Fiona Lai
banner
spicyfiona.bsky.social
Fiona Lai
@spicyfiona.bsky.social
230 followers 400 following 87 posts
an ever-changing designer. In(terweb)trovert.
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
"What I like" is such a wide variation...
On the way, walking passed the cafe and i second-guessed if i really, really needed that almond croissant + ice choco... Walked along and there's a CBA ATM, so obviously it's meant to be that I get cash out.. used their cashless withdrawal feature, and hurrah, i got my 🥐+ice choco = venturing day😋😆
Didnt have my physical cards/wallet on me, so spent 30 mins trying to add my bank cards to Google Pay/Wallet whilst commuting, and it kept rejecting... didn't have time for help/knowledge articles to resolve the problem..
people, people, throw yourself in situations and all kinds of situations!🤣 it's the way to really emotionally test moments - seriously! No AI can help you out on this!
Reposted by Fiona Lai
Another is a business card organiser for the phone books. Now it's QR codes to scan for🫠
Using a landmark when you tell someone where to meet after mentioning the street names.
What’s a real thing from your childhood that kids these days would find completely foreign?

Like, how we used to be able to walk right up to the gate to meet our family coming off a flight.

Or how we had to pick a spot to meet at the theater BEFORE we went.
Seeing Marcus getting to learn from Chef Luca, Richie getting to learn from Jessica and Chef Terry and even Carmy getting to learn from Chef Thomas Keller in The Bear. I really wonder if most industries would have this type of exposure for someone to learn from another.
Reposted by Fiona Lai
New blog post: On Freedom, Curiosity & Happiness

…Where I contemplate the intricate relationship between my personal life and the work I do, what kind of values I believe in, and what’s next after resigning from my full time position in the Nord Design System team

arielsalminen.com/2025/on-free...
On Freedom, Curiosity & Happiness
I have been recently contemplating the intricate relationship between my personal life and the work I do, particularly how these domains inevitably get intertwined and influence one another....
arielsalminen.com
the best taste of research
play is literally research
Reposted by Fiona Lai
“When you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it… so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and …takes its place in the web of nature.”

— Christopher Alexander
(A Pattern Language, 1977)
And it wasn't even planned obsolescence, literally a newly purchased a couple of days and faulty. Manufacturing production quality dropped😮‍💨
In stark contrast to how Apple handles device repairs (that's under warranty) compared to Samsung, makes a painful temptation to return back to that brand of a hardware even though i know isn't worthwhile, but damn their hardware support process/Retail rep hits the mark on basic human support.
TL;DR - two different hardware items are within warranty. One device (the retail rep) was able to assess & get it replaced. The other device that retail rep tells me to go to another store for a walk-in technician assessment, then that will either get replaced or not.
I've had the worst luck with hardware products and it shows the hardware-product-service/maintenance support continues to be underrated.
Forget all the software "advancements" when your hardwares aren't even capable to last for at least a few months!
Reposted by Fiona Lai
people will soon be selling Workflows
Reposted by Fiona Lai
Andy Bell @bell.bz · Jun 10
The last two "big" announcements from Silicon Valley:

1) Figma sites: inaccessible mess
2) Apple Liquid Glass: inaccessible mess

I can't actually remember the last time Silicon Valley came up with something that was actually good.
Reposted by Fiona Lai
Apple changed the Liquid Ass YouTube thumbnail 😅
Reposted by Fiona Lai
If you can't make new products that people want, just charge them more for the old products you made when your company still knew how to make software.
um thanks Google for charging me for something I didn't ask for?
"Four equal sides of a plane" technically.. a cross/plus works😉🤣
Reposted by Fiona Lai
Some might say I'm being too harsh on Figma but I actually think I'm not being harsh *enough.*

For better or worse, Figma is the industry-default design tool. When they select their priorities, it communicates to designers *what they should consider important* both as a role model and as a tool.
We're time traveling back to 1997 today, when WISYWIG editors were all the rage. In the decades since, web technology has clawed its way from that primitive state with semantic HTML that made accessibility possible and let content drive appearance rather than vice-versa.

Then Figma blew it all up.
Figma Dreamweaver
The dream of being able to generate working websites will remain out of reach until UX redefines its practice around semantic structure rather than layouts.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
"I hope people have big TVs at home now. I think they do"
...boyyy, not everyone has the affordance.
but now slowly I'm seeing changes in my Personal Pro plan..