Alan: so I've been remote working for,
I left my corporate job
in
2002, 2003.
That was, Sun Microsystems,
which obviously don't exist anymore.
Not, not in the way they
used to.
Anyway, I guess there's shelf the shadow of their former self.
and
So I was, I, I sold the little web app that I made then, and I worked for
that company for a little bit, but it was
pretty much there was an
office in a cool part of London.
And it was.
it was.
going,
if you
want to hang in London, it was those, the owner of
the company lived
like a few minutes walk away from the office and it was like
a four person, five person.
And we kind of just
went to
the office if we felt like it.
And so I think from that
moment on,
I've never
been a,
an office person.
I just have a, either it's been,
I go in, because I want some social interactivity or
there's something that we need to talk about together.
It's just easier, especially, you know, video
conferencing.
It wasn't really as good or It didn't really exist in the same way back then.
And there was the, the, the previous job I had here was through
the, there was the first time
since then that I've actually been like daily going into an
office and it would took some getting used to
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Alan: And I think that the thing
is
for remote
working is a
company has
to, they have to buy into it like big time, not
a dipping their toes in and say, well,
you
know, it's not really working.
You've either got to
commit to it and change
your working practices to, to take it remote first.
Or,
you know, there's gotta be a, a definite
goal in
mind, rather than just
seeing what
happens, whether that's like a hybrid goal
or,
You know, some kind of flexible system, but it has to be a stated thing that
you want to make work rather than just, oh, well, it didn't work out right.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So for now I'm having to commute a couple of days a week and next week
it's going to be three days a week.
And so, Yeah.
I don't think they are planning to fully support remote work for now, even, even
though they've had a long time to evaluate it and to see the effectiveness, because
work has gotten done, you know, everyone's been working and you know, it hasn't
really made that much of a difference.
And certainly for certain specifically for certain types
of jobs, so certain roles, right.
That make it super easy to just do the work remotely.
You, don't have to be in the office, but they're not even differentiating
that they, they they're throwing a blanket statement and everyone has
to come into the office eventually.
So, I'm working on that though.
I'm actively looking for a different role somewhere else and I'm not planning
on staying there for very long time.
So
Alan: I mean,
Mario: I've been there for a long time already, so I it's time to move
Alan: you, you know, there's, there's no one knows that you know what,
that, what will happen kind of thing.
You can make very strong predictions about how they're dealing
with this.
Right.
So,
Mario: Yep.
Yep.
Alan: Yeah.
I mean, I,
I, I saw her on the news about, you know,
apple saying that, you know, it's like, we're, we will not be
becoming a remote first company.
Right.
Pretty much.
I
mean, you,
you, it's a strange one because
I guess, you
know, they've just spent all of this
money on
that
campus, that gorgeous building.
And
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: it, I can't blame them if I had spent all that on
that.
And I think apple has such a, a, a
distinct culture goal that, that it's sad in one way That you know,
they, they seem to not be willing
to, to find some
medium.
But I,
if, if I lived
close, I'd probably want to.
go into that office.
That was probably a a
strong desire to
go there if I was there because you know, the
facilities and things
are somewhat different, once you've
tasted
the flexibility of remote work Even after it's hybrid or whatever, then it's really
difficult to go back to
thinking that you
have to be in a particular place at a particular
time.
So many days a week, it's like, well, I, it always kills
me that I don't
know
how
people get things done because
how do they,
I it's, yeah.
When I was going to start to going
into the office again, every day as a real, real job, I guess.
I,
was, I, I don't know how all of the things that I was doing, I don't know when I'm
supposed to do them anymore
because they just slot into natural ebbs and flows of your day.
But to be put on the spot and say, no, you will be here a particular time to.
do a
particular thing.
It's like, but what if I don't want to do that?
Or what if it's not the right time for me to do
that?
Right.
It, it felt such a
I guess if you've always
done that that's normal and you don't
question it so much, but when you've not done it for so
long, and then someone's put in this position, it's like,
why.
Mario: Yeah, Yeah.
and I can understand if a certain role requires that you are
physically present at a location.
Right.
And I can see apple, for example, they, they build hardware, right.
They design hardware.
So I can imagine that's, you know, you can't do all of that
remotely a hundred percent.
You have to be present.
and there's I don't even, know, what, you know, kind of work really requires
to do that I mean, I can imagine, but, but I can only imagine that you cannot
be a hundred percent remote if you're, if your role is, you know, designing
hardware and testing things And working with hardware, but, but there are certain
roles, That You know, lend themselves to be remote if you're
just writing software and you're just, you know, coding all the time.
I mean, why not?
You can be anywhere and meetings are conducted virtually
anyways, especially nowadays.
Alan: Yeah.
we kind of got used to that.
I mean, they're not necessarily optimal.
And I
think I think there's still a lot of learning to be done with regards
to how we approach online meetings
and
things.
So but again, that's, that's, that's one of the things I
want to try and solve with dot
plan or at least provide an alternative that is,
It offers different types of benefits.
I mean, the, the big goal for for dot plan for me was to try to try to
reproduce the serendipity that happens in an office.
And, I think, that was
a big shock for me
about returning to office life was there's a lot that you
miss by being.
Completely remote.
And I didn't realize
that so much before I went back
to it and just people talking on a phone call and the other
side of the
office, you've you
pick up things and you're like, are we working with them?
Hold on, who who's
doing that?
And I should probably be involved because I know
something about that, but because you weren't involved with it,
sometimes it's not known, are
you again, if you're
talking to somebody about a technology, somebody across the other side
of the office is like, hold on.
I've I've I know about that.
And that just
gets lost often in remote work, because everybody is doing their thing.
And unless it's assigned to
you, or unless it's made explicit that
we're looking into a thing, then you just don't know about it.
And that's
that, that,
so the previous
company that.
I
spent, like six or seven years working for remotely, I Three
of the staff at a conference.
And, but the
rest of them that the other 30 something people I never met, we, I, I never
even spoke to the majority of them.
It was purely text-based
communication.
And
it's great.
You know, I, I have some
really good friends.
I know it was
probably the best working environment
that I've ever had in terms of trust and
understanding
between each other.
But it was, there was a lot
of serendipity lost there because you just don't know what's going on, unless you
become communicative in a particular way, you just disappear into the background.
And so th the, the whole, the whole premise of me starting to up plan was I
want to be able to make it easy for people to share what they're working on, what's
going on without making it like formal, you
know, without me writing a report saying we are thinking about
this thing, and if anybody has
any input, please, that it's like, well, I'm looking at this.
And then people.
That's interesting to me.
So I wanted to try to
form a different way of that
serendipitous communication.
That's like a in , non direct
Mario: Right, right.
Indirect, indirect.
Alan: Non explicit.
So it's, there's still some ways to go, but it's interesting with
it kind of skipping all over the
place today.
But I had a,
We had some communication with one of the beta users here
in Fukuoka and his explicit,
Reason
for wanting to try this out, try using
dot plan was he wasn't, didn't feel on top of what his stuff we're doing.
and it's like, well, that's exactly what we're trying to solve it.
So he.
I don't want to say
hesitant, but he was somewhat unconvinced when we started the trial.
He's like, I'm happy to try it because I want to solve this.
I want
to make this better.
I don't know if what you're doing is the answer, but I'm happy
to try it, to see what happens.
His big worry was that his staff wouldn't do this.
You know, it, or they would take it with you know, begrudgingly
do it rather than buy into it.
And so we were talking to him about a feature that we're trialing with him
only him because he had a specific request and I'm like, I'm not sure
if this is part of this needs to be part of the product in the future,
but I'm willing to give it a go and
see how it fits in.
So it's this small feature that I added for him.
And it's just behind a feature flag so he can use it.
And so we said, well, you know, how is the other thing?
And he's like, oh, that's great.
You know, that.
Almost like not a problem anymore.
I'm more interested in this new feature and the fact that the dot plan is.
Providing the benefit and it's solving that problem that he had already.
He's already thinking about the next
challenges.
And that was, that was a big like, oh, hold on.
The fact that he's now reliant on this, the company has kind of accepted
this.
This is just part of the way
they work now was like, oh
wow.
He's, it's weird because you now looking
at the next problems and he's almost like skipping ahead.
Oh, it would be better if we, if we could do this and
say, yo, hold on.
I've got to convince everybody else at
this first step first.
So
Mario: Well, that's nice.
Alan: absolutely.
It was really like
validating
felt very reassuring to think that especially someone
who was hesitant and unconvinced to start
off with and especially, it was like, there's going to be like pulling
teeth, getting my staff to do this, but they're doing it and they seem to
have so the next step is we're trying to arrange another meeting
to go in and talk to him in
person.
Hopefully try and get his staff's feedback as well, because it's, it's great.
If it solves his problem, I want
to know how the staff feel about it now.
That's the next thing we need to understand.
So it's like, it's great if he's happy, but I don't
the staff happy as
well.
So
that's yeah, it felt really good to
get
that that
just that validation of like, yeah, of course it's working.
So that was exciting.
That was a good bit of new this news this
week,
Mario: That's awesome.
Can you describe the feature?
Are you at a
Alan: the feature that that we've built for him.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, it's the,
it's, it's pretty simple.
It's, it's a time tracker.
It's a timecard system.
So
Japan, I may have mentioned this before, but Japan has a labor law rule
that if you're running
less than.
10 million yen.
If it's an office job, if your
unit learned that less than 10 million yen
per year, a
hundred K or, and you're not a director level employee then you
have to keep timecards.
Mario: Yeah.
I remember you mentioned mentioned that.
Yeah.
Alan: so I mean, it's to stop overwork
and stop people being taken advantage of in terms of their office hours.
And he said, would they
currently have a complicated system with like, there's a clocking machine?
There's people making notes of
things.
There's people writing messages
in
like a slack type thing.
Yeah, I'm starting work, I'm stopping work.
And he's like this, this takes a lot of
time to aggregate this.
There's gotta be some something you can, and because the way they're
using dot plant is
it.
think I mentioned this before, but again, different people seem
to be using it in different ways and I'm trying to now figure out
what's the quote unquote right way.
Right?
There's it works
differently for different people
works
well in different ways for different people.
But the way they're doing it is they're doing a morning and an evening.
Check-in so first thing in the morning, they say, this is what I'm
going to, this one they plan to do.
And then in the evening, this is what I've achieved.
That's that
I'll come back to an interesting point about that in a second, but
that's what they're doing and that works well.
So he's like, well, can't we just say I'm starting work and
then I'm stopping work and record those times.
And that gives us a,
Like a recorded list of when
people start and stopped work.
Can we use that?
And I'm like, well,
that you don't necessarily know.
I want to tie
that to an official clock-in and clock-out, but the certainly
overlap there between the systems.
Right.
And I'm like, I, I didn't want to build I didn't want to build a
time-tracking system to be on that.
That was like the, almost like the opposite goal of dot plan.
I
wanted to produce something that was, that didn't feel formal.
Didn't feel like something you had to do.
It was more of
a,
getting a benefit from it.
But at the same time, but then I
started
thinking of the aspect, you know, there's a lot of
Movement
behind,
you know, recording what you've done as
a productivity and you know, personal tracking
kind of tool.
Like, you
know, what's, how long did I spend on that?
And you know, yourself, you know, I started to try doing
like, time-blocking just
to try to
control the amount of what I spent my time doing, because
it's easy to either lose time
on something that isn't important or,
You know, I'll waste time.
Looking at Twitter, right.
Or
or or just
working too much, you know, that's the other thing as well, you
know, we, we, we've mentioned, you know, things about just being
able to be aware of how much time you're spending.
And I, so I kind of got back to this
Came to this realization that it might be relevant because if you're adding
what you're working on, what you're
doing and what you've achieved, then being able to correlate this with
some kind of time based system that could be personal benefits
as well as corporate benefits.
Right.
You know,
so the socially something I was going to maybe mention is I'm curious what you
think about how you respond to people's requests for features, because in this
case, it's, you know, he said, I'd really like a time-tracking
system as part of this.
And I like this, isn't what I want to build.
Right.
I don't want to build a clock-in and clock-out system.
You know, this is not how I, I know remote working doesn't work well, if
I have to plug in at eight 30 in the morning and clock out at six but at
the same time, the more I thought about it, I just let it bubble for quite a
long time before agreeing to build it.
I was like, let me think about this.
I don't want to commit before I before I understand the implications of
this, but I also didn't want to say no outright, but my first reaction
was no, I'm not building that.
And then before I, you know, that that was going on in my head as like,
there's no way I'm going to build that.
And so I just said, you know, let me think about this
for
awhile.
And, and it took probably about a week for me to convince myself
that there might be something in
it.
And again, I don't know if it is, but I kind of decided that the, the
spending X amount of time, again, a reasonable, I didn't I didn't want to
just go down a rabbit hole and build out this fully feature thing, but I
scoped a very tight version of this.
And I'm like, okay, if I built this, is that useful to you?
Yes.
He said I'm like, okay.
It's, it's very tightly scoped.
It's not a full-on, you know, time-tracking, it basically allows
you to start and stop a timer.
And either just a generic timer or one related to a project that
exists in the system already.
So, you know, dot plan now I'm moving to, like, the projects has been like a
central part of how the interface works.
And if you're a member of a project, you can effectively start a timer on a
project and at the time, and that's it.
And it just gives you a list of your times.
The account owner can see everybody's times and that's it.
And so we turn that on for him this week.
And so we will find out how useful that is to him, but just in using
that on my, for myself as well.
I'm like this isn't, it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel too heavy.
It's super lightweight, just lives in the, the menu bar at the top.
And I feel like have this extra quantitative data about myself.
Now, what I've been doing is like, I can see my, how I, the time I've
spent and it doesn't feel invasive.
It doesn't feel
Like controlling or anything.
It just feels informative for me.
So I think there's something in it and I don't know what that is yet, but
it's been an interesting experiment to
take somebody's request that I was not convinced about and S and just
iterate on it and play with it.
And I, I've got like, so many sketches here of like, okay,
how can I make this work?
That doesn't feel like I'm making a time tracking system, right.
I'm not, that's not what I'm doing, but how can I incorporate
those aspects into this and make it feel part of the same product?
And it's, it's worked out well so far.
I think I say I'm, I'm still not a hundred percent convinced,
but I'm like 90% convinced.
So I'm curious to know, like, so say for instance, you know,
someone comes to,
you with Fusioncast and says, you know, it would be great if it did
this.
And you're
like, that's not on my
roadmap at all.
I'm not really interested in doing
that.
What would you do
with that
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a tricky, it's a tricky thing to consider those
requests and give them a weight.
Right?
Give them relevance.
I think the key thing is I think you, you touched on that the key
is to have you have an idea of what your product needs to be.
And some of these requests may align really nicely with
your, your idea of the product.
And some obviously will not align, you know, at all.
So I think if there's a way that you can mold or shape that idea or that
suggestion in a way that it'll, it'll, integrate into your system in a more
seamless way, then you can do that.
I handle this in a similar way.
I, my first reaction is usually no, because because I, I have
an idea of what I want to do.
but you know, as long as It's a request of a feature that is, sort of,
related or tangentially, related to
Alan: not a completely different product.
Right.
But it's, it's, it's kind of just out there a little bit.
It's just a bit beyond the limits of where you ex what you planned to, do, right.
Mario: Yeah.
For example, with the thing with fusion cast is that it's a recording tool, right?
So I want to stay true to that and keep my course, in that direction.
And I don't want to deviate too much from that because I want to take care
of one thing and hopefully do it well.
Right.
It's just this one to, it's a recording tool.
it's not meant for editing.
It's not an editing tool is not, you know, so I've gotten requests
where, people suggest that maybe, you know, if they could edit, you know,
Alan: Automatically uploads to like Yeah.
Distribution or something.
Right.
I can imagine
the request.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
exactly.
And so it's not, It's not a it's not an editing tool.
So I, unfortunately I have to, say no to, those.
but there are some other requests where even if it's not directly related to
recording, but if in some way it enhances the experience of recording, then,
you know, I can consider that maybe implemented as suggested or, shape it in
a different way that kind of, Integrates better with, with my main mission.
and I and I think that's kind of what you touched on earlier where, okay.
your first reaction was no, but then, okay.
Let me think about how I can kind of make it work and, have that thing that feature
bring more value into your core mission,
Alan: I mean, th th that's the interesting thing about this, you
know, by embracing something that
Not embracing it, but, but giving it
space to, to at least try to, live I've touched on
something that I think could become kind of core.
You know, the, the, especially this idea
of you know,
this, this of self of,
of recording, not
just for other people what I'm doing, but also
having the I mean, even using dot
plan for me, the company of me is actually useful having
this log of what I was doing last week.
And just seeing
full patterns
appear in that is actually very interesting.
And seeing
you can see your mood changes because, you know, mood tracking built in as well.
So not just for
From a a
manager company, you know standpoint, but just
from.
And how am I, doing?
I can almost see the ebbs and flows in my own work.
You know, how much time did I spend on each project?
And again, you'll see by
doing this, I,
I I,
want to try some visualization of this, but we can already see the
patterns in the list
of data of hold on.
I was really focused on this
thing
this week are, you
know,
that
period
of time and you can, it'll be
interesting to
do some visualizations on it.
So by seeing that it's not, not,
completely out there, it's actually has some interesting side effects is paid off.
I, think.
So I say I'm not
a hundred percent sure that it's going to
exist in it's in the same format to this right now, but I'm becoming more
convinced that it is part of what dot plan is
becoming.
And I think the.
and again, when I started on
dot plan, I had a a reasonably
strong idea of what I thought the
product was.
And it's really interesting to see how it's because it's I guess in
some ways it's, it's not a tightly
defined, I it's probably
the,
I think I've said this before as well.
It's probably
the
wrong project to do as an Indi, like a
project.
Right.
You know, it should be super nice like tightly scoped something that, you know,
it's, it has hard edges.
But by kind of approaching something
that is fuzzy and I've got an idea in this space,
but it
isn't strongly defined and typed and it doesn't have hard ideas.
It's it, it has potentially long tendrils
reaching out into other
projects.
It makes it
It makes it tricky.
But it also feels super rewarding to see where it goes
because it's, it's, it's growing.
I mean, the fact that, you know, projects, weren't an
integral part of the, the, my original plan and it's become kind of core
just by seeing how people use it
and how I use it.
And you can see these patterns coming out.
And again, if I was a different
type of person, I probably could have done this before I started coding.
I mean, this is, you
know, I guess what service designers and user experience designers do, right?
You know, this, all of this
would have been prototyped out and kind
of worked with clients.
And, but the easiest way for me
to, to do and learn is to write code, you know, I can write code
easy, then I can draw on Figma or
easier than you know, doing, interviewing clients with prototypes and like, well, I
can build it for you and see how you use it as the easiest way of learning for me.
And
I am sure other people will work differently, but it's been a,
an interesting journey so far.
And it's really interesting to see it's becoming clearer to me.
Well, what it is, even though my initial is not far, but
it's different from my original
concept.
It feels now
like
it is becoming much more in focus and now it's just a matter of like,
you know, getting it perfectly in focus and, and building it out and
building stuff, which I now know now no needs building when, before I wasn't
even aware that it needed to exist,
Mario: Yeah.
And it sounds like you, you, in analyzing the request and how the
feature would work, you kind of broke it down to parts that, oh no, not
parts, but you shaped it down to a way that it would work with what you have,
what your, the rest of your product.
So it's not, so it doesn't become a whole other product.
It's just an added feature that works well with the main
purpose of your, of your product.
Alan: exactly.
And I think that was
I also want
to
buy by not committing to building a
on time tracking system, but what's the what does a
time tracking system look like in the context of dot plan?
And, and it did take,
Took a good few weeks for
me
to figure that out, even at just a
high level, you know, sketch view.
And then seeing it actually come in and
just
be there and it
works.
It's, it's nice.
It feels good.
So I'm, I'm kind of interested to see
how this
works out just as a yeah.
It's, it's been an interesting experiment for sure.
Mario: Yeah.
Sounds like it.
That's awesome.
Alan: Anyway, how's your what's been going on there.
Mario: So Haven't had any time to work on product.
I need to, I think I talked about this last time.
I'm still working on other things besides the product itself.
I'm getting a little impatient and I need to get back to
working on the product itself.
And so I think I'm going to be doing that, this week next week, the latest, I've
been focusing on the marketing website.
I got some feedback from some folks And it was good feedback to, improve
the marketing site improve the message.
so I've been working on that and one of those things was.
Include a video, which I was planning to do.
And we talked about that so, I finally spent some time
recording a video for that.
it's just a quick demo of how fusioncast works from logging in
creating a podcast entry, creating a session, joining a session, have
someone else a guest join and.
Just showcase real quick, you, know, backup, recording, progress,
local recording in progress.
It's uploading at the same time And that's it.
And, just showing the recordings I get generated from that quick
session, you know, It's about three and a half minutes or so.
I'm still editing a few parts here and there.
It's almost ready to go.
And as soon as I finish it I'm going to update the website with that, And I have
data to copy a little bit on the website.
a little bit of styling as well, just to make it a little more, alive.
One of the, yeah, one of the feedback that I got was that it was a little
too grayish you know, kind of
Alan: that was good.
That was going to be my only
response to it is yeah, it, it needs a bit of color and that needs to look a
lot.
I mean, it's.
it's.
Especially with something like
a podcast that you don't want to it to feel like a
a boring corporate thing, right?
The people who are recording podcasts
are generally
a bit more lively And, upbeat, right?
So you want to fall into match that, right.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
So I did add a little bit of more color to it.
Not, not, yeah, not a whole lot, but
Alan: not being a designer at color is, I mean, that's one of
the reasons DotPlan is blue and purple is it's difficult to make a
massive mistake.
All of a sudden everything's indigo.
Right.
And I experimented briefly with trying to do a dark theme and I'm like,
okay, I need to learn a few things before I venture into that world.
Yeah.
It's without having any design background it's it's very easy to screw up with
a color, right.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Dark, dark mode presents a unique challenges and I've experimented with
that a little bit with my own website.
I created a dark theme.
if your system is in dark mode, then my site renders in dark mode,
but it's a really simple design.
I don't, I didn't use that much color.
And kept it really simple because it is challenging to
have color on a dark mode, a
Alan: Yeah, exactly.
And it's even, even some of the big sites, you know,
like I mean, get to a bar now
has a dark mode and stuff and some things work well and other
things you're like, nah, it
feels just feels off, right?
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
They, sometimes they use, these sort of neon colors on
dark mode on dark themes and, it doesn't look all that great.
It looks really colorful, but it's a little too much, you know,
Alan: Yeah.
There's a fine life.
W what,
that's actually, one of the things I'm trying to add to a to
dot plan at the moment is, so at the moment, the only place color
is used outside of the purple
is for your, like the default user icons.
So, you got a little circle.
So I'm trying to add this as a, an identifier, a way of,
Identifying visually projects from one
another, because projects are becoming like the, say, like a
core aspect of the, the, of the check-ins and things now I want
to try to tie colors to those too.
So at the moment
I'm just doing it as
like a I wrote a thing which basically takes a
string, does a hash, And you get a a, a hue based on it.
So you can set the saturation and yeah.
You know,
Mario: Yeah, oh
Alan: hue, saturation.
Yeah,
Mario: a hue saturation.
and what is it, contrast?
Alan: Maybe something like that.
so so I just vary the hue,
Based on so it always looks ish, right?
Because it doesn't look too stand out.
It's just reasons subtly enough that it's it
looks colorful, but it doesn't look too out there and then have it.
So you can
just choose a different one later.
But at the moment I'm
just
taking the the ID and something else and creating a hash from it,
using that
To see the to create a hue.
And, and it's nice.
Just, Just,
actually suddenly having a bit of color appear on
the
screen
in both tags.
And,
Like the, the project view it's suddenly
gives the, it makes
it feel more
real.
And, and it
also, I feel
like
I'm
my boring indigo and
white or rather gray 100,
Background certainly paid off
because the colors all work, having just colors.
If I'd already
gone
with a strong
opinionated color scheme for the rest of the project, it would be like, oh my
God, someone just knocked over a box of
Crayola.
Right.
But because everything
is
kind of blend to start off with having
just these little injections of color, actually, I was
pleasantly surprised how good it looked and I'm like, okay, this
I feel like, I, I feel like I planned it, but I didn't it was just.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
Color can be tricky and design as a whole is, is just.
a whole other field, especially for us
coders.
Alan: Adam's a refactoring
UI book.
Mario: I have the book I haven't gone through most of it.
I only started and did a little bit of
Alan: I read it when I
first yeah.
When he first
released it.
So I'd probably go back and reread it, but it's interesting how
certain things
a bit.
Mario: wait, I'm sorry.
No, I don't, have it.
I was thinking of a refactoring to collections.
The older book that he wrote, not you're talking about the UI.
Alan: did, Oh, Okay.
I knew, I don't
know
that one
though.
Mario: I don't have that one.
Alan: It's highly recommended.
Cause again, I read
it
first
when it was, when he first released it And
And I, I,
found it again the other day.
I was
tidying up some file
system
and I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.
And, and it's funny how
certain things seem to have, I have actually learnt it as in
things which he's mentioned.
I'm like, I do that
now.
It just, in terms of there, there was
one of
the, I think it was very early on, simple thing about just using as opposed to using
texts to as headers and things as
in like, you know, title project, and then I think using the
colors, weight, and,
And colorize weight and layout to
to almost like state what this is.
And there is a
relation to the
item.
I've been trained to do that a lot
more
and, and I didn't realize that
I was
doing it, but it, was just reading
it.
You know, I just scanned through the file when
I found it.
I'm like, ah, I I, apparently
I learned something there.
Mario: you internalized
Alan: apparently.
So,
That just really stuck with
me that like, oh yeah, I'm labeling everything.
Why am I labeling
gala the fields when it's obvious when you
weight things and you lay things out properly that you don't need
the
label.
Right.
So
I that apparently stuck with me.
So I feel as though there's a whole
lot more that I
should review in there and
learn again.
So it's, it's again, I like the
style of that,
just in terms of the,
Kind of like the,
not cookbook, but a
reference thing.
You, you
th there's, there's just things to learn, not like,
It's not a Woody you know, like novel, it's say.
Read these things, internalize
them, be a better
designer.
That, that, that resonates with me.
I like that style.
And if I was to write another, yeah, exactly.
I supposed to write another book
again which I've set up
set twice.
I'd never do.
And I ended up doing
but I really like to
do
something in that style.
That is, is something That
you can refer to
and, you know,
spend five
minutes looking through it and go, oh
yeah.
Okay.
I got something
from it.
you know, and, and
it's, it's not you don't have to sit down and work through it.
It's just like something that you can pick up at any page and learn something.
I like that that style.
Mario: Yeah.
Color is and design as a whole
is a whole other world.
And, I've been trying to get better on that and little by little, you know,
every project anything that I work on, I try to learn something new and apply it
and, improve in that side of things, but
still.
Alan: to that also, do
you use like Figma or a design tool to S to sketch, to, to
design your layout before
implementing it?
Or do you just use it designing code,
Mario: Sometimes I use Figma.
And sometimes I don't and I've been trying to use it.
even if I don't use it.
even if I don't do a lot in it.
I at least start and kind of get an idea of what I want to
do.
And then I just jumped right into The browser and just design
in the browser, especially with tailwind is a lot easier, you know?
Alan: Yeah.
exactly.
Mario: So, if I'm working on a project for a client or, you know, or something
like that or for work, I usually do go more in depth using Figma.
but for my own stuff, I usually just start, you know, I just start with
something And once I, I know I get an idea then I, just jump right?
into code.
There's been times that I've spent more time on Figma, just designing a
small feature, like subset of a page, you know, like, a row of, items with
buttons and I just want to see how they line up and, what spacing to
use and what little icons to use as labels kind of thing, instead of words,
just using icons and you know, that.
kind of stuff.
but yeah, I, I go back and forth between Figma and just, designing in the browser.
Alan: right.
I, I guess the my reason for asking is because I don't
use Figma at all and, and I don't, And, I'm not
comfortable familiar enough with it.
I tried using it a few days ago, a few weeks ago and realized
that I
couldn't get it to do anything.
And I'm like, okay, do I
invest time to learn Like a
prototyping tool or I
literally just, you
know, right in tailwind now it's like, well, I know I need a box
here and it's this
wide and
this things are going to go at this corner.
and
I just write
it
with that with tailwind and from a sketch.
So I'll just sketch on, paper and then go, okay.
I
know kind of how this is going to work.
and then visually I'll go,
okay.
That needs to be wider.
This needs to be, so I only.
do go direct
from a paper high level, weekly line
script sketch to,
To code.
And, and I'm wondering if I'm missing out
on something it's like, do I you know, spend a few days becoming
good with Figma?
You know, what will that
make
me w in the end, hopefully be faster and getting to the better design
quicker.
And then I'm just implementing the final design as
opposed to fiddling, which is what I do currently is like, I'll get it working.
And then I'll spend, you know, far
too much time fiddling with it to make it look right.
So I'm just curious as to
whether I should invest the time in.
Mario: I think it would be a good idea for you to
invest some time to learn the tool a little bit it can be useful, I guess it
really depends on the feature or what it is that you're designing sometimes the
color and, the icons and all that, helps a lot to do it in a design tool like Figma.
and it saves you time, but, in other situations, it, kind of slows
you down a lot because depending on what it is that you're working
Alan: I
mean, I, I sorry.
I was just gonna say the end In
previous company.
Yeah.
We, we, I would design effectively done by a designer in, in design and
then going
from that, and it's like, okay, I know exactly what
I
need to implement.
And then sometimes it's like, but I can't implement that based on
the system we have currently, you know,
it's like, well
that
that's not gonna fit.
and then
you end up with this back and forth.
So I'm just, I think maybe Figma
handles
that better maybe than in design.
Whereas I think in design.
is a
more
just graphical tool.
I'm
not too familiar
with the difference.
So I don't know.
Mario: Hm.
do you mean like interactivity or
Alan: I guess, I
guess my lack of understanding of Figma was when I started using it.
My assumption
was that I could design it and it gives me HTML and apparently I
was way off.
Mario: Yeah, I know it doesn't work
Alan: Because I see people do all these Figma designs and I've seen things shed,
and then I'm like, oh, interesting.
And then
it's like, hold on.
This is just a picture.
Oh yeah.
It's just a picture.
Which it was a a completely incorrect assumption on my part.
Mario: It doesn't do that.
It's just a design tool, but you do, it does have features or it does have
a feature where you can, create some interactivity so that if you hand this off
to a client, for example, you want them to get a feel for how the website navigates.
It can navigate from one page to, another.
Alan: a prototype kind of tool.
Right, right.
Mario: a prototype.
Yeah.
You can have links that are.
Live, you know, sort of speak and navigate the site.
So it gives you a,
good, kind of a good sense of
what navigation is going to be like.
that you can do, but it won't do code for you.
We
Alan: I discovered this quickly,
Mario: yeah, yeah,
Alan: yeah, I guess it's it was just a poor assumption on my part.
And then I, my question was, yeah, like, well, where does this fit into my process?
Because at the moment it doesn't fit into my process at all.
So it's, so it's like, do I change my process and learn to use that
as a, okay.
Do this before I start coding.
And you know, I'm, I'm always keen to improve my process and
techniques, so it's like, okay.
Do I say was probably, probably not a bad waste of an afternoon, right.
Mario: Yeah, yeah.
And Figma.
has a YouTube channel with a ton of videos.
Yeah.
I'll see if I can, I probably have a bookmark somewhere and you can go in
there and learn real quick the basics.
They have a ton of videos on
Alan: Cool
Mario: Yeah, I think it
would be good
for you to become familiar with it I find it that it's more useful when you have
to show a design to someone like a client
Alan: Working with a client or something?
Definitely.
Mario: Yeah.
then you definitely can take advantage of it and show a
client what a design will look
Alan: Before you go And, spend more time actually building it and fiddling.
Mario: Yeah, but with, with our own projects sometimes.
doesn't work to spend all that time,
just in design when you can, once you, get an idea.
and that's why I was saying the way I use that as I start and I kind of get an idea.
And once I, I kinda like what I see on Figma, I just leave it and jump on onto
coding and designing in the browser.
It's rare that I spend too much time in Figma for my own stuff.
I also use
paper and pencil quite a
Alan: going to say there is a there's an interesting
tool.
I don't know if it still exists, but when the very first iPhone
came out, Oh, not very first, but when you could start writing
applications for it, there was a, a prototyping
tool
that
you took a photo of a sketch and you
could effectively assign hot zones and
say, okay, if you push this thing, transitioned
to another sketch.
And so effectively created a prototype
based on sketches on your
PLP prototype on paper.
I think it was called problem probably still exists or something like it.
And
so the one of the first iPhone apps I designed, I did that.
And that was interesting because it
was such a designing for such a different format
was, was a big deal at
that point in time.
Right.
You know, responsive sites just didn't really exist.
And trying to design for like.
320
pixels when you used to 1024 was was a hold on VR.
I don't even know how
I'm supposed to put things on the
screen, this small whereas now it's,
you know, the opposite, right?
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: yeah, It it, that, that was, that was fun.
I remember doing that, but
yeah, especially again, if I'm, if you designed it,
for different break points, then being able to,
to do that visually and try different things without,
Having to fight with
CSS is probably probably worth doing
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Let's see, where were We I was telling you about the website and so I
Alan: was, we got distracted by
Mario: Yeah.
Oh, yes, that's right colors.
I kept it simple still because I, again,
I just want something that works, good enough for now that is aesthetically
pleasing, but maybe later on, once I have revenue coming in, I can hire a
designer and create something really nice, but for now, simple is good enough.
let's see what
Alan: going to have to start getting clients soon.
I'm going to keep harassing you about this
each call.
It's going to have start selling it.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm trying to get there.
and, trying to get there.
I did onboard one more podcaster.
yeah, got some good feedback already from them.
And I'm trying to get back to the product side of things to work on some of,
those.
And,
Alan: so close to the product, man.
It's so close.
Mario: I know, but You
know, this all of a sudden, for example, today, it was supposed
to it's it was supposed to start recording automatically and,
it did it for you.
and
so now I'm like.
I'm thinking what's going on.
I need to
go back And take a look at that
Alan: It's these little books.
I found one little thing
on one edge case on, on dot plan last night, and it's driving me up the wall.
Cause I'm too busy to
go and, look at it, but
it's like, I know if you push that
button and it doesn't appear very often, but
it's going to break.
It's really bugging me that it's like, nobody's probably gonna hit that button.
You know anytime soon, but it's really bugging me now.
Like that
century alert is just
there in
my email at the top.
And I'm like, ah, I don't know why
that's not working.
I have to go deeper
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: I need that, that stack overflow, AI
code gen, to go and fix it for me.
Right.
Mario: Oh yeah.
Right.
I saw that.
Alan: That's got implications.
I'm not sure what's, what's going to come with that.
But that's a, that's a whole bunch of ethical and technical worms
there kind of was, they just opened.
Right.
So
Mario: yeah.
Alan: don't even want to think about that, right?
Mario: it looks very impressive and it looks like
Alan: great demo.
Right.
Mario: It's a great demo.
and I'm sure a ton of work went into it.
AI powered and all that, but I don't know, it just makes me, I'm very skeptical
when it comes to tools like that.
Anything automated, at least judging by things that have come in the past, like,
Alan: getting syntax, highlights in working sometimes, you know, it screws up
all the time and I'm like, you know, if
syntax highlighting can't work, is it going to write my code correctly for me?
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah, And, you know, remember tools like Dreamweaver and you know, all these
tools that generate code for you and you end up with a mess or you end up with
stuff that you still have to rewrite or remove, or, you know, it's like, I dunno,
I don't, I don't have much faith in these kinds of systems, even though now.
Alan: I think,
there's going to be, it's super interesting to see and to
as a, like a
taste of potential futures, but yeah, my, my
more immediate reaction is like the, the ethics or
the you know, this has been trained on
open source code.
Suddenly this whole clean room codes
thing is blurry.
You know what happens?
That there's a potential for like, Back doors to
get learned.
You know, we already
know that this
is a real problem in the world already.
And yeah.
I'm, I'm,
less skeptical that it's not going to work.
I think in
certain
cases it will probably work too well, maybe.
I'm worried
about the implications of it with relating to software development as a profession
and in terms of security and
people taking shortcuts when probably they shouldn't, because we already
know people do that if it's an option.
So,
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: and that goes any
chance of yeah.
Code testing is like
in terms of
like interviewing, if people are doing
like oh yeah, write this code.
I'll just get the AI to write it for me.
See if we can get to that.
That'd be an
interesting bot.
Right.
See how many jobs a, an AI bot could get based on code interviews.
Mario: Yeah,
right.
Alan: get copy AI to actually
answer the interview questions and this thing to, to write the code for me and
see if I can get a job somewhere based on.
that.
Mario: yeah, yeah.
That would be interesting.
let's see, what else?
I think that's all I have, on my end of things, part of the website
also, I'll going back to the website is I created a change log
so that I can record, things that.
change from version to version and
Alan: Oh, nice.
That looks good.
The
you just, you said you're using Statamic.
Mario: Yes.
For the marketing
Alan: Nice.
Cool.
Cool, cool.
Yeah.
Cause,
I I know I
need to do some kind of change, like things as well,
especially since
we experimented with
this at my previous place and I forget the name of the,
did we use a service?
I think we started using, the service, then we brought it
in-house because it's like, we don't need, like, this is like
a list of things.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: and we had it in the UI as like
a notification bell thing.
Which, which, worked well, as
well, just because you know, if you're adding a feature or changing
some part of the UI, you want to draw attention to it.
Without being too yeah, if it's out there on some of the sites somewhere,
it's probably never going to get
looked at for.
So yeah, some way of showing it in the
UI is probably where I want to go
as well.
I haven't, haven't gone down there yet.
I'm still, I was looking at 'em
cause onboarding is still a, I say a, work in progress.
It's, it's, it's more of a, a massive overthinking
in
progress, I guess.
And that was
watching a funder site SaaS,
something I can't remember the name of it, but it basically does,
Like reviews of onboarding for other sites.
and
it's, it's super interesting to go through And you know, basically calls
out patterns that they're using or
like,
you know, just how are they.
People both in terms of signup and the
instruction process.
And that's
like, I think I've, I
think I've
done too much and I just need to build it.
Now.
Platoon was recently got to the point where I questioning every single thing I
do now, because it's like, I've
looked at too many examples and, too many
different ways of doing it that I'm like, I
have no
idea what's
right
anymore.
It was just so again, I probably just need to do version one and
then
iterate based on, you know, how that feels to me just cause there's, there's
no standard way.
Right.
so everybody does it differently and
everybody is some have pros and cons and
trying to come up with a hybrid of all of
them.
It's
just the, I
don't have time for,
so I'm just going to do
something and, yeah,
Mario: sure.
Alan: it's hard though, again,
especially with something like dot plan, that is one of the things that makes
the onboarding different or difficult is
I'm not just telling you
how to use the product, I'm telling
you what you should be doing in the product.
And that's the
point which I keep sticking on is
I think I talked about it last time, as well as that, you know, I don't
feel confident enough in telling
someone what they should be doing with their day.
But I also want
to present this in a way that makes them feel that there is a system to follow.
Right.
So,
That's the bit, which is, is just difficult to, to write.
so but again, I think I should probably just commit to what I've half done and
And then see how that goes.
Cause it's better than
what I had on what I have at the
moment, which is nothing, which is reselling them an email
saying, this is what we
probably should do.
Mario: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's a good idea to just commit to something and just stick to it.
People will find ways to use the product.
I mean, it's already happening where people are using it in different ways.
And you can probably address that with your either documentation or
knowledge base, and screencasts where you could potentially show different
ways to use the product, you know, like, you know, different, quick
demos and, you know, you could use it like this, you use it like that.
But Yeah.
sticking to.
Alan: What are you using for your knowledge base?
By the way?
Something
Mario: It's part of Outseta.
Alan: Oh, okay.
Of course.
Yeah.
Okay.
Nice.
Mario: Yeah.
It's part of Outseta.
And so I haven't done much there yet, but that's the plan.
Alan: because we've been again, my wife has been,
working on Japanese,
like instructions effectively, and I'm like, okay, I want to
take this out as we've just been doing them on separate pages within
What's the website thing using the London page
thing I'm using.
And and it's great
because she can just go and create a web page and build
this.
I'm like okay, is now there's enough content there that it
makes
sense to bring it into like a, a knowledge
base based on
that.
So I'm going to shop around and see what options I have there that
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: something that I w actually this
I've got, don't
try and make us another side project is I'd love a directory.
Indie alternatives.
Right?
Because I know that there's going to be somebody with a,
you know, a side project
that, that is a, you know,
$10 a month
knowledge base that I would love to support.
And I'm like, you
try and search for knowledge based
software on Google and in our,
even in
alternative to, or whatever the,
you know, they've review sites are.
And there's just so many that, and they're so flooded by the big
players
that if someone was like,
this is an Indy,
like this gets a, an official
indie approval stamp
of approval, then I'd be like, yeah, it may not be the most
featureful or complex, but it's, I would like to support the creators.
Right.
So
you'd like an Indy directory in the alternatives or something like that.
Mario: Yeah, that would be great.
I wonder if indie hackers has anything like
Alan: I
Mario: Cause that was that's, you know, it seems like that would be something, I,
mean, people do have.
Their projects on indie hackers.
Cause you can create a profile for your project.
And so I wonder if that's
Alan: Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll go and poke around on any hackers.
There's probably a good place to start.
But yeah, don't make, it's just resist.
Don't make it, don't make it Alex.
Mario: Yeah.
You can't focus on, on that right now.
Stay the course stay the course.
Alan: I was so
bad at
like, I
mean, as
a side thing on
that
as
well.
It's, it's amazing to me, just how
You know, I, I think I said before that, like, you know, ideas working on
something begets more ideas
and, you know, you th when you start,
you know,
you, if you're starting
a project, you're like, I don't know what to build.
As soon as you start building
something, they it's like a virus.
And it just spreads all of these potential things you could build.
Right?
Because you hit so
many ideas and roadblocks,
or like challenges, and you're like, oh man, this should
exist.
And I wish I had had that And
the list of
potential projects just explodes.
And it's amazing
to me,
the, the same thing happens
with like, just opportunities and context as well.
Right.
You know, if you
somebody is looking at going freelancing or something, it's
like, but I don't know who to
you know, I don't have any clients or any contacts
or anything.
By just suddenly announcing and talking to people about what you're
doing, like a side project or
something like this.
It's amazing how many
people have just reached
out to me about other work as
well.
And it's like, nah, I'm that, that the whole point is I'm
not doing this, but it's a,
it's, it's really it.
I can, I know this, but I'd kind
of forgotten it by just being
in a, in a, in the zone in
terms of working for other people.
I kind of to come back to this and also
to
come back to this like eight or nine years later,
just how much
more there is as well.
You know, like when I
was more public about what I was building,
you
know, eight to nine years ago, there was so
many
like, you know, requests, requests for coffee.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: You
know, brain picking as, as a service.
And
whereas now it's, it's, it's insane.
There's just so much work as so many more people wanting to build
things that it's, it's crazy, you know, that
your
moment you say you're building something, everyone's like, Ooh, we should talk.
And I'm like, no, I'm building my
thing.
So it's, if there is anybody that's
Yeah.
Like
on the fence of, you know, not knowing what to, what to build are being
scared
about, you know, finding
contacts
and things.
It's
just like
it's things
Mario: Oh
Alan: the moment you
start them
Mario: yeah.
That reminds me you had this other idea.
You had this other idea with
Alan: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I did fall.
I that's,
that's progressing slower
slowly,
just because of time.
But yeah, I
kind of.
I demo to it, to some people the other week.
And they were all like, oh my God, where do I buy this?
And I'm like,
okay, I really need to finish that up.
It's a really easy sell, which is kind of
Surprising, right?
Yeah,
exactly.
It's so yeah, I
kind of, I should get, get on that and and get it out because it's
working, it just needs wrapping up
into a
like, you know, product page.
And now as I've got
paddle access, that's a
very good point.
Now, as I'm a puddle
approval a person, then I could sell it.
Right.
Mario: Did they have to approve the product
Alan: Probably.
Yes.
Yeah, because actually that's a good point because this has
no, it doesn't have physical thinkers, just QR code.
Right.
So
I can, yeah, I should check on
that
because if I'm sure if it's, it's no big deal because it
meets the
same list of requirements as the as dot plans, so, huh.
Interesting.
Yeah.
cause that was one of my things is like to set up billing is always
like a little, but I guess once
I've done it for one thing it's easy to do
for another.
Mario: Yeah,
Just watch out for
getting derailed,
Alan: yeah, I know this
Mario: on that instead of your main, main project.
Alan: Cool.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: All right.
Mario: Yeah.
Alan: Me.
I'm just trying to my I'm having computer problems.
So I'm on battery at the moment and it's just down to 5%.
So I'm just going to see if I don't
Mario: Oh yeah, no worries.
Alan: Let me just find a what's the easiest way to do this.
Maybe if I put this in, hold on.
Okay.
Maybe that will work.
So yeah, I can't run my, I can't.
Oh, hold on.
It's going to pause for a minute while it does something.
Mario: All right.
Alan: I don't know what it's doing.
Everything's just hung so I can hear you, but I can't see anything.
Mario: There you go.
It's
Alan: I back.
Mario: I can see you and I can hear
Alan: I've got black screens at the moment, so, oh, here we go.
You're over there.
Mario: Ah,
Alan: So yeah, my 16 inch MacBook pro I don't know whether it's the heat or what,
but I can't run the internal monitor and the external monitor at the same time.
Without.
Mario: Oh, wow.
Ah, I see.
Can you hear me?