Jonas Downey

Jonas Downey

@jonas.do

Design Director @ Superhuman // Co-creator of Hello Weather. Ex-Figma, Twitter, and some other stuff. Puns always intended. he/him 🌐 https://jonas.do 🌞 @helloweather.com

3.8K followers631 following406 posts

Jonas Downey reposted

Erika Hall
@erikahall.bsky.social

A really uncomfortably topic professionally is that we are on the other side of a design bubble. Design Thinking didn't do the thing. A tremendous amount of dogmatic, uncritical thinking was happening, convincing workers that "design" was critical to "business success" without defining those terms.

Jonas Downey reposted

Alex Winter
@alexwinter.com

Replying to @alexwinter.com

It’s an unpalatable truth, but Meta, TikTok, and hopefully it goes without saying, X, aren’t sustainable to rely on for political amplification, cultural promotion/marketing or community organizing. It’s long past time for new platforms/means and to move on.

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Has anyone done a sociological study on why corporate jargon business-speak is so pervasive? Whyyyy do we do this? Business weirdo: "I'm not aligned. Can we circle back to sync again, and assign a DRI to put more wood behind fewer arrows?" Regular human person: "I disagree. Let's make it simpler."

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

wow Indigo is excellent, and highly customizable too. Combining social feeds is a hard problem, but this is so well done!

Cabel Sasser@cabel.panic.com

fwiw, i've really been enjoying using Indigo recently as a shared bluesky & mastodon client. the ui is super clean, it makes reading nice, and most importantly, it's great at crossposting. check it out! —me

apps.apple.comIndigo for Bluesky & Mastodon App - App StoreDownload Indigo for Bluesky & Mastodon by Aniline Applications Inc. on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Indigo…
Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

One upcoming feature in iOS 27 is a new "extra large" widget size, which might as well be an entire app at this point, because it's nearly the same dimensions as a full screen app. But who are we to question this? So, behold, the upcoming Super Mega widget for Hello Weather:

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Designing software in 2026: - Generative AI outputs bad design slop - The bad AI designs are poor facsimiles of actually good reference designs - But, users now falsely interpret the original designs as "evidence" of careless AI usage - So, now you have to revise previously good UI patterns 🙃

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Whenever something deeply stupid like this happens in software, I always wonder what went down internally. Was there a conversation in Slack about it? Was it demanded by executives? Who made the change? Did they protest? I hope the commit message was funny at least: "Rename lake (revert in 2028)"

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Every time I think, “ok, that’s the dumbest thing that could possibly come from the President of the United States,” a new even dumber thing appears and proves me wrong again

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Times when I most fantasize about quitting tech: 1. quiet sunlit mornings spent pondering the destructive effects of careless growth capitalism run amok, and mournfully reflecting on my direct personal contributions to these problems 2. trying to use Google Slides for literally anything

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Can't decide which is weirder: 1) the endless barrage of mind-numbing AI slop posts on LinkedIn 2) the surprising amount of positive engagement on said AI slop posts

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

If you haven't watched Phoebe Bridgers play a song with an epic band of kids, you should youtu.be/zfaVCiyyqTQ?is=J9-pn...

youtu.bePhoebe Bridgers: Lost Boys | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonMusical guest Phoebe Bridgers performs "Lost Boys" for The Tonight Show. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Stream now on Peacock: https://bit.ly/3gZJaNy Subscribe NOW to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: http://bit.ly/1nwT1aN Watch The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Weeknights 11:35ET/10:35c Get more The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: https://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show JIMMY FALLON ON SOCIAL Follow Jimmy: http://Twitter.com/JimmyFallon Like Jimmy: https://Facebook.com/JimmyFallon Follow Jimmy: https://www.instagram.com/jimmyfallon/ Follow Jimmy on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@jimmyfallon Follow Jimmy on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jimmyfallon THE TONIGHT SHOW ON SOCIAL Follow The Tonight Show: http://Twitter.com/FallonTonight Like The Tonight Show: https://Facebook.com/FallonTonight Follow The Tonight Show: https://www.instagram.com/fallontonight/ Follow The Tonight Show on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@fallontonight The Tonight Show TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fallontonight The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon features hilarious highlights from the show, including comedy sketches, music parodies, celebrity interviews, ridiculous games, and, of course, Jimmy's Thank You Notes and hashtags! You'll also find behind the scenes videos and other great web exclusives. GET MORE NBC NBC YouTube: http://bit.ly/1dM1qBH Like NBC: http://Facebook.com/NBC Follow NBC: http://Twitter.com/NBC NBC Instagram: http://instagram.com/nbctv Phoebe Bridgers: Lost Boys | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon http://www.youtube.com/fallontonight #FallonTonight #PhoebeBridgers #JimmyFallon
Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

I haven't talked much about this, but one of the gut-wrenching things about designing a weather app is thinking through various extremes and disasters. We designed these UI elements hoping that most people would never see them.

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Web friends: in 2026, what’s the best semi-friendly way to make a hand rolled website? My kid wants to get into web making, but stuff like Eleventy or Hugo feels a little advanced. Is there a beginner-level option that’s more approachable?

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Trying to work with Al chatbots is basically the same as being a horrible reply guy: "Actually, you're wrong" "That's a bad take" "Is this even true? What are your sources?" "This writing makes no sense" "Think harder"

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

I'm writing a post on what's hard about working in tech right now. (The list is long.) What are you struggling with the most?

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

One of my favorite Internet pastimes is clicking NO on passive aggressive promotional upsells, to intentionally mess up the metrics for whatever dumb psychological conversion tricks the product team is trying to pull

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

words I would be ok with never hearing again agentic tokenmaxxing human in the loop generative anything involving a claw meatspace you're absolutely right —

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Modern software needs more stuff like this. Adding a small, superfluous human touch in a few places goes such a long way. (The original Mac OS had this sort of personal character scattered all over the place, but it's been gradually squeezed out over the years.)

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

BEFORE AI: "Would it be faster to do this manual task, or to write a script to do the task for me?" AFTER AI: "Would it be faster to do this manual task, or to ask an approximation machine to solve it accurately, then proofread its inevitable messes?"

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Small personal news: a few weeks ago I started a new job at Superhuman, as the head of design for Superhuman Mail. Had a truly wonderful time at Figma, but have been feeling the itch to try something new. Excited to work on communication tools again (it's my happy place)

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Seriously asking: what the heck happened to iOS autocorrect? I remember some point in the past when it worked properly, and now … not

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Catherine O’Hara is one of those few people who could turn a creative role into a higher art. Not just a comedian or actor, but someone who elevated and changed the entire idea of those things. Absolutely inspiring legend 💔

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

Just tried @aeronautapp.com, a Mac app for Bluesky. It feels like being transported back to the glory days of Twitter 3rd party apps (like 2014 or so? It reminds me of Tweetie or Echofon.) Anyway, this makes Bluesky nicer. Well worth the subscription!

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

The brutality of all of this is absolutely horrific and unconscionable, but what really gets me is the pointlessness. None of this needs to happen for any reason whatsoever. It’s just dumb stupid brutality for the sake of it

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

I fussed around with this oddball Search tab/button pattern SO MUCH before iOS 26 came out. The new iOS design language has many different ways to accomplish similar things, and affordances are less differentiated, so it's really hard to know what's "right." ryanashcraft.com/ios-26-tab-b...

ryanashcraft.comMy Beef with the iOS 26 Tab BarThe iOS 26 search tab looks more like an action button than a tab. That's causing problems for developers like me who want to follow Apple's guidelines.
Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

We ended up running with the button-tab pattern for @helloweather.com, but used a location pin icon (to indicate "Location search") instead of a search icon. Still not convinced that was the best call, but we kinda tried to split the difference.

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

For a while I’ve felt that we’re entering the Post-Trust era of information, where skepticism becomes our default mode of consumption, since almost nothing can be believed as real at a glance.

Jonas Downey
@jonas.do

With the deepfake trash happening on X, a constant stream of falsehoods and rewritten history spilling from the US govt, and AI generated content becoming more prevalent rapidly, this first week of 2026 feels very post-trust.