iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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

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

Ai chat bubble from the user with commit push verify writtent

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

- Save clean screenshots of the Macintosh display. Save in MacPaint and name your drawing, the screenshots use that name (in-browser OCR). - Save a timelapse of your drawing as a super-light MP4 (in-browser ffmpeg). Easiest MacPaint timelapse I know (I used it to make the video in this post.)

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

- Real-size display option to match the 9” Macintosh CRT screen. Uses a custom list to guess your physical display size, with calibration for purists. Great to feel the constraints Bill Atkinson, Jeff Raskin, and Susan Kare faced when designing the UI. (even more below!)

Macintosh emulated display captured at real size on a MacBook screen

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

It uses the insanely great Infinite Mac as the embedded emulator—and adds useful tools around it: - One-click shortcut to open MacPaint - Crisp fullscreen by default, perfect for the original 1-bit UI. (more below!)

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

It’s also pure fun: draw in a retro way and explore the creative constraints of 1-bit illustrations.

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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 · 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

By the way, the images are all generated using Flux Schnell, a very fast <2s, and quite small open weight image gen model, that can give you great results if prompted right. In this case the prompts are themselves generated and decided by the text model based on a mix of traits.

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

What if nobody knew what you will found playing? What If the experience was about finding the paths that nobody has ever taken? How to balance between randomness and consistency? These are key design question for native generative AI user experiences. These are some of the early results.

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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 · 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 · 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

Micropatterns is a small tech design experiment: a generative art web app and an ESP32 firmware for e-paper devices working together to put generative art in your pocket

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

I designed Micropatterns to explore what an e-paper-first art platform would look like: generative because they are small computers, black and white because that's their strong point, working offline because we can carry them with us everywhere.

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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

These small e-paper artworks are rendered on device (no connection needed after a sync), and redraw themselves every 77 seconds. They are created using a small, dedicated art programming language called Micropatterns. I called this one Confetti.

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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 · 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 · 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

How did the Blob Keyboard worked? • Tap for middle letter, swipe for side letters • Not QWERTY, it’s optimized! • No backspace, caps, or cursor • Instant “pop” feedback, no true animations It’s raw, messy. But it was the first to really work!

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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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