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Jason Beaird

@jasongraphix.com
794 followers 424 following 8.6K posts

Amateur adult, novice dad, humble husband & professor optimist. Senior Product Design Manager based in Winter Park, FL. 🌴 jasongraphix.com

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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 5h
I finally finished my blog post about the empathy exercise and Silo-themed game I ran at last week's onsite. jasongraphix.com/journal/brea...
jasongraphix.com
Breaking Silos & Building Empathy - Jasongraphix
For remote teams, there's always pressure to make our rare, in-person time valuable. Spending an hour of a 2-day onsite on a silly game might seem like a waste, but I've found that a little competitio...
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 15/09/2026
Can't wait to run the Silo-themed team "building" game I planned for a work meetup in Chicago next week. My kids and I play-tested it over the weekend, and I printed red-level relic trophies for the winning team.
My daughters putting the finishing touches on a DIY marble run built on a table from cardstock, straws, popsicle sticks, and tape.A set of six 3D-printed duck Pez dispenser trophies with Sprout Social branding.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 04/08/2026
I'm sure the Venn diagram overlap of Untappd & Pixelfed users is small, but I wrote a tiny Python script with Claude that checks my Untappd RSS feed and cross-posts new check-in photos to Pixelfed. Here's the repo: github.com/jasongraphix... and here's what it posts: pixelfed.social/jasongraphix
github.com
GitHub - jasongraphix/untappd-to-pixelfed: Cross-post new Untappd RSS check-ins to Pixelfed
Cross-post new Untappd RSS check-ins to Pixelfed. Contribute to jasongraphix/untappd-to-pixelfed development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 28/07/2026
I launched SkilletSched.com three months ago, and our family still uses it every week to plan meals. It's been fun iteratively improving the UX. I just added a feature a friend asked for: household ⭐️ ratings for recipes. If you cook at home, give it a try!
skilletsched.com
SkilletSched
SkilletSched — Family meal planning synced with Google Calendar
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 27/07/2026
Of the 71 feeds I'm tracking at teamdesign.team, only 32 have posted within the last 12 months. I just did some cleanup and moved Atlassian, Babbel, ExxonMobil, GitHub, Gusto, Kingfisher, Oscar, Prudential, Wix, and Yelp to the dormant list.
teamdesign.team
Team Design Team
Discover insights, trends, and stories from 40+ design team blogs. Follow along via RSS, LinkedIn, or Mastodon for a steady stream of design inspiration. 🙌 Welcome to the team!
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 17/07/2026
It's been a tough week at work. Layoffs suck.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 08/07/2026
Just published a blog post about our Italian road trip through Bologna, Florence, Cinque Terre, Verona, and Venice. It was an adventure we'll never forget, and a good reminder to be intentional about experiences like this before our kids are grown. jasongraphix.com/journal/our-...
jasongraphix.com
Our Italian Summer Road Trip - Jasongraphix
We just got back from a 12 day vacation that was months in the making. Over the last decade, my sister Jenna and her family have lived in Puerto Rico,
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 13/06/2026
Fun fact…
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 02/06/2026
I laughed at the link, but now this is playing on repeat while I work. kottke.org/26/06/daft-p...
kottke.org
Daft Punk, Medieval-Style
Watch and listen to bardcore trio Courseval play a cover version of Daft Punk’s Veridis Quo, a track from Discovery. This is lovely. And a banger. Course
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 26/05/2026
Huzzah! No more “back to safety” step when enabling SkilletSched’s Google Calendar sync option. Our OAuth flow is now fully verified. Here’s the demo walkthrough I submitted to kick off the verification process. Drop a reply if you want to try it out! youtu.be/Vt0uRJmLf4I...
youtu.be
YouTube
End-to-end demonstration of how SkilletSched uses requested Google Calendar scopes to sync meal plans.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 14/05/2026
I asked Claude to package the opinionated practice behind this pattern library into a skill for anyone working in React + Tailwind. I haven't tested it with a new build project yet, but happy to share the .skill file if anyone wants to try it.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 14/05/2026
One thing I noticed while building SkilletSched is that Claude tends to reinvent components. I spent a few sessions standardizing UI, killing off unnecessary variants, and converting skilletsched.com/design from a page of approximations used to troubleshoot theme colors to a legit pattern library.
Screenshot of the pattern library at skilletsched.com/design
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 07/05/2026
Made a delicious batch of chicken & dumplings for dinner and then spent my dev time tonight baking prep/cook/total time, yield, and tag metadata into stored recipes. #BuildInPublic skilletsched.com/@jasongraphi...
skilletsched.com
Recipe for Instant Pot Chicken & Dumplings
Shared by Jason Beaird on SkilletSched.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 06/05/2026
Our daughter asked to invite a friend over for dinner on a night we'd planned to try a new recipe. It turned out great, so I added it to my shared recipes: skilletsched.com/@jasongraphi... In tonight's app progress, I'm now surfacing public shares on the Recipes page in SkilletSched for easy import.
skilletsched.com
Recipe for Honey-Mustard Chicken & Broccoli Casserole
Shared by Jason Beaird on SkilletSched.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 03/05/2026
Our family has been planning and cooking meals for the last few weeks with a web app I've been working on called SkilletSched. Now, I'm opening it up for others to use, too. Here's the story: jasongraphix.com/journal/intr...
jasongraphix.com
Introducing SkilletSched - Jasongraphix
Three years ago, I wrote a post about how our family plans meals each week on Google Calendar and used a data export to surface and share some of our favorite weeknight dinners. Until this month, that...
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 15/04/2026
"The interdisciplinary mind isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s the capability that matters most, precisely because it’s the one machines can’t replicate." matthiasott.com/articles/des...
matthiasott.com
Design and Engineering, As One · Matthias Ott
We inherited our product processes from a 19th-century steel works. Frederick Winslow Taylor separated thinking from doing, managers from makers, designers from builders – and a hundred years later, m...
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 06/04/2026
I spent some Claude Code tokens improving teamdesign.team a bit over the weekend. I now have a script that auto-fills missing recent post thumbnails with the article's OpenGraph image. While I still wish they'd just add an RSS feed, I also found a way to fetch new posts from design.google.
teamdesign.team
Team Design Team
Discover insights, trends, and stories from 40+ design team blogs. Follow along via RSS, LinkedIn, or Mastodon for a steady stream of design inspiration. 🙌 Welcome to the team!
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 01/04/2026
I finally released the Nest photo gallery project with a working installer. Now, anyone (with an ARM-based Mac) can convert a discarded Gen2 Nest thermostat into an interactive photo frame. jasongraphix.com/journal/crea...
jasongraphix.com
Create your own Nest Photo Gallery - Jasongraphix
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I used Claude Code to convert a deprecated Nest thermostat into a photo gallery. That post finished with a happily-ever-after ending and a video demo of the working ...
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 26/03/2026
Do you happen to have a Gen2 Nest Thermostat lying around that you want to convert to a photo gallery like this? jasongraphix.com/journal/nest... I have an installer built (for Intel Macs) that I’d love to get a few folks to test.
jasongraphix.com
Converting a Deprecated Nest Thermostat into a Photo Gallery - Jasongraphix
Before we dive in, I should let you know that I'm a designer. I have no business hacking firmware to make devices perform jobs they were never intended for, but I do love tinkering with physical hardware. A few years ago, I wrote about building an Arduino LED strip game and followed that post up with another about a Simon clone built with arcade buttons and a 3D printed case. I've also taken on some Raspberry Pi projects, a few simpler Arduino builds, and some home automation. All of those were based on existing code and project plans—no compiled binaries or firmware modifications. So, yes, I was way outside my skill set and comfort zone on this project, but that's how we learn new things, right?
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 11/03/2026
I've always said that design is about learning rules to know when to break them and that applies to design process too. I love this whole talk from @jennywen.ca. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u94...
youtube.com
Jenny Wen: The design process is dead. Why Designers can no longer trust it.
YouTube video by Hatch Conference
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 05/03/2026
I can quit anytime I want…
eBay purchase screenshot showing $31.95 paid for a lot of two gen2 Nest thermostats.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 21/02/2026
Claude Code changes the question from “should designers code?” to “should designers modify firmware?” Here’s the story about how I upcycled a deprecated Nest thermostat into a photo gallery. jasongraphix.com/journal/nest...
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 17/02/2026
This is a fascinating window into how AI SaaS pricing models are evolving. "We could tell we were creating a not-lovable experience." www.elenaverna.com/p/we-stopped...
elenaverna.com
We stopped forcing the subscription model on our users. Here is what happened.
How and why Lovable introduced ‘top-up’-style monetization.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 12/02/2026
That could be cool! One of the hurdles I ran into is that there's no way to render jpg/gif/png on the device, so each photo has to be resized to 320x320 and converted to bgra .raw file. 🙃
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 12/02/2026
That's the plan! To make it easier to update the gallery, the Nest will be pulling the images from a web folder, so you probably won't be able to scrub too quickly. Not sure yet how many I'll be able to cache at a time.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 12/02/2026
I’m converting my deprecated Gen2 Nest into a mini digital photo frame and just got a test image loading. I would have abandoned this project already if it weren’t for Claude Code, which is making the trial and error of it fun.
A Gen2 Nest Thermostat in my hand with a family photo on the display and a couple terminal windows on the MacBook in the background.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 05/02/2026
Having shared the viral video with my teens, it was fun to read about how a 77-year-old curator at the National Gallery of Art started making videos in Gen Z slang. www.milkkarten.net/i/186801044/...
milkkarten.net
The museum with an unexpected star - by Rachel Karten
I talked to the team at the National Gallery of Art, including 77-year-old curator Alison Luchs, about “rizzing up the internet with art history.”
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 30/01/2026
Completed the first step of my side quest to do something fun with this little hunk of e-waste.
A deprecated gen2 Nest displaying the NLE (No Longer Evil) logo, indicating that it has been successfully flashed with custom firmware.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 16/01/2026
I love our local UX community. Cesar led us through a great, practical workshop on Journey Mapping at last night’s Downtown Orlando UX Meetup. youtu.be/MhztaBCwt6U
youtu.be
Using User Journey Mapping to Turn Raw Inputs into Insight
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 06/01/2026
Thanks Lauts! Felt good to dive into (and make time to share) a big DIY project again. Been a while! Hope all is good in ATL.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 05/01/2026
We did it! Our DIY Library Ladder Wall project is complete. It was quite a holiday break marathon to get this built, but we're so happy with how it came together. Check it out: jasongraphix.com/journal/libr...
jasongraphix.com
Library Ladder Wall - Jasongraphix
In August, Ames and I did something we never thought we'd do - we finally bought a move-in-ready home. Since our first house renovation project in 2005,
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 13/12/2025
The bulk of our winter break DIY project just arrived. Not pictured: vintage 10ft library ladder and butcher block countertops. 📚
Large stack of IKEA cabinet and bookshelf boxes.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 06/12/2025
Symmetrical internet is much better than fast download speeds alone. At our old house, a 300mb fiber plan worked great. We moved in September and the upload on our “gig” cable internet capped out at about 50mb. Just got fiber run with only a 500mb plan, and this chart makes me smile.
Speed test history chart showing symmetrical ~400mb speeds in June & July, a date in September with 610mb download and almost 0 upload, then a new test this week with ~550mb up and down.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 04/12/2025
One of my product design colleagues shared this from their granola.ai 2025 "crunched" report, and I've never felt more seen.
What would 2025 have been without the people you work with?
Celebrating...
Jason Beaird
Most Likely to Remind You That We Actually Have to Build This Thing Eventually
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 01/12/2025
Time to let the kids shave off my November beard again. Unsurprisingly, they attempted a 6️⃣7️⃣ this year.
Selfie with a full, graying, November beard.Photo of my daughter shaving off part of my beard.A six shaved into the left side of my beard.Selfie with the beard completely shaved off.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 12/11/2025
We've been chatting with ProductTank Orlando about doing a collab event for a long time. So excited that it's happening, and that we're meeting in Full Sail's Treehouse, which is such a rad venue!
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 08/11/2025
The weather was perfect for this year’s Falcon 5k. Adelyn didn’t train at all, so we took it slow and had fun.
Adelyn and I in our 5k shirts with our race medals.Strava post export with a photo of the starting line and our 35:03 finish time.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 05/11/2025
nice again?
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 31/10/2025
Creative Mornings Orlando is always inspiring, but it was especially refreshing to hear stories from students and recent grads at today’s “Rising Creatives” event.   creativemornings.com/cities/orl/b...
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 28/10/2025
Tonight’s random vibe coding project success, presented without context.
A 4x9 grid with labels overlayed showing the color of the dot inside each cell.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 23/10/2025
Experimenting with agent mode in ChatGPT Atlas is a good reminder that designing web experiences that are intuitive and accessible for all humans makes them more usable for everyone, including the robots. Watching Atlas work is like facilitating a user research session.
Screenshot of Atlas recognizing that it chose the wrong date from a date picker component.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 23/10/2025
Just put a fresh set of caster wheels on my old standing desk. After about 5y, the tread wore off one from my original set. Still love being able to roll my desk around.
Old set of 4 caster wheels. One is is missing tread and the looking pretty worn and gross too.New set of 4 locking caster wheels that are similar to the old set but blueish and with shorter stems.Photo of desk with new caster wheels installed.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 10/10/2025
I Installed a closer on the door of our new home office today. I was a bit nervous as it was my first time having to drill and tap machine screw holes, but it turned out great!
An aluminum storefront style glass door with a top jamb mounted door closer installed.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 06/10/2025
I took my youngest daughter to see Alex Warren perform at UCF last night. A few weeks ago, my oldest and I went to Benson Boone at Kia Center. Middle school girl dad life is out of the ordinary, but mystical and magical.
Selfie with my youngest daughter. She's wearing an Alex Warren shirt at the concert last night.Photo of my oldest daughter wearing a red Benson Boone hoodie at a concert in September.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 03/10/2025
Ugh! Home of some of the all-time best lunch breaks.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 23/09/2025
"Delightful is fleeting. Delight is enduring." - @cameronmoll.bsky.social chieflydesign.substack.com/p/delight-vs...
chieflydesign.substack.com
Delight vs. Delightful
Issue № 01 in which I unpack the differences between Utility, Delight, and Delightful. Featured font: Rather Risqué by SilverStag.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 16/09/2025
Just re-discovered loadmo.re via today's sidebar.io newsletter, which reminded me to check out www.hoverstat.es and httpster.net again too. I need more unconventional design inspiration in my life.
loadmo.re
LOADMORE
LOADMORE showcases unconventional websites for smartphones.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 12/09/2025
Looking forward to next week's @douxmeetup.com discussion on the UX of AI. www.meetup.com/downtown-orl...
meetup.com
[Hybrid] Discussion: Exploring the UX of AI, Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup
From auto-complete to multi-agent orchestration, AI-powered features are becoming ubiquitous, but are we designing them well? This month, we'll explore the emerging UX patt
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 29/08/2025
It’s inspiring to see new signs of pride and allyship popping up around Orlando. You can paint over (and pressure wash) a crosswalk, but The City Beautiful will keep shining through.
A residential driveway in Orlando with rainbow stripes painted on it to match the Pulse memorial crosswalk.
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Jason Beaird @jasongraphix.com · 11/08/2025
The school year begins! We officially have two middle schoolers.
Two smiling girls with backpacks on, ready for their first day of school.
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