December 2012
4 posts
Merry Doomsday: Free YC Facelift PSD Bundle!
After every YC Facelift I’ve done, I’ve received a few emails from people asking me if I could send them the PSD file so that they could learn themselves how to start down the path of design. I was always a bit reluctant to oblige, in the hopes that someone would come along and want to actually pay me for them.
Thankfully, over the months, these facelifts have presented me with more...
UX Idea: Real Turn-by-Turn Navigation
The new Google Maps app was finally released, and I’m loving it so far, but it’s missing a feature I’ve been hoping to see map apps implement for some time. I have this problem where as soon as I pull up directions on my phone, whether right after entering my destination or getting out of the subway station, I get into this confused spinning dance. What I’m trying to do is...
Disrupting Medicine: Check
A year into medical school I cracked open The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. The book recounts the author’s involvement in the development of the WHO Surgery Safety Checklist and his exploration of checklist implementations throughout various fields. What he found was that medical checklists are remarkably effective, in one study reducing the ten-day line-infection rate from 11%...
Why I'm No Metrosexual
Look at your keyboard. What is it about the keys that make you know they’re clickable? Are they a different color than the rest of the board? Sometimes they are, but a lot of the times they aren’t. Now look at the nearest door. How do you know that its handle is the part you’re supposed to interact with? Is there only one differentiating characteristic that tells you to grab the...
October 2012
1 post
YC Facelift: Instacart
Moving to NYC these last few months has been really hectic. Life here in general is hectic. From chasing the morning bus to weaving through sidewalk traffic, to running between hospital departments, I never really fully understood what it meant to live a busy life until I moved out here. Time and energy have become so scarce that basic life tasks, like visiting the laundromat, are almost seen as...
August 2012
2 posts
Hacking Behavior: The Behavior Potential
Rapidly growing a user base is as important as ever. Now that ten million users is the new one million, focus has been shifted to developing intuitive ways to reach a wider audience through today’s hottest platforms. It’s called Growth Hacking and is essentially marketing through the eyes of an engineer. And while it’s a great development, it only helps you get people to look at your product, not...
Being Social Is About Being Private
Social networks and services have definitely given us new and seamless ways to communicate with people from across the globe, pushing the boundaries of what in our lives is deemed acceptable to share, but a wall has been hit and the efforts to tear it down have left me uncomfortable. I’m specifically talking about this new move to broadcast what pages and messages we’ve viewed, without...
April 2012
4 posts
YC Facelift: DrChrono
Healthcare needs to be disrupted, and this next YC company is trying to do just that. Although the look of their website isn’t severely lacking, I decided to give it a go because I really love what they’re doing: bringing meaningful value and innovation to an industry that desperately needs it. It’s also one of about 2 or 3 medical startups that YC has funded thus far.
Next up...
YC Facelift: Pebble
I’m a really big fan of the personal biosensor movement. Being in medical school, I’m always thinking about the potential benefits of unlocking all sorts of health data, and although this next product doesn’t directly tackle these issues, I think it can be a really big leap in making that type of data readily available to us at all times.
The YC company I chose for this next...
YC Facelift: Flutter
I said I’d do this every week or so, but the simplicity of this next app and my design made for a quick completion.
Next up to bat: Flutter. Flutter is an app that gives you Jedi-like control over your music and movie playback. The first time I used the app, I kept playing and pausing my music for about 5 straight minutes before I tried convincing a few friends I was Lance Burton.
The app...
YC Facelift: EXEC
In an effort to refine my design skills, I’ve decided each week or so to redesign the landing page of a YC company I dig and whose website I don’t feel so similarly about.
This week I’ve chosen EXEC, which is like the ultimate personal assistant service: anything you need done, they’ve got an ‘Exec’ to finish it for you. I decided to run with a personal...
