combination of both leads to the best results

September 19, 2021

Design

What Is System Feedback And Why Designers Should Care About It?

Every action we take requires proper feedback. But what is system feedback and how it affects our interactions with the product and our daily lives?

August 31, 2021

Finance

How I've Stayed in My Financial Lane And Avoided Spending More Than My Means

Knowing and sticking to your financial lane is crucial to stay in a healthy shape financially. I've used some principles I describe in this piece to keep my finances in check. So far so good.

August 29, 2021

Finance

The Evolution of My Spending Habits on Stuff I Want But Don't Need

When I started earning some money, I spent lavishly on electronics and gadgets that I didn't need. Over the last couple of years, that habit turned on its head. But I have some purchases lined up.

August 2, 2021

Tech

How Silicon Valley Got Its Name, And The Origin Story

Silicon Valley is home to the biggest Tech Giants on the planet. But how did the valley get its iconic name? How did the region shape up over the years to become the Silicon Valley?

July 1, 2021

Design

Designing Cover Images for Book Notes for my Blog

A short backstory of me designing the much needed cover images for the book notes I publish on this blog.

June 30, 2021

Design

How Can Designers Avoid Shallow Work and Protect Their Productivity?

Shallow work is the work that can be done without our complete attention. To eliminate shallow work, designers should improve documentation process, use plugins, and quit social media.

May 30, 2021

Productivity

How I Capture Everyday Moments with Daily, Monthly and Yearly Journaling

I use daily journaling to capture my thoughts, ideas and everyday moments. In addition, I create monthly and yearly journals to create a zoomed-out versions of my life.

March 14, 2021

Design

Whimsical Docs – A Designer and PM's New Best Friend?

Whimsical Docs, the latest addition to the Whimsical suite of products is the perfect documentation and thinking tool for Product teams, Designers and PMs especially.

February 28, 2021

Sports

What Happens in a Formula One Race Weekend?

A 3-day race weekend at an F1 Grand Prix consists of practice sessions, qualifying and the finale on Sundays. What's the breakdown of each day, though?

January 29, 2021

Design

Some Reasons Why I Decided to Build my Personal Website

Instead of using a makeshift website builder, I designed and developed my personal website from scratch with Webflow. The idea was to have a personal corner on the internet, learn by doing, blog etc.

January 8, 2021

Productivity

My Reading Tech Stack: What I Use For All My Reading Needs

In this post, I describe how I use devices and applications to read blogs and books. I use Kindle, iPad and Macbook as my primary devices to read. And also Goodnotes, Reeder, Raindrop etc.

January 2, 2021

Design

Writing

How Retrospectives Are More Than Just a Corporate Jargon?

I Designed a Colour Palette from Scratch For My Personal Website

Understanding Colour Usage On My Personal Website Before Cleaning Up

How Real-World Inspiration Shapes Architecture, Industrial Products, Digital Design and More

Solo Bike Ride to Yercaud, Tamil Nadu | TVS Ronin 225

My Writing Process with Obsidian and Notion

My Journey of Building a Reading Habit

How I Export, Organise and Refactor Kindle Highlights

How MOCs Help Organise and Link Notes Together Better Than Folders

Why Daily Standup Meetings Don’t Work for Designers (or anyone?)

Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton | Book Summary

The Story Behind Twitter’s Origin and How It Was Almost Called Twitch

Areas Where Design Thinking Doesn't Work

Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado | Book Summary

The Secrets Behind Apple's Product Development Process

Algorithms vs Heuristics

What Is System Feedback And Why Designers Should Care About It?

How I've Stayed in My Financial Lane And Avoided Spending More Than My Means

The Evolution of My Spending Habits on Stuff I Want But Don't Need

How Silicon Valley Got Its Name, And The Origin Story

Designing Cover Images for Book Notes for my Blog

How Can Designers Avoid Shallow Work and Protect Their Productivity?

How I Capture Everyday Moments with Daily, Monthly and Yearly Journaling

Whimsical Docs – A Designer and PM's New Best Friend?

What Happens in a Formula One Race Weekend?

Some Reasons Why I Decided to Build my Personal Website

My Reading Tech Stack: What I Use For All My Reading Needs

144 People Visited My Website in One Day Thanks to a Tweet

How I am learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript by building projects

Navigating and Creating New Folder and Files Using Terminal

The 4 Meetings (from the book Death by Meeting)

Why are meetings boring and ineffective?

Why I enjoyed reading a non-fiction book about meetings?

I Designed a Colour Palette from Scratch For My Personal Website

Standup Comedians I Enjoy Watching and Listening To

Possible Enhancements for Variables in Figma That I Noticed

The Grouping Structure I Used to Organise Variables in Figma

What are the attributes of a good design?

Parallels between scientific thinking and product design process

Resources to learn Variables in Figma

Three plots of storytelling

Some well-designed blogs

How people's response to a request is influenced by knowing there is a reason behind it

Start doing something first before collecting the gear

Intermediate Packets are the atomic blocks of all creative pieces of work

Collaboration is essential for creativity

The Goldilocks Rule

The Gap Theory of Curiosity

Conduct retrospectives or debriefs even when things go right

Start every project with a collection of ideas instead of blank page

Peak End Rule: When people judge an experience based on how they felt at its peak and at its end

Direct Manipulation in iPhone User Interface

Creative Principles from Pixar

A rift between creative and production departments at Pixar almost destroyed it

Quantity leads to quality

What is Information Architecture?

Semantic Stretch is the overuse of any idea or concept that delivers an emotional kick

Three plus one (3+1) design philosophy for driverless cars

Temptation Bundling – Linking what you WANT to do with what you NEED to do

The problems that Information Architecture addresses

Project-driven learning and learning-driven project

Complexity of human personalities can be summarised in 5 traits with acronym OCEAN

How the LA Lakers won NBA Championship with 1% improvements using the Career Best Effort (CBE) system

The aggregation of marginal gains – 1% better everyday

Cathedral Effect explains how our environment affects our productivity

Design your environment to make habits stick

When people buy things they see even if they don't need it

Calculating good and bad habits with Habit Scorecard

Pointing and calling system reduces mistakes and prevents railway accidents

The Four Laws of Behaviour Change

Creating actionable plan to change habits using Implementation Intention

Diderot Effect – One purchase spirals into many others