brain function collapseWojciech Dobry
aka brain function collapse
I’m a designer. People have asked me to be more specific for more than a decade, and I keep declining.
I was coding before I was designing — I sold my first website in 2001, at eleven — and I trained as an architect, which mostly taught me to think at scale. Code has been a design tool the whole time: the shortest path between having an idea and finding out whether it’s any good.
What this is
It’s a notebook. Finished articles sit next to sketches, unfinished games, and screenshots of things that will never be more than a screenshot. The bar for putting something here is one good idea, not a case study — I’d rather write the article the work taught me than a retelling of the project.
What I’m researching
Everyone has settled on chat and voice as the interface to a language model, as though conversation were the answer rather than the fallback. I don’t think it is. A model needs interfaces built for the task in front of it, the way every other capable instrument does.
Would you rather talk your race car around the track, or drive it behind a HUD that already knows what you need? Conversation is what you reach for when there is no instrument. Building the instrument is the work.
Where I’d start
- essayLet's talk about gradients A gradient editor from 2017 that still does what today’s design tools can’t, and a short argument about why.
- productPhase A prototyping tool for designers, designed before Figma existed. The first thing I point at.
- deep diveSee the Music Audio visualization from first principles. The most me of anything here.
The rest of it
There isn’t much of a line between the work and the rest of my life. With infinite time and money I’d do the same things, with more electronics in them. The non-work part is my wife, our dog, and hills to walk up. I produce music now and then, which is where the visualizing habit comes from.
Elsewhere
Open to a couple of outside engagements a year. Otherwise, say hi.