Cassidy’s Blog
Design
Thoughts about user experience design, UI design, design thinking, and more
GNOME Should Kick the Foot to the Curb… Mostly Fri, Feb 14, 2025
A distinction between the outward brand and a contributor mascot could provide some balance
Update: Thanks for all of the feedback and discussion on Mastodon and Matrix! I’ve revised this post a bit with some more nuance and…
Stars & Thumbs Mon, Jul 31, 2023
Thoughts on app ratings and reviews
I’m on my way back from GUADEC in Rīga, Latvia and one recurring discussion (of many) was centered around how ratings and reviews are…
Accent Colors: A Proposal for GNOME Mon, Jun 26, 2023
Enabling user expression while considering the needs of distros and app developers
This is not an announcement or guarantee of implementation from GNOME! This post represents my personal opinions in tracking an ongoing discussion within GNOME…
2021 UI Study Results Thu, Jan 27, 2022
Digging into the dock, multitasking, and more
Over the past couple of months we’ve conducted a user interface study to dig into how people multi-task on elementary OS as well as…
Cassidy on GNOME, Themes, and More Fri, Nov 12, 2021
The Linux Experiment interviews Cassidy for a video
Recently there’s been a lot of discussion within the open source desktop space about GNOME, LibAdwaita, and the future of “theming” on GTK-based platforms…
Google's polishing up its emoji—probably for Android 12 Thu, Jul 15, 2021
Nearly everything outside of faces has been tweaked or entirely redrawn
The “Uncanny Valley” Curve Fri, Jun 5, 2020
How creepy robots relate to skeuomorphism and UX
The Uncanny Valley is the idea that there’s a curve related to a human-like object’s level of realism and how acceptable we perceive it…
Get Settled into elementary OS with Onboarding Tue, Jul 23, 2019
Designed to improve the first-run experience
We’ve never provided a tutorial or “welcome” on your first run of elementary OS before; our Human Interface Guidelines state that users “should be…
2019 UI Study Results Fri, May 17, 2019
Regarding Custom Styles, Dark Modes, and Night Light
In my time contributing to elementary and GNOME, I’ve become familiar with pleas from users to implement official support for arbitrary themes — while that itself…
The Need for a FreeDesktop Dark Style Preference Fri, May 17, 2019
It’s time for the FreeDesktop to catch up
In the past year or so, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox have begun testing or released a user-set dark…
Accessibility Features Are Just Features Sat, Feb 16, 2019
An OS-wide curb-cutting effort
Photo of an accessible curb cut by Dane Deaner on Unsplash For some time now, Daniel and I have been talking about how accessibility features…
GNOME’s New App Icons Drop Pixel-Precision and Hinting Wed, Jan 23, 2019
What it means for elementary OS
Jakub taking photos on an outing from the GNOME London UX Hackfest This week Jakub Steiner, a designer at GNOME—and a friend of mine!—announced…
Why We Use “Checks” in Checkboxes and Radio Buttons Sat, Sep 22, 2018
Checkboxes and radio buttons are honestly used pretty sparingly in elementary OS, and even more sparingly together. When they are used, it’s fairly obvious…
How the YouTube Music Rollout Should Have Gone Tue, May 29, 2018
Let’s Imagine an Alternate Universe
This whole YouTube Music thing has been really poorly handled. It’s not entirely clear where the overlap is between existing services and subscriptions, what…
Introducing Palette Tue, Apr 10, 2018
A new app for elementary colors
This past weekend, I realized I was opening a web browser to do something a native app could do better: referencing and copy-pasting colors….
Unroll the Purpleprint Wed, Mar 14, 2018
The story behind the elementary OS Beta wallpaper
In our Let’s Talk About elementary OS 5.0 Juno post, we debuted a new vibrant purple wallpaper with a sort of blueprint aesthetic going…
Why the Looped Square (⌘) Symbol? Thu, Mar 1, 2018
Keyboard shortcuts in elementary OS are the same no matter if it’s a Windows-branded keyboard or not; we just use the ⌘ looped square…
Developer Tips: Branding Your App Wed, Jan 31, 2018
How to give your app a unique but native look
With 75+ native GTK3 apps, AppCenter continues to fill out with quality experiences from several dozen developers. Many have begun to build their own…
GNOME UX Hackfest 2017 Tue, Nov 21, 2017
Designing the future of GNOME Shell
I just got back from a week-long design hackfest in London focused on GNOME Shell and related components. It was a fantastic week with…
Developer Tips: Making a Killer AppCenter Listing Fri, Aug 25, 2017
Five ways to make your app stand out
As the number of apps in AppCenter grows, it’s becoming increasingly important for your app’s listing to stand out. It’s no longer sufficient to…
HiDPI is More Important than 4K Mon, Feb 13, 2017
What’s the difference, and why does it matter?
In my first post on HiDPI, I touched on the problem with marketing buzzwords surrounding the concept: HiDPI is a great idea, but it’s…
Introducing the elementary Community Logo Tue, Jan 17, 2017
After a fan reached out to us about usage of the official logos in community projects, we worked with them and our design team to better define community usage of the elementary brand. The result: an awesome new elementary Community logo!
We first debuted our Brand page on our website nearly a year ago in an effort to help provide guidelines for the usage of…
Secure by Default Wed, Dec 21, 2016
Easy Security UX Improvements to Modern OSes
I’m a UX architect at elementary (developers of the Open Source elementary OS) and a front-end web developer at System76 (manufacturers of powerful computers…
Top 3 Misconceptions about HiDPI Fri, Dec 2, 2016
Or, HiDPI Part II
I recently wrote an article to introduce HiDPI and help explain what it’s all about. I got a lot of feedback across Medium, Twitter, and Reddit, and wanted to directly…
What is HiDPI Wed, Nov 23, 2016
and Why Does it Matter?
I’m a web developer and UX architect formerly at Ubuntu computer manufacturer System76, and cofounder of elementary OS, an open source desktop operating system….