Q&A with Lee Munroe

I'm a Designer from Ireland living in San Francisco. I work on a product called Mailgun, an email service built specifically for developers, owned by Rackspace. I also blog and dabble in a bunch of side projects.

Hardware

I have a 13" Retina MacBook Pro. Absolutely in love with the Retina display. I'm also lucky enough to have a 27" Thunderbolt Display to hook up to. Just upgraded to an iPhone 5s. Post-its, sharpies, large sheets of paper and white boards play a big part in my day to day work flow. And I just recently started using a standing desk, which is awesome.

Software

Axure is probably my favorite tool. If you've ever worked with me you'll know I rave on about rapid prototyping and user testing. Photoshop for visual interface design. Sublime for writing code. Evernote for everyday notes. Dropbox for file sharing. Things for getting things done. iTerm instead of Terminal. Rdio for music.

I recently documented my MacBook setup here.

Dream Setup

I couldn't ask for anything better at the moment. If/when Apple come out with Retina Thunderbolt Displays and Retina MacBook Airs I would definitely want some of that.

Inspiration

I usually find myself most inspired when I'm hacking on something new. For example, watching a Railscast on how to do something or coming across a new service like Firebase will inspire me to make something.

I've also started using Inboard to capture inspirational UI. It has a great tagging system, which is great for reference.

Sidebar and Designer News are sites I'll keep tabs on for inspirational design articles. Sites like these have enabled me to ditch my RSS subscriptions.