Dennis, Author at Dennis Cortés

September 7, 2018 — No Comments

Finding Purpose in Life Outside of Your Work

Design, code, and the pursuit of being better at each was all I lived and breathed in college. It’s all I ever thought about, to the point of me daydreaming in class about what I was working on the night before and how I would continue it later that day. I sacrificed time with friends, with my significant other, and even time for my health because of how much I wanted the goals I had in life.

This is incredibly important still, and should be for you as well, but it’s in a completely different way and balance than before.

Back then I would wish I had made time to work on music, or to go to the gym and focus on well-being, or to pick up a new hobby, but I wouldn’t act on those feelings. I’d brush them off and put my head back down and continue to grind away at design and code. They’d remain afterthoughts, pushed to the back of my mind while still being a subconscious yearning to pursue.

Almost a year has gone by since I felt the way I did above.

I’ve had some career changes that shifted my free time from wanting to work on design to needing decompression from a full-time design job. I started to get worried (and still do sometimes to be honest) that I wasn’t a “productive” person anymore. I didn’t come home anxious to work on my next side project and ship something on my own, living on the constant high of being that person that never sleeps.

I slowly but surely transferred my free time to finding other pursuits in life that didn’t revolve around the same topic as my full-time work. I was able to explore other mediums of creativity, expression, and decompression that weren’t design or code.

An appropriate quote I came across in the book Rest:

If your work is your self, when you cease to work, you cease to exist.
Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

This quote made me take a step back and think about how much my life was reliant on the outcome of my work. I felt that if I didn’t have my work or what I do full-time, I didn’t really have much to offer and wanted to re-evaluate why and where this came from.

It turns out that I got my confidence from my work. I was confident in my ability to design, code, and illustrate for clients at a high level, was proud of the amount of income I had gotten to, what that income was able to buy me, and how proud I was of myself. While these are all very much valid and present feelings, I’ve been able to shift that mentality and confidence to a more widespread set of skills and personality traits.

With four albums under my belt I have a creative outlet I didn’t have before. I recognize I’m compassionate, understanding, and a great support system to others and have invested more time for my friends and coworkers to take that into account. I’ve been working out and eating better for 6 months straight and am much more comfortable with how I dress and how I feel about my body. I’m starting to learn about finances and on my way to being able to buy my first place within a year or two. I play video games almost every day and love the time I have to forget about everything else in the world. I just moved and have invested in making my apartment what I want to call home and express myself.

I’ve always thought I had a balance in life in the past, but am recently realizing the divide and bringing the ratio back to 50:50 between life and work. I’ve been able to find a deeper purpose and meaning for what I want out of life and better visualize and encompass the approach to my goals and strengths.

Think about the quote above and think about how you balance priorities in personal and professional life. They can even be working towards similar goals, but it’s worth thinking about how you currently spend and block off your free time vs your work time.

Published by Dennis in Personal

August 31, 2018 — No Comments

How Blogging Can Make You a Better Remote Employee

Working remotely is all the rage nowadays. Companies can hire more diverse sets of people, save money on salaries, and find the best people fit for the job. After all, 43%of the workforce has spent at least some time working remotelyin 2017. Working remotely provides for a more flexible schedule and even no set schedule like we have at MetaLab. Remote working is better suited to some people’s personalities and lifestyles and can be a healthier and happier alternative.

However, that doesn’t mean remote working is easy. As I mentioned, you really do need a personality and lifestyle that fits with not being in an office and often working in a spot from home. Routines and concentration are a must, including restrictions and reducing distractions. These are typically obvious to those in or considering working remotely, but a part you may not think about is written communication.

Technologies and companies such as Slack and Microsoft Teams have taken over the digital office space and become the new norm. As a remote employee, I’d say about one-third of my day (as a Product Designer) is spent writing and communicating with team members and stakeholders on projects we are working on. Written text can sometimes be tough to communicate in both content and tone and requires attention to detail and the way we present written words to others. Something as small as punctuation can completely change how words sound and feel to others, let alone communication not being descriptive or contextual enough.

As someone who has been blogging consistently for the past 100 weeks, I’ve naturally improved and progressed as a remote employee as well. I’m more able to think about how my writing is perceived, when and where to be descriptive, more clear and concise, and overall better able to set a tone in written communication. Also not to mention I can type much faster now ?

If remote working is something you are interested in or are currently doing, I highly recommend investing time and effort into improving your writing. Blogging is always a nice, for-sure way to improve, but if you’d rather not start a blog then writing for yourself or even being a more avid reader can impact your written communication skills altogether.

If blogging sounds enticing and you’re not sure where to start, I’ve written quite a few articles that touch on getting started! Here’s an article from last week that you may find helpful.

Published by Dennis in Productivity, Work

August 17, 2018 — No Comments

You Don’t Lack Motivation to Get Started, You Lack Clarity

Starting a new endeavor is typically difficult. You’re excited to get started and have all kinds of ideas in mind as to how you can be successful in this, seemingly all in different directions.

If you’re like most people—you’re fine for the first couple of days, maybe even weeks. Things start to slow down and you lose motivation to continue, eventually having this new endeavor die out. You struggle to find this motivation again. You accept failure and go about your life until it happens again. It sucks.

But, what if you could do something to combat your mind trying to have “motivation” kick in so that you’ll get serious about what you’re working on?

Instead of focusing on motivation, focus on clarity.

Typically the reason you can’t get completely invested in a new project or even a new lifestyle is because it’s not completely clear what you should be focusing on next.

A plethora of ideas come to mind when something new comes along, hence building that excitement (aka “motivation”) that gets you hooked and obsessed with what you are tackling. The only issue there is not typically having a clear direction of what you need to do to get you to your goal the quickest.

The solution is to filter, focus, and plan your ideas.

Take those great ideas you have and filter them out into smaller, more actionable steps. Focus in on what’s most crucial and important to your success and/or productivity and plan the best approach to attain that success.

Afterwards, you’ll naturally have a plan of action and a sure way to feel motivated and productive to keep pursuing that new endeavor that will make an impact in your life and/or the life of others.

Published by Dennis in Business, Productivity

July 27, 2018 — No Comments

Knowing When and Where to Seek Feedback on Your Ideas

Sharing an idea is like passing around an ice cube in a room of people. When you first have the idea it’s a good size and it’s sturdy. It has potential and a lot of use cases for how to best take advantage of this new thought in your mind. You’ve built up the idea and let it freeze to a solid form, just big enough to be ready to start putting into action.

But then you take this “ice cube” and pass it around to others in this room so they can have a look. They give a couple thoughts on it, provide some critique and some feedback as to how it could possibly not be successful or be better. When they hand it off to the next person, it’s melted a tad and not as solid as it was at the start.

Finally, it gets to the last person before you in the room. Once they pass it off to you, the ice cube is almost nothing now. You didn’t have enough time to build it up enough to take the heat and thought of others. Now you're lost as to what you can do with an ice cube this small now as it continues to melt in your hand.

Our latest and greatest idea is cherished and held close in our minds. We care for it and are passionate about the idea but when it comes time to put it into action, we sometimes think that the opinion of others can make or break our product/idea in an instant.

While the opinion and advice of others can be beneficial and keep us in check when we need it, knowing the time and place to ask for it is important. Your idea may still be “half-baked” and require some more thought on your end which is not a bad thing (it’s actually quite exciting in my experience). Presenting an idea to someone in this state can lead to less than ideal feedback, possibly because context is missing that you are still working on.

You may be familiar with the term MVP (Minimum Viable Product), where a product is built to have the absolute necessary features first and then built upon. I believe this can also be applicable when forming our ideas as well, say an MVI (Minimum Viable Idea) before you decide to share with others.

This MVI covers the absolutely necessary user flows and business models that to the best of your knowledge will make this idea successful. Even some iteration on how it would work in practice, benefit others, and play a part in the market competition you’d be up against.

In a more practical sense, even smaller more personal ideas can have an MVI applied to them—personal goals you have, fitness regimens, apartment layout changes, a new recipe you’re creating, etc.

Being able to find and pull out the most important parts of ideas that can make or break their success is a skill that is quite difficult to master. I honestly don’t think anyone has in every aspect of their life either. We’re constantly having to acknowledge and put ideas into play before we go ahead and share them with others. Over time smaller ideas and goals become easier to share and get opinions on while larger overarching ideas or even businesses remain what we strive for most of our lives.

Acknowledging and being able to find the correct times to get the correct advice is one way we can be better at this though. Like anything, it just takes a bit of patience, practice, and even a bit of failure before we begin to get better.

Published by Dennis in Productivity

June 29, 2018 — 2 Comments

Easy Ways to Make Your Product Design Work Better Designed

Over the 5+ years I have been working in the tech world on websites and products, I’ve come to learn that the combination of many small details come together to make the final work great. Things like typography, grid systems, alignment, and even spacing can really make a difference in the overall look and feel of a product.

While this may seem obvious, it’s most likely more detailed than you’d think. I know it was for me when I was first starting out. My boss/mentor a few years ago had a big impact on my approach to these details. If what I was working on had a small spacing issue or even a couple typos, I had to redo the screen and make it better somehow each time it happened.

It might feel like this was a waste of time from an outside perspective, but it was quite impactful for me. This practice helped me really dial in on high-quality and detail-oriented work. I developed a keen eye for catching small details and mistakes (not only in my work, but the work of others which has been helpful in a team setting) and has lead to much more refined work. This has made me much more careful in my work as well and has helped me avoid typos, kept spacing consistent, watch for alignment, etc.

Here are a few high-level tips that may be helpful, make sure to double check each of these often, especially before a review day:

Typography

Create a system and use case for typography sizes and spacing.
Make sure all your leading is tall enough for legibility—default values aren’t always the best option.
Use 2 typefaces max and assign each to their own use cases.
Use 3 font weights max and assign them to sizes or use cases.
Use system fonts when possible.
Give type space to breathe, makes it easier to read and digest for users.

Use a Consistent 8pt Grid

You can read about the 8pt grid and how to use/create one here and here
Keeps you from guessing and “eye-balling” spacing of elements
Helps you work faster and more consistently
A great foundation for quality design work

Double Checking

This is a big one that’s overlooked, a lot of the time designers are in a rush to get something shipped and don’t double check work. I see it all the time, trust me!

Check for typos, goes a long way in presentations and avoiding copy confusion.
Make sure your alignment is consistent, even a few pixels off here and there can have a bigger impact than you’d think.
Make sure your spacing is not only consistent, but visually correct. For example, containers are actually better visually when the vertical space is a bit more than the horizontal space. Designers tend to always make these the same but visually they won’t look correct to a user.
Check that you are using a consistent color palette and don’t have legacy colors or mistakes. Inconsistent colors are a sure way to lose trust from users subconsciously.

At the end of the day, these should obviously come after time and effort put into figuring out core features and the experience of a product. I find that iterating quickly at the beginning of a project without giving too much thought into details is better. Afterwards I come back through and clean up files with the above in mind to not limit myself or spend too much time on things that aren’t crucial to a product at first.

Hope you found this helpful!

Published by Dennis in Product Design

June 22, 2018 — No Comments

The Struggle of Having Too Many Interests

Ihave been struggling quite a bit lately coming to terms with the various interests and pursuits I have in life. Feels like a strange statement to say if I’m being honest—how can being passionate about different topics have a negative connotation?

Well, there are a few that I personally struggle with and have a hard time overcoming, but I think the main ones being incompletion, lack of focus, and the feeling of accomplishment.

Let me tell you my scenario and maybe you can relate.

An overview of topics I am passionate about in no particular order: design, development, music, music production, fashion, sneakers, startups, health and fitness, entrepreneurship, gaming, minimalism, interior design, collecting, and writing. Not a crazy amount of topics to be interested in all things considered, but with my personality and mentality it leads to some “less than ideal” situations for me.

I love making things. I feel like crap if I’m not working on something (a side project, a new album, etc.) and in turn weigh “journey” over completion subconsciously. This leads to unfinished projects, songs, books, articles, video games, etc. I get a rush over starting something new and learning about new things at a constant pace.

If something starts to feel mundane, I need to move onto something else or I get extremely unmotivated. Being unmotivated = no work being done = me feeling like crap and getting in my head about things and where I am in life. Dramatic, right? I agree, but it isn’t something I can control unfortunately. I’ve recently found this compounding as I’ve shifted more of my personal work outside of full-time design work towards non design and development topics.

For example, being focused on releasing mini-albums (or EPs), playing story focused games with time investment peaking, and recently getting into fashion and streetwear and the research and collecting that comes with it. While I don’t regret putting time or money into these (on the contrary, I highly enjoy them), my time spreads more and more thin for making time to pursue my original goals in my career of design and development.

I want to work for myself at some point in the future. I love where I work now and don’t plan on doing this anytime soon, but some day. I want to have my own web apps that I work on myself and just have that as my full-time job. While I consider myself a great designer and front-end developer, I don’t quite have the full skillset to pursue this or even put this into motion. While I’m more than willing to learn, it’s hard to find a balance with all the other things I’m working on and doing.

At some point there is a priority decision that needs to be made, whether consciously or not, and wherever my interests are focused at the time tends to be the winner. So instead of learning some new technologies of code or picking up and reading that business book, I’m putting that time into working on my new album or researching a company or project I came across.

One could argue that I need to “set my priorities straight”, and while I thought this was the case too, it’s a bit more complicated than that after much reflection. It’s not that working on my new album or playing a video game aren’t priorities to me, because they are. I care about making music and experiencing an interactive movie because these are creative outlets for me outside of design and development too.

These other topics I care about are important to me and it’s not just a toggle to switch of what I want to do that day. Throughout the week I touch on almost all of my passions to a degree, and I don’t want to have to sacrifice one or two of them for others. I have instead been pursuing each on a typically shallow level while deep diving on 1–2 at a time.

What I’m trying to say is that no matter what I do, I always feel guilty about another topic that I’m not working on. Even when I am working on one and being productive, in the back of my head I’m asking myself “when are you going to finish that code course?” or “how come you haven’t finished that book yet?” or “you only have one song left for that EP, why are you doing this instead?” as an endless loop.

While I’ve come to terms with struggle to an extent, every now and then it becomes overwhelming mentally. As someone who keeps to themselves and does well with handling problems on my own, it’s a tough thing to talk about with others because there really isn’t a straightforward answer. It’s more of a fluctuating choice management of focusing on 1–2 topics for a finite amount of time and then when my mind shifts, I let it and ignore other topics for a bit.

I’m getting better at feeling less guilty putting other interests on the back burner for a bit and learning how to handle it more and more each day, but it was something I wanted to write about this week as it’s very relevant to me today recently as couple things in life start to compound one another for a bit.

Did this make sense? And is it something you or someone you know can relate to? I’d love to know your thoughts and/or your approach to this if you have any input you would like to share as it’s always welcome.

Published by Dennis in Personal

June 15, 2018 — No Comments

How to Find Great New Music on Spotify

As a music lover and artist myself, I’m always looking for new music to keep me inspired and motivated whether I’m working, at the gym, or just relaxing. I switched over to Spotify from Apple Music a few months ago out of frustration for Apple Music’s UI and discovery and have since found some really great methods of finding music I like on Spotify.

Spotify does a great job of making most of their features in this space prominent and easy to come across for users, but a few I’ve found that have been very helpful for me that I wanted to share.

Discover New Music with Featured Playlists

Under Browse in your sidebar you’ll find a tab named Genres and Moods which is by far the best place I’ve found for discovering new tracks and artists on Spotify. Spotify’s editors curate the playlists you’ll find on these pages and are able to browse by both the mood you’re looking for or the genre you’re interested in.

The playlists within here go from general to very niche styles and you’re able to endlessly find new genres that peak your interest. For example, I recently found a great playlist named Cute Beats. Weird sounding I know, but it ended up being a niche I found that I really liked. This has happened a few times for me and have found a few artists I really enjoy through these playlists so I recommend digging through these for playlists to follow now and then.

Discover New Music with Albums from Songs Discovery

Tagging along off of Featured Playlists, finding new music through the tracks in these playlists is helpful as well. When I find a track from these playlists I really like, I’ll look into that artist’s other music that they have put out. Usually I find some more great music through other songs on that album or even on their entire profile. I’ve found some of my favorite tracks and artists through this method.

Discover New Music with the Discover Tab

Under Browse in your sidebar you’ll also find a handy tab appropriately named Discover. Here you will find a plethora of ways to find music similar to what you listen to and enjoy.

Discover Weekly is a hit or miss usually, but a great place to find new music weekly based on your listening patterns. Release Radar is a neat playlist that keeps tracks of the latest releases from artists that you follow on their Spotify profile. This is a nice way to find new music from your favorite artists without having to keep track of all of their releases.

You’ll also get Top Recommendations for You and New Releases for You which are a nice way to see the most relevant music based on your listening patterns. After that you’ll get recommendations based on specific artists you have listened to recently. This section isn’t as helpful in my experience but can lead to some gems here and there.

Recommended songs after a playlist in Spotify

Discover New Music with Recommended Songs

At the end of your playlists you’ll find a Recommended Songs section that acts sort of like a mini Discovery tab within your playlists. Spotify takes the tracks that you have in this playlist and will recommend songs that are similar to the tracks and mood on this playlist.

This overall has been a great place after I’ve gotten through one of my playlists and want some new similar additions. You can even press refresh in the top right to have Spotify bring in even more tracks for you to listen to!

Hope this will help you find some new great music to listen to and if you need something on the ambient side of things, be sure to check out my music that I make here and on all streaming platforms. Enjoy!

Published by Dennis in Music

June 8, 2018 — No Comments

Ways to Use an iPad for Product Design Work

Apple’s iPad is advertised as a stand alone device that can replace a laptop, but for many this definitely isn’t the case yet. For example, as a Product Designer, I can’t open Sketch or Abstract and go to town on my design files. Or as a developer I can’t reliably code and run a local server to work on a project.

As someone who bought a 12.9" iPad Pro a couple years back, I was hoping this would change. While I can’t do exactly what I mentioned above in the way I would like to, I’ve been able to find ways to bring the iPad more and more into my workflow for design work.

Research and Notes

A spot where the iPad can really shine is in the research phase of work. Research typically only requires a web browser and a way to document your findings which makes the iPad’s split screen perfect for the job.

My setup consists of a Chrome browser open on the left of my screen and default Apple Notes on the right. You can of course switch these out for whichever replacements you’d like (Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, etc). The side-by-side apps lets me enlarge and shrink windows as I need and even lets me drag and drop both text and media from my browser on to my Notes. This lets me seamlessly mix documentation with my own thoughts and findings. Throw my Apple Pencil into the mix for drawing extras on notes and I’m set for getting my notes complete and organized.

I’ve used this method on countless projects as I really enjoy the mobile aspect of an iPad versus a laptop. Working on the couch or outside or at a coffee shop with a smaller form factor is great. Not to mention mixing touch with writing and drawing (Apple Pencil) is a delight that I think is tough to find in products.

Wireframing

By far my favorite part of design work on an iPad. While there are definitely different ways you can do this depending on your style, I’ll give some recommendations based on my preference.

Pattern is a favorite app of mine for wireframing. Despite some limitations (no zooming, some tedious editing aspects), Pattern is great for basic wireframing of design screens. The app provides a minimal but useful interface with some delightful interactions for creating interfaces. I personally enjoy the Apple Pencil capabilities as well for making notes directly on your wireframes.

Procreate, while considered more of an app for art, is great for wireframing as well. It’s definitely more difficult to create refined shapes and lines like you can in Pattern, but the layering and editing capabilities can make up for this depending on what you’re looking for.

Inspiration

While producing work is important, consuming of inspiration and other subjects is an paramount in your creative process as well. Luckily, there are a plethora of ways to do this with an iPad. Using a browser the same way you would on a computer to browse you bookmarks and favorite websites is a sure way to do this.

In terms of apps to use, Pinterest is an obvious one for most folks and happens to be a favorite of mine as well. While following people on Pinterest has become pretty obsolete nowadays due to their home feed changes, Pinterest does a great job of feeding relevant posts related to pins you have saved before.

While there are other apps to use such as the Adobe suite, the apps and methods I listed above are the way I personally use my iPad within my product design workflow on an almost daily basis outside of hifi work. Hopefully we’ll see this change in the future and be able to do full-fledged design work but for now this is the method I use.

Published by Dennis in Product Design, Productivity

June 1, 2018 — No Comments

How a Creative Outlet Can Benefit Your Creative Profession

If you’re someone who is lucky enough to work in the creative field, you probably know how difficult it is to work in the same vein of creative work outside of your full-time job.

I’ve struggled with this since I can remember and still struggle with this to this day. As a digital designer, I’ve always wanted to constantly get better at design and pursue things outside of my full-time gig. To not wear myself thin, I spent time learning other skills that I could blend design with such as design, code, and entrepreneurship. This has proved very useful time and time again and has since helped me accomplish career goals in my life that I am able to enjoy today.

However, now that I’m in a working environment that I love and constantly learn from, I’ve since shifted my focus to other creative outlets outside of work. The main example for me being my music. It’s been about 6 months of me working on music and I’ve noticed it actually have positive influence on my work and personal life so I wanted to share and hopefully encourage you to pursue the same.

I’m happier

When I used to do design all day only to come home to try and design all night, some nights I was miserable. I didn’t feel like hitting my head against the creative wall and getting something mediocre to do the job.

Not that working on other creative outlets doesn’t have its frustrating days, but they are far less often. I typically feel excited to exercise different creative muscles and mature my perspective on different aspects of the creative world. Now I look forward to learning and trying out new things with music and other outlets that impact my happiness and satisfaction creatively.

I’m more productive and motivated

Because I have goals to work towards within my music work, every time I come back to work on those goals I’m more and more excited to get work done. I feel excited to keep working on that track that was coming along well and feel motivated to get better because it’s something relatively new to me. I constantly feel that rush of something new and exciting and look forward to working on music at the end of each work day.

I get creatively refreshed

The work I do in product design can be draining somedays on top of meetings and tasks I have to work on. Decision fatigue becomes a very real thing when you’re working on a difficult project I have found personally.

Luckily I’ve found that creative outlets can really make an impact on this feeling. In contrast to watching TV or playing videos games, creative outlets allow you to flex other creative muscles that influence subconscious thoughts you may have on full-time work.

I can genuinely say that I feel better refreshed and ready to tackle the day after a music session the night before. I feel in a better spot to pick back up on projects at work and can even have a better perspective than I did the day before.

It differentiates me as a person

I personally am someone that doesn’t like to put all their eggs in one basket. Not only do I feel bored and unchallenged, but I feel a plateau constantly creeping up on me as a person overall. For better or for worse, this puts me in a position where trying different things constantly makes me happier overall. On top of this it expands my understanding of other people and industries while finding different ways to inspire others.

Through music for example, I’ve met quite a few new friends and have had others find me online through my musical ventures. Even folks that I know through my design and development work have expressed interest in the work that I do and even shared wanting to try music themselves. Meeting new people and having conversations around creative outlets with others keeps me at ease with the worry I mentioned before.

Published by Dennis in Personal, Work

May 25, 2018 — No Comments

How to Be Well Prepared for Morning Standups

Since joining MetaLab a few months ago, I’ve had to transition back into daily stand-ups after not having them since I worked at Satchel last year. While stand-ups are incredibly useful in a work setting, it definitely takes some preparation and getting used to or can lead to miscommunication or even be action-less at the end.

Here are some tips I’ve implemented for myself that you may find useful for your own standup preparation:

Write down tasks you complete throughout the day

At first I thought I could remember off the top of my head everything that I did the day before but I was completely wrong. Some days I would forget a few tasks that were completed and would jeopardize deadlines or personal task lists.

Instead, I now keep a notebook next to me throughout the day at my desk and I write down each tasks I finish that day no matter how big or how small the task is. Then the next day I have an accurate list ready to go and talk through with my team.

Write down specific blockers you had during the day

Sometimes I’ll have some software issues during the day (cough InVision cough) that can put an hour or so dent into my workday. Or sometimes I’ll be waiting for another task to be completed by another team member before I can proceed. Addressing these blockers in stand-ups is crucial to be transparent with your team and your team may have advice on how to better approach these blockers next time you face them.

Leave stand-ups with clear action items

Ever leave a stand-up and need to think for a second about what actually needs to get done? No, just me? All joking aside, this is an obvious but important one. Make sure you have a clear picture of the goals for your tasks that day and what needs to get done for that day. It helps!

Ask for prioritization of tasks for that day

A genuine mistake I used to make was not asking for prioritization of tasks. Some tasks needed to be done before others for client presentations or calls so it was important to put those first.

Not asking for priority level on tasks can lead to interference with the schedule and tasks of others which you definitely don’t want to be the cause of. Prioritizing your tasks for the day also allows for some leeway if not every task gets done because you got the most important ones out of the way at least.

Published by Dennis in Startups, Work

Newer Posts Older Posts ›