James Carleton

Back to Carleton design Config 2026 - Recap // INTRO Three days at Moscone Center, San Francisco.

A11Y Camp 2026 — UX Takeaways Bay Area Accessibility Camp · May 29 2026 8 Takeaways for UX Designers This year's edition of the Bay Area Accessibility Camp included a wide range of interesting topics.

All the current hype with vibe coding is around speed and power, which constantly ramps up with each new model that’s announced.

Artificial intelligence is a vast and complex thing, but it’s surprisingly easy to start playing with new AI tools.

Sometimes the internet feels like a dumpster fire but once in a while it feels like the pinnacle of human accomplishment.

a UI kit a sticker sheet a component library a brand book a code library design tokens usage guidelines one size fits all generic, off-the-shelf, prebuilt A design system CAN contain these things, but it’s much more than these parts.

Figma’s Config 2024 was a crazy adventure.

Designing a soundscape As electric and hybrid vehicles have become more ubiquitous, I have noticed the sounds coming from them.

Kill the Date of Birth dropdown!

I had the opportunity to attend the Design Systems Leadership Summit by Knapsack in San Francisco.

Tada!

So with my extra time after the layoff, I decided to try out the device everyone is talking about, the Apple Vision Pro.

I’ve followed Dan Mall’s work for a long time and I’ve enjoyed watching him share and teach what he’s learned about design systems.

Building experiences that work well for a diverse range of customers is a key part of living out our values of inclusion at PayPal.

It seems like I just shared my recap of mentoring in 2022 but now it’s time to reflect on 2023.

Note: This article was adapted from my talk at GOV.UK Design System Day on October 11th 2023.

Video, slides and notes from my talk at ADPList.org’s BeMore Conference on September 20th, 2023 Video: Figma slides with illustrations by Blush Speaking notes: Hello!

Don’t be trapped by the allure of the slider.

I had a great time at Figma’s annual Config conference June 21-22, 2023.

User & System User Experience/User Interface design is about making a system (device/application) as usable for the user (human, customer) as possible.

The Giant Dipper, by Daniel J.

Mentoring on ADPlist.org I had a great year mentoring designers on ADPlist.org and I’m looking forward to meeting even more in 2023🥳.

My first podcast!

Clarity Conference 2022 This year I attended Clarity Conference, the premier design system conference, virtually along with my PayPal teammate Silvia Recinos.

Conference speaking recap: BeMore 2022 Mentoring Builds Leadership Skills I had a great time talking about “Why Mentoring Builds Good Leadership Skills” with the panel at ADPList.org’s BeMore Festival 2022.

Tech Gone Wrong Attention tech workers, innovators, computer nerds!

I love sharing good design news and articles with my design friends and colleagues.

Poster by Ben Barry Hack has become the buzzword mantra in the valley.

As a designer, I love patterns.

I love exploring new avenues for creativity.

Creative people often have a story to tell about the adventurous path they took from where they started to where they ended up.

Thinking about the design process for a set of icons I’m working on, I realized it felt very familiar.

##TL;DR Mobile apps are fun.

A year ago I stood up.

Working on a native app project has allowed me to experiment with new design tools.

I’ve been working on focus.

I recently attended Designers+Geeks, at Yelp HQ in SF, and took some notes on LukeW's great talk, It's a Write/Read Mobile Multi-Device Web.

I just spent two days watching users pick apart my precious design concept.

Ok, that title may sound like link bait but this topic needs just one more opinion.

A discussion about simple interfaces with Brian Anderson and Tyler Bell got me thinking.

Podcasting seems to be in a phase of growth.

Design is a chameleon and I love it.

The facts Icon fonts are simply fonts that have symbols and glyphs (e.g. arrows, folders, magnifying glasses) instead of standard alphanumeric characters.

This is part of a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart, held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

This is part of a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart, held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

This is the first in a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart, held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

This is part of a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart, held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

Backstory Fonts on the web have been limited by licensing restrictions setup for the print era by the font foundries who create them.

I hardly shout at all, but I have to make an exception.

I have completed a redesign of my personal portfolio website.