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Q&A with Darcy Clarke

UX Developer and Designer

I’m Darcy Clarke, a UX Developer and Designer. Essentially, I like to build things and talk about building things. I Co-Founded Themify, contract with agencies/startups and actively contribute to a number of open source projects.

Hardware

My hardware stack is pretty simple, I use a 13” MacBook Air with a 24” external monitor. The Air is great for travelling, which I do a lot of. For testing I have a number of phones and tablets strewn about my apartment but prefer my iPhone 5 for daily use. I also keep two physical backups of everything I do on a external hard drives. One of which is a Rugged LaCie USB 3.0 1TB I keep with me while travelling.

I also always carry at least one hardcover Plain or Squared Moleskine, a number of Black Uniball 207 Medium Gell Pens and various colors/shades of Copic markers for sketching ideas in the office or on the go.

My office consists of a bunch of nicknacks but most importantly are my Ikea Black-Brown Expedit Workstation, Alang Table lamp and numerous books which include:

  1. Learning JavaScript Design Patterns (by Addy Osmani),
  2. About Face 3 (by Alan Cooper) and
  3. Designing Interactions (by Bill Moggridge).

Software

I use Sublime Text 3 and iTerm with ZShell for development, Mou for Markdown, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for design, Dropbox for backups, Adium for IM, Alfred for search/opening things, Spotify for music, Screenflow for recording tutorials and screencasts, JSFiddle for code snippets, Github for Open Source development/distribution, Browserstack for testing and Chrome Canary for initial in-browser development.

Dream setup

My current MacBook Air is really just a temporary machine as my 15” MacBook Pro was stolen a few months back. My preferred laptop, and next purchase, will be a maxed out 15” Retina MacBook Pro. As well, I’ve been meaning to grab the latest iPhone 5S and a new iPad.

The one thing I’m missing from my home office is a cork board and decent printer to print and post in-process designs and concepts.

Inspiration

I’ve always been passionate about web development but when I’m looking for new inspiration I turn to other individuals in the field. RSS Feeds, Hacker News, Reddit, Dribbble, Twitter and Github are great places to find and stay up-to-date with the best and brightest professionals.