deep divesONE TOPIC AT A TIME notes2AM BRAIN DUMP 100 womenSIDE QUEST experiencesOUT OF OFFICE design play clubMEMBERS: 1

pooja's website.

everything faint is a door
DEEP DIVES · ONE TOPIC AT A TIME

One ordinary thing, taken apart.

Interactive long reads. Each one picks a single everyday piece of the interface — a login screen, a settings page, a cookie banner — and keeps pulling until it explains itself.

press and hold a file to lift it open — heavier files take longer. (enter works too, if you're in a hurry.)

The topic

Every era of authentication — from MIT's time-sharing passwords to passkeys — mapped across three layers: what the design asks, what the security assumes, and where the secret actually lives. Because every login screen is an apology for its storage model.

The format

Fully interactive. You type into 1961, survive a push-fatigue attack, and watch biometrics win. Evidence transcribed from eighteen real production screens.

open the interactive file → STATUS · FILED & PLAYABLE — close file
The premise

Settings is where features go when nobody could decide where they belong — and where users go when something is wrong, which means the most anxious visit lands in the least designed room. Currently counting how many taps "turn it off" takes across the apps on one ordinary phone.

STATUS · IN RESEARCH — close file
The premise

A banner designed by lawyers, dismissed by reflex, and quietly running the largest consent experiment in history. A deep dive into what the choices actually do, why "reject all" takes three more taps, and what an honest version would look like.

STATUS · IN RESEARCH — close file

know an ordinary interface that deserves this treatment? nominate it →

NOTES · 2AM BRAIN DUMP

The 2am brain dump.

Notes get filed at 2am and are not reviewed in daylight. One at a time — they don't like sharing a room.

01 / 07
"legacy" means nobody remembers why.
tap anywhere on the note to file it ▸
EXPERIENCES · OUT OF OFFICE

The route so far.

Conferences, travel, and what they left behind. The line inks itself as you walk.

HYDERABAD · WHERE IT STARTS

Learned the rules properly, so breaking them later would count

Enterprise design at scale — the unglamorous kind that teaches you what users actually do at 4pm on a Tuesday. First lesson: nobody reads. Second lesson: design for the first lesson.

✓ ORIGIN
KASM · FOUNDING DESIGNER

Security products, worn lightly

Designing streamed workspaces where the hard problems are invisible — latency, trust, and making "secure" feel like "easy" without lying about either. Day job. Also night job, some nights.

✓ CURRENT POST
COPENHAGEN · CIID

Cardboard first, apologies never

Interaction design the Danish way: build the ugly version today. Made glasses that listen to music with you — the Groovy Glasses — and learned that a prototype answering "what if?" beats a deck asking it. Photos and footage in the darkroom.

✓ STAMPED · CPH
SEOUL & TOKYO · THE PILGRIMAGE

Minimal, yet somehow cheerful

Field study of interfaces that are clean without being cold — the Japanese and Korean trick western minimalism keeps missing. Came back with a camera roll of vending machines and one design philosophy.

✓ STAMPED · ICN / HND
CONFERENCES · ONGOING

Collected talks, collected people

Where the practice goes to argue with itself, politely. Currently assembling the full itinerary — badges being counted, opinions being formed.

✓ IN TRANSIT
100 WOMEN · SIDE QUEST

A ledger of lives that chose their own shape.

One hundred conversations with women who decided marriage and children were optional, not inevitable — and built something else entirely. Documented one at a time, at their pace, in their words. The ledger is open.

hover a circle — every one of them is a woman i haven't met yet.
RECORDED · 000 / 100  ·  IMAGINED SO FAR · 000
DESIGN PLAY CLUB · MEMBERS: 1

Design talks × board games.

A social club where designers argue about interfaces until someone flips a table — the board-game kind of table-flip, mostly. Members: 1 (me). The door is closed but not locked.

HOUSE RULES · DRAFT 1

Bring one opinion and one snack. No phones during someone's turn. "It depends" counts as a forfeit.

knock from the inside →

EST. SOON
knock. (click the door — three knocks is the custom.)
first meeting · agenda still open — cast a vote: /