I’m Jesse and this is my blog.

I’m a designer and a developer by trade. This blog is where I write about technology, design, life, and love.

  • Empire State of UX

    May 11, 2023

    Guess what? I'm starting a new job with the state of New York!

  • Practical Design Systems

    May 1, 2023

    A few weeks ago, I quietly launched my new design systems consulting company, Practical Design Systems.

  • 2022 in Review: Personal Goals

    January 5, 2023

    Each year, our family writes goals for the next year and stashes them into a time capsule (cardboard tube) to be opened the end of that year. Here are my 2022 goals, how well it went, and what I'd like to accomplish in 2023.

  • 2022 in Review: Traveling

    January 4, 2023

    Two big themes for our 2022 travels: local exploration and work travel. In January, we braved the cold and traveled upstate, visiting the colorful ice castle in Lake George. A recurring theme here in Upstate NY is cold winters (foreshadowing). There were many tears the night we visited the castle, but they quickly froze and... Read More

  • 2022 In Review: Home & Family

    January 2, 2023

    I’ve got so many updates from 2022 that a single post wouldn’t cut it. That’s not true. I could put it into a single post, but it would be far too long for the modern individual’s dwindling attention span. How will my written words hope to compete with TikTok’s 3.33s average watch time? Not to... Read More

  • Farewell, Fox

    August 15, 2022

    A rewarding personal experience, tremendous teams, and a bittersweet goodbye.

  • Platform Innovation at Fox

    April 12, 2021

    This has been in the works for a few weeks now, but I’m happy to announce that today was my first day as Vice President of Technology for Consumer Products and Engineering at Fox.

  • 1 Year of Daily Coworking

    March 11, 2021

    It’s March 11, 2020 — a Wednesday. The world hasn’t completely shut down yet — that will happen Friday the 13th — but things are definitely getting weird. I didn’t have any grand plan around building a community. I’d just been working from home for the last 10 years and knew how challenging and lonely... Read More

  • Use a Random Wikipedia Article as Your Start Page

    February 10, 2021

    I’ve been doing some research into randomness lately, and I came across the following excerpts in my reading, which praise the merits of introducing some randomness into our life and our work: In a design process, designers and design researchers often find something that they were not looking for initially. For serendipity to occur, the... Read More

  • Clubhouse App: Tips and First-Impressions

    February 5, 2021

    I just wrapped my first live event on Clubhouse: a discussion around Using Content To Grow Our Businesses with Steve Portigal, Martina Hodges-Schell, Becky Buck, Thomas Richardson, and David Holl. If you’re not familiar with the Clubhouse app, it’s like Snapchat for podcasts. People on the platform can spin up no-video, audio-only rooms and invite... Read More

  • Using a DSLR as a Webcam

    March 13, 2020

    With everyone working from home lately, I thought it might be helpful if I shared a bit about my audio/video setup. Video Before I dive into how I got everything working together, here’s a bullet list of my video setup today: Sony A6000 Dummy battery Elgato Cam Link Amazon Basics tripod Micro-HDMI to HDMI cable... Read More

  • The Airbag Has Landed

    March 4, 2020

    Helping Greg Storey get Airbag Industries off Movable Type and onto a better publishing stack.

  • Story Time: An Encounter with a Skunk

    February 27, 2020

    Life on a hobby farm can get weird.

  • 2019 in Review: Traveling

    January 3, 2020

    This is part two of my year in review series. You can start with my 2019 in Review, Part 1 if you’d like. In 2017, I turned 40. Instead of buying a sports car I couldn’t afford, I told my wife I wanted to travel more. But 2017 was also the first year I’d gone... Read More

  • 2019 In Review: Our Family and Homestead

    December 31, 2019

    Because I couldn't really call it "a decade in review."