Patrick Crowley
I’m a product designer and developer in San Diego.
I make apps and websites. Lately that’s meant Artemis Watch, a 3D tracker for NASA’s Artemis II mission, and Sidewalks of South Park, a map of the century-old sidewalk stamps in my neighborhood. Years ago, I built iCalShare, which Steve Jobs called “wonderful” in his Macworld keynote. I also start meetups, like SD Ruby, where I gave many of my talks. And once, I helped build an SUV that turned out to be a bike. It ended up on CNN. I’ve made a few other fun projects, too.
Background
- San Diego, California
I’ve lived in Paris, New York, Sydney, Savannah, and Washington, D.C. For the past 15 years, home has been South Park in San Diego, where my wife Lisa and I also run Ivy Street Coworking.
I left college at 20 to work on a startup with AOL, and I’ve been making software ever since. Some projects have had a long life: Cinema Treasures is still the web’s guide to movie theaters, and Graffletopia still serves OmniGraffle stencils.
I’ve also started a few things that weren’t products: SD Ruby, BarCamp San Diego, Ignite San Diego, San Diego JS, and MerbCamp. The common thread is getting people in a room.
Away from the computer, I’m fascinated by typography, architecture, urban planning, subways, skyscrapers, manned spaceflight, and golden age science fiction. I saw one of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s last launches, and I’m related to the French pirate Jean Lafitte.
Process
I fight for the users.
When I take on a project, I go deep—shaping the idea, designing the experience, building the product, and then relentlessly iterating until it’s awesome.
And I mean deep. I’ll design the front end, then nerd out on the back end, from database schemas and query optimization to background jobs and deploys. I also sweat the parts most people skip, like complex forms, pagination, sign-up and login flows, password resets, transactional emails, mobile support, error pages, opengraph images, and so on.
If it touches the user, it’s worth getting right.
Education
I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design, where I was a double major in photography and film, until I left to work on a startup with AOL. While I was there, I also founded District, SCAD’s student newspaper, which is still published today.
Resume
My recent work history.