△▽ arun.is 040 · Designing arun.is 2.0

In case you missed it, I recently left my job as a co-founder and product designer at Carrot Fertility. I wrote all about it in the last issue, which you can view in the newsletter archive.

Also, since the last issue, I published a photo essay about a few days we spent at the TWA Flight Center. Definitely check it out if you like architecture history.

Of the four things I set out to do during my break from work, a few are well underway. First, I'm writing up my learnings from my experience at Carrot. Thank you to all of you that wrote in with questions to answer.

I've also significantly improved my sleep quality, exercise regimen, and diet. I'm already seeing the effects on my resting heart rate and Apple's estimate of my VO2 max.

I've begun slowly easing into conversations with people around the industry. The goal is to learn about industries I've overlooked and what the most exciting spaces are.

Lastly, I shipped my first project, arun.is 2.0. Check out my blog post for the full details on my process. Here, I'd love to talk a little about the back story that I didn't share in that blog post.

I have a long list of potential projects that I've been collecting over the years. Some are quite stupid and go directly into the trash bin the next time I see them. The others have remained and piled up with the thought that I may eventually come around someday.

With this many month-long break ahead of me, I prioritized my idea list along a few axes: how fun they are, how much I'd learn, how easy they are, and how much impact they could have. The redesign project shot to the top.

So, I worked for a week on designing and developing improvements to arun.is. I told myself I would limit the scope of the changes to functionality only and not touch the visual design of the site. On that Friday, I stood back and gazed at what I had created. While the bones of the ideas were sound, the final execution had really missed the mark.

I lost a little sleep that night. I kept turning the problem over in my head. I knew deep down that I needed to revisit the visual design, but I also didn't want to extend the project. I hate when undertakings drag on at work. I didn't want that here.

The next morning, I made the hard call to not ship. My gut told me that I had drawn myself into a corner. The only solution was to go back to the drawing board.

I spent another week further overhauling the site. Along the way, I felt quite a bit more stress than the previous week. However, I became obsessed. The thought of wrapping it up and launching brought a smile to my face.

This week, I launched and received thoughtful feedback from many of you already. I'm very proud of the result. As an added benefit of the extra week spent, I launched not just a set of functional updates, but a full redesign.

I learned so many lessons in the short sprint. The biggest is to listen to my gut when quality is being compromised. Even though I doubled the time I spent on the site, the result feels at least five times better.

I can't wait to start on my next project.

That's it for this issue. As always, this is my personal email, so feel free to respond directly.

Stay curious,
Arun Venkatesan

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