Product × Design × Engineering ☀️ Building the AI Platform for the Insurance industry 🌙 Building Omnom, TackTile, Gesso, and Diameter
Boston, MA
Joined March 2008
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Dan Perrera retweeted
The reward for making something good is a longer list of things you now know are wrong with it
Dan Perrera retweeted
The future belongs to designers who build.
When I started at Anthropic, I challenged myself to work as close to production as possible.
That meant working in code and spinning up prototypes with real states and depth, not just simple flows.
Soon, I realized I hadn’t touched Figma in a week. It's now been over a month.
So I thought: what if I just kept working this way? I zoomed out and spun up a container for my first project, so I could add a second, third, and eventually as many projects as I needed. I customized everything around what I needed, how I work, and how my brain works. Not a diss to any creative tools. But you can’t really beat a tool that matches your mental model.
What came out of it is a fully custom, Frank-first tool that’s part FigJam, part Figma, part Loom, part Google Docs, and part Trello except it’s built entirely around how I actually think.
I’ve already handed files off to engineers and shipped to production using it.
At this point, I can’t really imagine working any other way. And I'm moving 100x faster. I had a lot of anxiety around AI, but I truly feel like the future is bright, and fun.
Dan Perrera retweeted
You can start your own recursive self-improvement loop. It's very easy.
Make a conscious choice to work hard, identify what holds you back, and actively choose suffering in service of undoing (limits/beliefs/trauma/etc)
Most people's subconscious is actively blocking this
Dan Perrera retweeted
I'm Boris and I created Claude Code. Lots of people have asked how I use Claude Code, so I wanted to show off my setup a bit.
My setup might be surprisingly vanilla! Claude Code works great out of the box, so I personally don't customize it much. There is no one correct way to use Claude Code: we intentionally build it in a way that you can use it, customize it, and hack it however you like. Each person on the Claude Code team uses it very differently.
So, here goes.
Dan Perrera retweeted
The reason why I make a great deal out of this
Elysia is a byproduct of the worst contract I had with a software house, as I mentioned in the 1.0 release note
Imagine working 15 hours a day for 6 months
Having to rewrite your backend every 3 days with an ever-growing requirement because of a loose contract
I was forced to maintain the OpenAPI Schema while the backend is extremely flaky, to update to project manager, just to rewrite everything in a few days
I was forced to write SwiftUI in its first year, with a design that is changing every day, and PM blamed us for not being able to follow the smallest detail that had last changed 30 minutes before the meeting
I was forced to maintain and rewrite the backend, which will be refactored every week
Sometimes forced to break it into micro-services only to be rebuilt into a monolithic next week
Sometimes a complete rewrite
I was forced to manage CI, CD with and maintain the whole AWS infrastructure
I have managed all of these alone because they promised they would bring their people in the first month, but nobody came until the end of the project
In the end, my total earnings are around $1,400 deposit at the start of the deal for working 15 hours a day for 6 months, plus trauma
They refused to pay after we had done the project because they are "not satisfied" with their own mismanagement, and refused to believe that their people aren't able to manage the project
I made Elysia because if I can go back in time, I want to give myself this, and reassure myself that everything is going to be alright
Dan Perrera retweeted
Every time I escape Figma and go back to designing entirely in code it feels like being violently introduced to reality again.
No wonder my designs were inadequate. I couldn’t see the real system.
No wonder the interface felt inert. I couldn’t think in the interactive medium.
Dan Perrera retweeted
Sports teams run drills to prepare for game time.
We do something similar in product development where designers pretend to build the app in Figma. Then another team steps in later to actually build the app.
Why do we do this????
Dan Perrera retweeted
Really good examples in this thread that show how much "design" happens in the engineering and implementation of software. If you don't focus on these issues, you'll never be a great product designer. 👇
Dan Perrera retweeted
I made this piece for @dperrera’s birthday. He’s taken over the role of baker in our family, regularly popping out loaves of sourdough, stacks of tortillas, and the occasional bagel or English muffin.
16 × 20” colored pencil on museum board
#pencildrawing #photorealism
Dan Perrera retweeted
Hey folks 👋
In case you missed it, I’ve got two of my drawings in a gallery show that opens this weekend. I’ll be there (the Zullo Gallery in Medfield, MA) with @dperrera tomorrow from 7-9pm. Stop by and say hello if you’re around!
#thisweekend #artgallery #galleryopening
Dan Perrera retweeted
Excited to share that these two pieces — my first ever large-scale drawing and my first ever colored pencil piece — were accepted into this year’s juried exhibit at Zullo Gallery in Medfield, MA.
1/2
Dan Perrera retweeted
Finished up my drawing of the left AirPod in way less time than the right one.
#photorealism #drawing #apple
Dan Perrera retweeted
It's happening – I'm hiring 2 designers to join the product design team at Goldcast! If this is you, get in touch, otherwise please help me spread the word.
goldcast.design
#design #uxui #UXJobs #hiring
Dan Perrera retweeted
A little study on Museum Rising Board which I love so much, @dperrera now refers to it as my husband. 🙄
#photorealism #drawing