iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 28/04/2026

@mikebithell.bsky.social Hi! Was trying to download Thomas was alone to show it to my design students on my iPhone but… it’s not available to download anymore! Is that a region issue (France) or is totally removed from the App Store? (I digged out an old iPhone that luckily had it!)

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 27/03/2026

"human-in-the-loop", they said

Ai chat bubble from the user with commit push verify writtent

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 23/02/2026

@rebeccabellan.bsky.social hi! I’m a bit surprised that you took the framing of companies using Anthropic AI generation to train their models as attacks without challenging it. Anthropic trained on downloaded and scanned books, copyrighted materials, when AI answers bear no copyright at all.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 11/02/2026

Students using the Blob Keyboard (2005) simulator to learn about the iPhone OS design story and the strange paths of prototyping 😃 @kocienda.bsky.social

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 04/02/2026

Invent machines for imagining. Sway between control and the unexpected. SLOP Gala lets you create an outfit no one has seen before you. There's millions of fits to craft. Some might be ridiculous. Others, brilliant. And you decide which is which! try it: slopgala.com

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 01/02/2026

Allez, je l'affirme, j'ai créé la meilleure IA avant-garde de mode 😅 Et elle est super simple à utiliser : on choisis des inspis qu'on aime, on les mixe, et on compose une tenue jamais vue, par personne avant nous ! slopgala.com

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 31/01/2026

I think I created the best avant garde fashion AI, and it’s super easy to use: pick inspos you like, mix them, and craft an outfit that nobody has ever seen! slopgala.com

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 25/01/2026

Are you ready for the SLOP Gala?

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 21/01/2026

The Fit / The Look at the SLOP Gala. Did you get your invitation?

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 22/10/2025

MacPaint is a key step in the history of UX (and visual design!) I built a super simple way to use MacPaint 1.0 in workshops and lectures. Try it: juliendorra.com/macintosh/

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 22/10/2025

2-minute pottery in Mac Paint 1.0. Time lapse created using juliendorra.com/macintosh/

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 13/10/2025

in Accelerando (2005) by @cstross.bsky.social at the start the main character is using smart glasses and have the same disconnect with people. He's an early adopter, tech obsessed. It costs him something. Very relevant book. Captures from @mkbhd.com's review of Meta's Ray-ban display

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 08/10/2025

You should care about Kare (because she's the first digital design professional)

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 03/10/2025

Here are three people that are present everyday in your life: Jef Raskin, Bill Atkinson and Bas Ording. They make you move in very specific ways. Do you know why?

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 28/09/2025

Artificial Intelligence programming book from… 1986

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 22/09/2025

What if the atomium was a giant rotating sculpture? Shot with a 1997 camera, animated with a 2025 AI

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 20/09/2025

Black Lava, made with Live Code Lab

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 19/09/2025

AI and video games: using light fast AI models to get impactful results - Combining game's ingredients in detailed monster description => GPT5 Thinking (ok, heavy model) - Monster image gen => Flux Schnell, optimized for speed, <2s generation - Monster video gen => Luma Ray3 draft, fast, 20-30s

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 06/09/2025

Créez le problème pour mieux annoncer la solution 🙃

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 05/09/2025

I built a new generative AI prototype! The goal? Find out how gen AI can expand playful user experiences that have been traditionally limited by fixed rules and pre-created content. What if crafting-based games were much more open ended?

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 25/08/2025

Brussel has a special mix of architecture, and the Sony Mavica FD7 (1997 floppy camera) is particularly adapted to shooting the 70s - 90s buildings there. I especially love the quite tacky neo-neo-classic ones.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 22/08/2025

AI chatbots: so cheerful and happy to grant your wish in a totally wrong way

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 09/08/2025

The world before containerization (Retable of Saint Nicholas, ≈1479/1505)

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 08/08/2025

I’m sorry but I don’t know a single PhD who you can’t give a whole book or two to read… (yes, it’s about GPT5 still too small input length)

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 05/08/2025

Who's afraid of blown out highlights and color fringing? Not me! The Atomium in Brussel, shot with a Sony Mavica FD5, a 1996 camera that uses diskettes (!) and take 640x480 pixels photos using a video sensor.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 01/08/2025

The Paris Olympics flame, up again for 3 summers. Shot with a Mavica FD5, a camera that uses diskettes to take 640x480 pixels photos using a video sensor!

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 17/07/2025

In 2013, Mozilla partnered with ZTE to create a phone with a FLOSS OS based on web tech: Firefox OS! You could build native apps using only HTML, CSS, JavaScript. This is a piece of tech history, from a moment many believed there still was a chance at a really open and accessible OS for phones

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 01/07/2025

A new tool that lets its users work 80 times faster? It was released, and it was 46 years ago: VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, which allowed users to do in 15 minutes what used to take them 20 hours! Did their professions disappear? No.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 10/06/2025

Early Aqua (10.1 2001) compared to later Aqua (10.7 2010)

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 08/06/2025

Bill Atkinson was one of the most influential interface (dev+UX+UI) designer of all times: if you're using a computer, you're using his inventions everyday, pull-down menus that you can ruffle through (invented over one night… after months of iterations), palette-menu in design tools like Photoshop…

a polaroid of the first pul down menu moved to the top for the LISA interface, with annotations on the bottom of the polaroid

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 06/06/2025

It’s the weekend so here’s generative art at the bouldering gym

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 04/06/2025

Is Google the Apple of generative AI?

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 01/06/2025

Generative art with Louis XIV

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 31/05/2025

Thunderstorms at Jardin du Luxembourg. E-paper generative art that I can carry in my pocket, created with the micropatterns tools I designed (editor and firmware)

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 29/05/2025

Generative Art at the Arboretum

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 22/05/2025

E-paper is still emerging as a platform. What is it good for, beyond book readers and price tags? It's an open tech design question. (tech design is also called full stack design).

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 22/05/2025

micropatterns, from code to e-paper. Now render 10 times faster on the e-paper device. Faster slow art? 😅

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 12/05/2025

I created a completely crazy Memphis Milano inspired design for the Micropatterns web editor… but I added two levels of failsafe in case of visual overdrive!

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 11/05/2025

Handheld Generative Art, at the top of the Eiffel tower! I wanted a way to enjoy generative art outside of the phone or computer screen, so I designed it using an e-paper dev kit 😄

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 05/05/2025

I debugged by reading the code, like that, without AI, like a psychopath

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 28/04/2025

Real life UX anti-pattern. Defensive design to "fix" self-inflicted "wrong user behavior". This (recent!) bike lane is dangerous, so bikes drive on the sidewalk. Next step was *obviously* to put barriers there. Now it's bad for bikes, cars, pedestrians, wheelchair and stroller users. Lose-lose UX 😱

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 19/04/2025

A4 sheets, barcodes… and the web! Why aren’t designers more focused on designing standards instead of products? Standards (aka protocols, conventions) create huge ecosystems of companies, devices and applications, unlocking incredible value.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 17/04/2025

"I've been surprised to find that most of the products out there billing themselves as "AI Agents" are not all that agentic. A lot of them are mostly deterministic code, with LLM steps sprinkled in at just the right points to make the experience truly magical." github.com/humanlayer/1...

github.com

GitHub - humanlayer/12-factor-agents: What are the principles we can use to build LLM-powered software that is actually good enough to put in the hands of production customers?

What are the principles we can use to build LLM-powered software that is actually good enough to put in the hands of production customers? - humanlayer/12-factor-agents

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 15/04/2025

iPhone 2G and iPhone 3GS on top of an iPhone 16. Designing for the early smartphones was very different than designing today, and their success is hard to really capture without experiencing them. UX history gives designers perspective!

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 09/04/2025

This prototype has never been experienced outside Apple since 2005! Try the Blob Keyboard, Ken Kocienda's first prototype for the original iPhone keyboard. It’s raw UX, it's unfinished, but it was the **first** to really work! juliendorra.github.io/blob-keyboar...

juliendorra.github.io

Blob Keyboard Simulator. Back to 2005!

Experience Ken Kocienda's early iteration of the original iPhone keyboard: the Blob Keyboard from september 2005.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 09/04/2025

How do you solve a design challenge full of unknown unknowns? Jump back to 2005 and try the Blob Keyboard, @kocienda.bsky.social's first working prototype for the iPhone keyboard, created during a UX crisis.

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 06/04/2025

@kocienda.bsky.social I posted it on HN, and there's a bunch of nerds all over the word thanking me, that's quite fun 😅 news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359... I tried to answer and dispel some myths / misinterpretations in the thread too, hopefully I get it right!

news.ycombinator.com

Show HN: iPhone 2005 weird "Blob Keyboard" simulator | Hacker News

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Julien Dorra @juliendorra.com · 05/04/2025

I knew the US was an outlier amongst OECD countries on homicide, maternal and infant death, longevity, but road fatalities specifically is something that I missed. Again, GDP per inhabitant is not telling the whole story of wealth in a country, especially not how this wealth is distributed

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