Fall Vibes

Holy Pumpkin Spice Batman, it’s September! I feel like the last few months have been a bit of a blur.

General Life

Despite the title of this post, it’s distinctly un-fall like in TN right now. With highs in the 100s over the last few days, the brisk 83 we had for a high today felt like a break. Looking back on July and August it’s not surprising that it doesn’t feel like it’s September. We went to Config as a family the last week in June, and came home to start the first few weeks of July with Covid. Thankfully we’re all boosted, but this was the first time any of us had gotten it, so it was a little disheartening and surprising how much it could take out of you.

On a better note, we had a few visits from friends and family in late July and early August that brought some much needed delight to the house. It’s always a pleasure when people come to spend some time with us, since most of our friends and family still live in Illinois. Unfortunately, that also tends to add to the whirlwind of activities, and with our big England/Scotland/Ireland trip on the horizon it’s certainly been a stressful past few weeks.

Scotland Ahoy!

On that note, we’re going to the British Isles in a week! This time Friday we’ll be on a plane crossing the Atlantic. Neither Becca or myself has ever been, so we’re very excited to get to do this first together, and with Gideon too! I’d say we’re most excited to stop in Edinburgh, getting to see some of the beautiful architecture and towns is something we’re both looking forward too.

Work Updates

After coming back from Config it’s unsurprising that work has been busy. Not only were there lots of talks and updates to (and from) Figma that we had to discuss, share, and explore as a team, but UI3 also meant a pretty big change and impact for some people. I’ve mostly adapted at this point, but I’m sure we’ll still be feeling the impact and spend some time on coaching for a bit longer.

Fall also marks back-to-school, which at an edtech company might as well be the holiday season. It’s our busiest time of year when we’re buttoning up final features and ensuring the product is as-good-as-possible for a smooth transition back into learning for both teachers and students.

On top of all of that I also officially stepped into my role as Lead of Product and Design Operations. The last few months have mostly been spent talking with team members about their experience to get a broad understanding of where we have problem areas and what sorts of improvements would make the biggest impact. We’re currently in full-swing for planning out the work our teams will be doing in Q4, and it feels like there’s never enough time for everything I want to get done in a day; but I guess that comes with the role, always looking for improvements.

Around the Web

Some interesting posts that I came across over the last few weeks:

40 thoughts at 40 - I’m a little late to this one, but It was a joy to read through Brad’s thoughts as he crosses this age milestone.
Traveling to technical events: A guide - As someone who is marginally obsessed with bags and travel gear it was super interesting to me to read about how Cassidy travels. I’ve also added the Topo Designs Rover to my “want to buy” list, so thanks for that.
Basic keyboard shortcut support for focused links - I feel like this post from Eric is so incredibly important. So often people don’t understand the vast array of things that come with simply using semantic elements. This sort of clear, explicit

The Blog

I’ve been able to stick to my goal of 1 post a week, though some weeks have definitely been harder than others. I also managed to finalize and push out a new site design. I’m quite happy with the overall feel of the site, although some actual headshots are likely in order.

Some of my personal favorite posts recently are:

Site Redesign Retrospective - I don’t often get to work on or talk about my own design work these days, so writing a post about designing, building, and reviewing my work was a nice change of pace.
Evaluating Design Success - Something that is top-of-mind right now in terms of Design Operations. When talking with my product and design teams, we need to know how we’re measuring the success of our changes.
CSS Architecture Archeology - This started out as a draft about separating structure and style in CSS and morphed into a meandering exploration of the CSS architecture models I’ve used over the years. I still want to write the post about style and structure, but this was a fun trip down memory lane.

Wrapping Up

So far this quarter has been incredibly busy and a little frantic. I’m very much looking forward to getting to unplug and spend some quality time relaxing and hanging out as a family on this trip, even if it’s a bit nerve-wracking being our first big international travel with the kiddo. I’m sure there will be plenty to catch up on when I come back, but that’s a problem for future me.