B. Prendergast

B. Prendergast

@renderg.host

๐ŸŒ€ Socialist building a social web at @eurosky.social ๐ŸŒฟ UX strategy+design for early stage startups ๐Ÿง€ Making unfinished art to understand myself ๐ŸŒถ๏ธ ND rudeboi learning to live healthily ๐Ÿงถ Writing about culture, design, people, tech and the messy margins

2.3K followers167 following5.8K posts

My training as a designer is built on cycles: idea, refinement, execution, refinement. Tools looks like Paper ๐Ÿ—˜ #Prototype ๐Ÿ—˜ Browser. The speed was on paper, in #Figma or Miro: cheap, fast, safe to fail. The slow part came later, in the code editor and the browser. Thinking faster. Building slower.

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As a designer, coding with LLMs gives me the speed I used to only find with paper and pencil. Everything my training taught me says thatโ€™s the "wrong way round". I tried it anyway, and I'm rethinking my assumptions about speed, quality and what a design system can finally become.

Its still really important right now for me to have anchors outside of the browser to keep me in a context of scope, feasibility, desirability viability, etc. But it's been a morning of learning.

My training as a designer is built on cycles: idea, refinement, execution, refinement. Tools looks like Paper ๐Ÿ—˜ #Prototype ๐Ÿ—˜ Browser. The speed was on paper, in #Figma or Miro: cheap, fast, safe to fail. The slow part came later, in the code editor and the browser. Thinking faster. Building slower.

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The bigger promise is the impact on the #DesignSystem. Held in code, it can finally be the real source of truth instead of a stale Figma library. Figma stays a place to explore and style, while code holds the system truth. For product teams that could close a gap we have lived with for years.

My training as a designer is built on cycles: idea, refinement, execution, refinement. Tools looks like Paper ๐Ÿ—˜ #Prototype ๐Ÿ—˜ Browser. The speed was on paper, in #Figma or Miro: cheap, fast, safe to fail. The slow part came later, in the code editor and the browser. Thinking faster. Building slower.

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Once the content and interactions worked, I passed them back to Figma purely for styling. Claude drew the coded prototypes onto #Figma artboards almost instantly **with tokens, styles and components intact**. The speed and quality of that handover totally blew me away. Minutes not days.

Prototyping in code has, of course, existed forever. But as a designer, I found it hard to access in a way that was good enough, fast enough, and cheap enough. Browser first, then Figma, then back to the browser with both kept in sync has been a personal revolution for me.

My training as a designer is built on cycles: idea, refinement, execution, refinement. Tools looks like Paper ๐Ÿ—˜ #Prototype ๐Ÿ—˜ Browser. The speed was on paper, in #Figma or Miro: cheap, fast, safe to fail. The slow part came later, in the code editor and the browser. Thinking faster. Building slower.

Lately Iโ€™ve felt a tug the other way. So today I worked only in the browser, anchored by research and requirements docs. I prototyped in #Claude with real data and real browser behaviour, ignored brand and visual design, and focused on modelling data and refining interactions.

This started off so innocently, just trying to make some nice shadows for #PaperTrail ๐Ÿ“š cards...

B. Prendergast@renderg.host

I *may* have over-engineered this shadow designer just a touch but gawwwddamn, she pretty. #Lumen for #CSS โ†’ lumen.renderg.host

Having so much fun prototyping this week. A lot of ideas coming together. Hoping to finish #PaperTrail for @popfeed.social + @bookhive.buzz, in the coming days, so that I can find my fellow #bookworms on the #Atmosphere who are reading the same books, start a #bookclub, and read along together.

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Assemblage@assemblage.renderg.host

Thanks to the generosity of the wonderful @byarielm.fyi , we now have working #OAuth for passwordless sign-up and sign-in! ๐Ÿค˜ #ATscience ๐Ÿงช #ATmosphere ๐ŸŒ€ #ATproto ๐Ÿชฟ

B. Prendergast reposted

End to End, DID to DID payment with @atcash.app Hereโ€™s a teaser. Lots more to come.

Joe Basser@joebasser.com

I paid @stagingcreator.bsky.social $25 USD with @atcash.app โ€œThanks for building in the Atmosphereโ€

More @assemblage.renderg.host goodies! @semble.so collections, a command bar, preferences, and ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿคž๐Ÿคž maybe maybe maybe soon (thanks to @byarielm.fyi ๐Ÿ’–) #Oauth !!! #ATscience ๐Ÿงช #ATmosphere ๐ŸŒ€ #ATproto ๐Ÿชฟ #ATberlin

Assemblage@assemblage.renderg.host

More #Assemblage goodies for you today! First and foremost is a command bar ( `CTRL+K` or CMD+K` ) so you can power your way through creating and managing @semble.so Cards and Collections, navigating your canvas, changing your preferences, getting help, and much more!

Let me take you through this absolute slop off-brand โœŒ๏ธLegoโœŒ๏ธ toy set my son found on Amazon, brought to you by the beloved "LQPFBSM", a "Jieyangshimutangmaoyiyouxiangongsi" family brand.

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Let me take you through this absolute slop off-brand โœŒ๏ธLegoโœŒ๏ธ toy set my son found on Amazon, brought to you by the beloved "LQPFBSM", a "Jieyangshimutangmaoyiyouxiangongsi" family brand.

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Let me take you through this absolute slop off-brand โœŒ๏ธLegoโœŒ๏ธ toy set my son found on Amazon, brought to you by the beloved "LQPFBSM", a "Jieyangshimutangmaoyiyouxiangongsi" family brand.

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Let me take you through this absolute slop off-brand โœŒ๏ธLegoโœŒ๏ธ toy set my son found on Amazon, brought to you by the beloved "LQPFBSM", a "Jieyangshimutangmaoyiyouxiangongsi" family brand.

This is IMHO the most exciting thing happening in the Atmosphere today and I canโ€™t wait to see it implemented.

Sam Goto@sgo.to

@thisismissem.social @divy.zone and I recently went through an exploration of how the browser can help you login to websites with atproto accounts. We recently presented to the FedID CG and here is a sneak peek in case you couldn't join! This is early but we'd love your input before we go too far!

"Oh I already have an account that works for this?!" will be so powerful to people who really do not want to sign up for yet another fucking thing.

This is IMHO the most exciting thing happening in the Atmosphere today and I canโ€™t wait to see it implemented.

Sam Goto@sgo.to

@thisismissem.social @divy.zone and I recently went through an exploration of how the browser can help you login to websites with atproto accounts. We recently presented to the FedID CG and here is a sneak peek in case you couldn't join! This is early but we'd love your input before we go too far!

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

Try #Assemblage now at assemblage.renderg.host Make sure that you've got a @semble.so account first of courseโ€” and thank you ๐Ÿ™ #ATscience ๐Ÿงช #ATmosphere ๐ŸŒ€ #ATproto ๐Ÿชฟ #ATberlin

assemblage.renderg.hostAssemblage โ€” Draw ConclusionsTurn your Semble collections into a node graph. Connect cards as supports, opposes, leads to and more, then draw conclusions. No server: every change is written to your own AT Protocol PDS.

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

We've also made some minor performance improvements so the app starts faster, remembers more of your preferences between visits, and has fewer brain farts in general ๐Ÿคž. If you notice broken stuff or have ideas for improvements, leave your feedback on @userinput.app at userinput.app/s/did:plc:jw...

userinput.appAssemblage | userinput.appConnect ideas. Discover patterns. Draw conclusions. An visual knowledge graph for exploring Semble.so collections and Margin.at annotations.

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

Editing Cards & Connections: Small UI refresh to make them a little easier to understand and use.

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

Context menus: When you right click on cards or the empty canvas, you can create new cards or edit existing ones.

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

Suggested cards and connections: Thanks to the magical @semble.so API, we can now recommend cards connected by others (to the selected card) and similar pages added by others that you might want to add to your collections. If a card is already in your collections, you can just make a connection.

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

Inspecting cards: The Inspector sidebar is now better organised, with collapsible sections that only appear when you select a card. (There are some scrolling ๐Ÿž bugs here which we're aware of and actively working on)

B. Prendergast reposted

Replying to @assemblage.renderg.host

Navigation The left navigation sidebar can be hidden with `CMD+B` / `CTRL+B`. Collection and Filter selection is now managed in their own tabs. All of this means you have more space to work. I'm open to hearing what Filters you would find helpful ๐Ÿ’ฌ

B. Prendergast reposted

Thanks for the feedback yesterday! I've added a bunch of new features and made some 'quality of life' improvements to make Assemblage a little more fun. ๐Ÿงถ read on for more ๐Ÿ‘‡

Wow a LOT of y'all seemed to enjoy my preview of #Assemblage ๐Ÿงก yesterday. I made @assemblage.mu.social so you can follow along and get involved. See you there. #ATscience ๐Ÿงช #ATmosphere ๐ŸŒ€ #ATproto ๐Ÿชฟ #ATberlin

B. Prendergast@renderg.host

Introducing #Assemblage ๐Ÿงก Add @semble.so cards and collections and @margin.at annotations to an infinite canvas, draw connections between them to create context, expand your understanding and see the bigger picture! โ†’ assemblage.renderg.host #ATscience ๐Ÿงช #ATmosphere ๐ŸŒ€ #ATproto ๐Ÿชฟ #ATberlin ๐Ÿงถ