Case notes
5 min read
Vale's hikers book huts at the trailhead with almost no connection. Designing for that made the app faster for everyone.
Most of Vale’s bookings happen where the signal ends. So we set a rule before drawing anything: every screen must work offline.
That meant storing the hut list, maps and bookings on the phone, and queuing requests until a connection appears.
We also set a weight budget of 180 kb for the first load, which ruled out most of the heavy map libraries.
The side effect surprised us: people in cities rated the app faster than any travel app they used.
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Craft
5 min read
The screen most people see on day one is the one we design last. I've started with it on every project for two years, and it keeps changing the product.
Research
6 min read
Four mornings on a clinic front desk taught me more than a month of interviews. People describe where it hurts, not what they need.
Systems
7 min read
Components are the easy part. The hard part is agreeing what 'primary' means, and writing it down where people will find it.