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damirkotoric

113 karma · joined January 24, 2011

Reach me on https://twitter.com/damirkotoric
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damirkotoric··on Ask HN: When and why did you start believing in God?
You could be indifferent to God existing?

I don't believe in a superior grand designer overlooking it all from "his" cloud castle, but if such a deity did exist, I would be profoundly amazed. I find it interesting to think that one could come to find it anything but consequential.

damirkotoric··on Can we have the day off?
No we can't because that's not how capitalism works.

Marx called it exploitation for a reason.

damirkotoric··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)
Location: Australian resident, based in Thailand half the year

Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Unlikely. EU possible.

Technologies: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Tailwind, Supabase, Node, Figma (no longer use it)

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZL3NkRoKuGtqx_iMlU7sdgsE...

Website: https://damirkotoric.com/

Email: mail@damirkotoric.com

Design engineer / UX developer with 17 years across product design and frontend. At Booking.com I worked on payments and checkout, contributing to a €35M conversion uplift; at Harvard I designed AR interfaces for academic and cultural heritage projects (Giza, Parthenon). Currently freelancing and shipping my own products.

damirkotoric··on Talking to strangers at the gym
Ironically enough, Dale Carnegie's book is about as far as you can get from genuine human connections. The whole book is centred aruond an underlying desire to gain something from someone.

So good on you for finding that one genuine bit of interaction in the entire book.

damirkotoric··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2023)
Designer SEEKING WORK | REMOTE WORLDWIDE

Damir is an expert UX Architect & UI Designer with over 15 years of multi-industry experience — designing sites and apps for the likes of Booking.com, Harvard University, Australian state governments, finance, XR and web3 startups worldwide. He specialises in taking startups from 0 to 1 — that is from strategic design consultation and UX architecture, to the nitty-gritty of UI design, design system creation, prototyping, quality analysis, user testing, hiring and mentorship. His talent for turning complex problems into elegant solutions is a winning formula that has left a legacy of successful projects with clients from Austria, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Spain and the USA.

http://damirkotoric.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/damirkotoric/

damirkotoric··on I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone
Marx knew better.
damirkotoric··on Google Dataset Search
Shameless plug. I wrote a piece about The State of Open Data Portals https://uxdesign.cc/designing-open-data-portals-for-governme... where I predict that it'll take a Google to really provide a single searchable dataset portal for the whole world.

Doesn't take a genius to predict, but there ya go! Governments are assembling datasets in a very fragmented way. It'll take a private company to provide one single website to explore and find all datasets from around the world, making it easier to look at holistic patterns that are happening around the world, or compare patterns between countries.

Though, I would expect a much better UX from Google nowadays. This site has more in common with Google Scholar than Google Search.

And ultimately I'd like to see them build something where people don't need to download datasets in order to make use of the data.

I compare the state of open data to the state of mapping software before Google Maps. You needed to download map files and open them on special software that you open on your computer to make sense of the data. And then Google Maps came along and flipped that whole model. Open data needs the same leap forward in order for more people to make greater use of open data.

damirkotoric··on Losing faith in UX
UX was never about the user to begin with.

It was about giving companies competitive advantage. That is essentially the ROI of UX, and it was since the term was first coined.

damirkotoric··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2020)
SEEKING WORK | Product Designer | Remote (GMT+11)

Multidisciplinary designer bringing digital products to life — for fledgling startups and Fortune 500 giants all around the world.

http://damirkotoric.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/damirkotoric/

damirkotoric··on A Study of Meditation Under the Influence of Psilocybin
> Tripping is an advertisement to meditate, not the other way around.

This really distills the message down to its essence. Though worth pointing out that this advertisement doesn't have to be seen as spam. Rather it can be just the right channel at the right moment for some people.

damirkotoric··on Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?
I'm in the middle of building https://minihero.org/ and hoping to ship next week. I hope that in the future volunteering will be as easy as hailing an Uber.
damirkotoric··on Just how smart is an octopus?
"unless the emotional pain is a desired outcome"

Seriously, who are some of you people?

damirkotoric··on Backpacker stripped of tech gear at Auckland Airport
Are things getting worse every day?
damirkotoric··on Wikileaks publishes 500k new Stratfor emails
A training video? Showing them how to behave like barbaric cunts?
damirkotoric··on PS4 UX is powered by WebGL
Hate it when people use UX as a cool new buzzword for UI. UX is not UI. Read:

http://www.helloerik.com/ux-is-not-ui

damirkotoric··on California passes groundbreaking open textbook legislation
I love his response in the video. Seems like it took the guy only a couple of seconds to realise how much sense the idea makes. He would have done his research prior to the meeting but his attitude toward it is great.
damirkotoric··on Designing for A Retina Web
Good point. What you can do though, is to use media queries to load up different SVGs based on the screen resolution of the device. With a progressive enhancement approach you would load up the icons minimized for small displays by default, then work your way up.
damirkotoric··on Designing for A Retina Web
I find vector images to be a godsend when creating responsive web sites. They are easy to implement and 'future proof' your website so when the next iDevice comes out with twice the resolution as the current gen retina devices your icons will look just as crisp. Of course Bitmap images remain a pain in the bum.
damirkotoric··on LSD helps to treat alcoholism
Me too.
damirkotoric··on HTML5: With Great Templates Comes Great Responsivity
I don't think that responsive web design is a fad. No way. I don't want to download an app for every website that is out there. I want to simply visit the same sites that I do on my desktop and receive the same content in a way that is pleasant to view on the device that I'm using.

This isn't a Web 2.0-like design style that comes and goes. I'm sure the techniques will evolve in time but I can't see us ever going back to fixed width layouts.