After Hours Blog

A question I get often, and often struggle with answering, is: “So what do you do for work?”

I am currently Principal Product Designer, Design System at Pluralsight.

I work on design systems, which are basically groups of tools, resources, principles, and libraries that designers and developers use to create digital products. Tools include color palettes, design program setups, and other items used to create digital art or products. Resources include research histories, best practices, documentation, and communication connections. Principles define what the design system and its parts are trying to accomplish, and why and how people should apply the systems to their work. Libraries include groups and types of elements that make up a digital product, including pieces like buttons and form inputs, and shared resources like icons and digital art.

That can be a lot, and design systems can be vital to a product, brand, or team in helping to align toward a single source of truth. This often requires a person or an entire team to be dedicated soley to curating and maintaining them as a product.

I work closely with our design and engineering teams to help bridge communications, establish best practices, and ensure that all of our people have the tools and resources they need to work and produce fast and efficiently.

I’m happy to announce I have started as Principal Product Designer, Design System at Pluralsight!

After 7 years and 3 months at Cars.com, I began a new position with Pluralsight in May of this year as Principal Product Designer on the Design Operations team. I’ll be work on the Design System team with two very experienced and talented engineers (and hopefully more members soon) as we take the Pluralsight design system to its next level of evolution.

Working at Cars.com was a truly beneficial experience that brought me many opportunities, challenges, and experiences throughout my time there. I loved working in downtown Chicago, in two separate and beautiful office buildings right in the heart of a city that would captivate me on a daily basis. During my tenure there, I grew from a “Visual Designer” that could develop some frontend web pages to a Senior Manager of Product Design, leading the design system efforts as well as the direction of our Product Design practice.

At Pluralsight I have been fortunate enough to be welcomed onto a great team of people, which was the main draw for me. Working with and around (virtually, at least) experienced, knowledgeable, empathetic, and helpful people helps motivate me, and also helps me grow as a designer, employee, and person. Pluralsight as a company also exhibits many of the culture and professional aspects I’ve been looking for, including working toward a good cause, being inclusive, and emphasizing a good work/life balance.

There’s a lot to do to get where we want to be with the design system at Pluralsight, and I’m very excited at where we’ll be going over the next year. I’m gracious and humbled to have this opportunity.

Time for some more groups of ratings, folks!

In these series of posts, similar to the last one, I post groups of related movies I’ve watched and compare their ratings. This time I’m going to add some other stats as well.

Batman movies

• Average score: 58.43%
• 80s/90s movies average: 45.25%
• Nolan trilogy average: 76%

80%

46%

39%

16%

78%

93%

57%

Star Trek movies

• Average score: 54.5%
• Originals average: 50.33%
• Next Generation average: 53.25%
• Kelvin timeline average: 69.5%

37%

66%

55%

34%

29%

81%

39%

61%

40%

73%

82%

57%

Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 1 movies

• Average score: 71.2%

81%

64%

64%

70%

77%

Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2 movies

Average score: 54.5%

38%

45%

56%

52%

72%

64%

Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 3 movies

• Average score: 66.25%

47%

55%

67%

71%

74%

76%

68%

72%

Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 movies

• Average score: 68.5%
• MCU total average: 65.11%

60%

77%

Newly added ratings in TV and Movies for June 2022

As always, all ratings are in the Library.

Movies

77%

87%

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” was a great popcorn movie. There was enough craziness and special effects to forgive a less-than-stellar plot (and Benedict Cumberbatch’s stiff acting, he does much better in other roles) and it kept me interested throughout, something the previous installment did not do.

“Dune” suprised me as I went in thinking this would be more of a Stargate clone, but it relied more heavily on dark cinematography and drama, which worked. The size of the visuals is worth the price of admission here, and I’m excited to see a sequel if it’s made.

TV

64%

71%

66%

80%

“Moon Knight” started out hot but then got its feet caught up in the sand and too many levels of Egyption-type lore. Also having little-to-no connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe hurt it a bit, as I was waiting for that to happen all series. Ultimately decent and entertaining, though not as good as I was hoping for.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi” was saved by incredible Darth Vader scenes, and the return of James Earl Jones and Hayden Christiansen as Vader in and out of suit, respectively. Ewan McGregor is fantastic, as usual, but the series didn’t have enough vital “meat” to it to feel truly significant.

“The Boys” is shock-TV superheroes for a Trump-era America, basically poking fun at everyone who thinks conservatism will save America. Some funny moments, some cool drama and tension-filled scenes, some over-the-top blood, sex, and gore… It’s not something I’d recommend to almost anyone, but it’s been a fun ride for what it is so far (2 seasons in).

“Yellowstone” started out hot: my wife and I were absolutely hooked about 3-4 episodes in. Season 1 was all over the place plot-wise, but it was fun to watch. Season 2 was bad, and season 3 was slow. Season 4 picked back up a little, but it ultimately never hit its high spots ever again. Worth watching, for sure, and we’re looking forward to season 5, however we’re hoping it can gain back a little of its lost luster.

Newly added ratings for TV and Movies

As always, all ratings are in the Library.

Movies

83%

60%

“The Lighthouse” was a “beautiful in a creepy way” telling of a classic going-mad tale. Willem Dafoe is brilliant as always, underscoring my new appreciation for his acting prowess. The film style lends to the drama and suspense as well, providing a thrilling atmosphere of suspense and fear.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” didn’t live up to the hype for me, though I was spoiled by the reveals having waited until it was available to rent to see it. Ultimately it seemed a bit of an overstep for the formula, repeating a lot of the same types of jokes and stretching the cast and story a bit too far without fundamentally changing it enough to be fresh. Hopefully this is the last for this rendition of Spider-Man, and maybe we’ll see a new take (but keeping within the MCU continuity).

TV

85%

“Severance” is brilliant. Its combination of comedy, drama, sci-fi, and suspense, all built on top of a very intriguing and intertwining mystery, made it a must-see for me each week. Those benefitting from being able to binge this entire season will love it. There were hints of Stanley Kubrick as well as Black Mirror-type storytelling and settings throughout, which added to the thrills.

It was time for some cleanup around these parts, so here’s a list of what was fixed.

I spent some time this winter diving deep into this website and cleaning up what was initially a lot of add-on, messy, and less-than-optimally organized code. I also made some design updates and basically rounded off a lot of sharp edges. Here’s a roundup, for posterity:

Design changes

• Standardized link hover states
• Removed sunruise lines from homnepage
• Fixed heading sizes in article-stubs
• Changed up and fixed some dark mode colors and styles
• Standardized button and form specs across the site
• Fixed some movie rating layout issues
• New menu button location and fixed header
• Tweaked the Blog header to use a less-repeating image of the Chicago skyline

Code cleanup

• Moved seasonal styles to date-conditional class
• Restructured articles layout, and basically re-wrote the entire structure of every page
• Changed colors to use hsl()
• Converted all font-size px values to rem
• Fixed some broken links across the site
• Converted all modals to the new <dialog> element
• Changed the primary branch from master to main

Content

• Added new work post about Figma
• Added a goodbye blog post for Tom
• Added more movie, video game, and TV ratings
• Switched from a Google Form to a custom form on the Contact page
• Updated some Work posts with larger images and up-to-date content

What’s next

This was a clean-up and bug-fix phase, and now I have a list of some enhancement, performance, accessibility, and usability fixes to come next. Not to mention that it’s about time for a design refresh soon. This is a 2018 special that’s been going strong, and I’m happy with it still, but the itch is forming.

• Core Web Vitals work
• Lazy loading ratings images
• Performance! Currently scoring a 60 (94 on desktop) on the homepage. Embarrassing. Edit: That was actually some adblocking scripts getting picked up. All good with 100 now!

Rating groups of movies, just for fun.

Let’s bring up some groups of movies and compare their ratings, ok?

Christopher Nolan movies

91%

90%

78%

96%

93%

78%

57%

92%

Quentin Tarrantino movies

90%

94%

91%

84%

82%

66%

90%

69%

91%

74%

Star Wars (release order)

83%

88%

57%

52%

61%

64%

69%

66%

62%