February 28, 2018 in Design, Findings, Thoughts

Dead Fish ≠ Code Export

This post is a response to a tweet critiquing the "code export" capability of design tools, and a talk called "Stop Drawing Dead Fish" that calls for better tools to allow artists to create visual art without code. Should designers code? Should artists code? It's a nuanced, interesting topic and I had some thoughts.

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November 22, 2017 in Tutorials+Tips

Advocating for Accessible UI Design

Although it is a hot topic in our industry, accessibility is not just up to developers! In this article I wrote for CSS-Tricks, I go through several non-technical accessibility tips developers can share with designers and content providers in order to advocate for accessible UI design on teams.

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November 3, 2017 in Research

Day 6, Algorithms: Sorting Algorithms in JavaScript

Algorithms have got a bad, scary, rap. And you know what? It's for good reason – understanding an algorithm is pretty doable, but implementing an algorithm in code of your own? It's hard. I went through writing some common sorting algorithms in JavaScript with lots of help from the Internet. Take a read!

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November 1, 2017 in Research

Day 5, Algorithms: Logarithms, Big-O, & Binary Search

If I told my 16-year-old, art student self I'd be writing a blog post about logarithms, I wouldn't have believed it. I've tried hard to avoid math for much of my life, yet here I am, not only learning about it but enjoying it! This post is an outline of what logarithms are and how they tie into computer science by way of Big O notation and binary search.

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November 1, 2017 in Research

Day 4, Data Structures: I Made a Hash Table

Apart from hashtags, my association with hashes is encrypting passwords in a database. That association is correct in terms of what a hash is, but there are also hash tables, hash functions, hash maps, and oh my gosh, more hash things for sure. Let's focus on a hash function and a hash table and building a rudimentary one in JavaScript.

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A diagram of a hash table if people's names

October 31, 2017 in Research

Day 3, Data Structures: Stacks & Queues

Stacks and queues are quite similar in that they are both linear and abstract data structures (meaning they describe the behavior of a different data structure, like a linked list or array). All the action in terms of adding and removing items happens at their ends, and their main difference is in which end that adding/removing happens.

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October 28, 2017 in Research

Day 1, Data Structures: Linked Lists

Linked lists are very similar to arrays in that they are a one-dimensional list of elements. Unlike arrays, however, in a linked list, you cannot just jump to index 4, you have to walk through the list, starting with the "head", or the first element in the list, and work your way through to the fourth element. They are very useful for lists where you need to add/remove elements, but not so useful if you need to search elements.

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Illustration of a linked list

October 27, 2017 in Inspiration

Podcast Recommendation: A Piece of Work

Abbi Jacobson, the long-haired one from Broad City, has a podcast about modern art. It’s fantastic. As an art school graduate who doesn’t remember very much about art, I absolutely relate to the podcast’s sentiment: It’s everything you want to know about modern art but were afraid to ask.

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