Thejas

Designer

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

New portfolio. The little guy at the door likes visitors. Come meet it: https://t.co/RE5NhDbXZC

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

The profile picture on my portfolio has a stop motion animation hidden behind it. I dance outside of design, and I wanted a small, quiet way for the site to show that side of me too. How I made it is a bit of a story, so here's the video.

Hover over it on https://t.co/pzZVTnGhrc to see it yourself.

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

I have been exploring affective design and how products can be intentional about how they make us feel. Don Norman describes three levels in Emotional Design: visceral, behavioural and reflective.

While I was reading, I noticed some parts of my portfolio already do this, so I recorded a short ten second walkthrough. A small robot says hello, the copy changes with the time of day, and the transitions try to keep you oriented.

I am still learning. If you have seen affective design done well, I would like to see it.

Portfolio: https://t.co/pzZVTnGhrc

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

A small interaction on the "snapshots" in my About page, to make them feel a little nostalgic. swipe or tap to the next photo and it comes in with a light leak and some old film crackle. https://t.co/Gr3mCHFiBZ

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

tiny detail I added.
the chips slide over as you scroll down the page.

https://t.co/MvRqKc8WnY

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

How do you point first-time visitors to a hidden feature without getting in their way?

On my website, if your mouse goes still for about 8 seconds, the robot does a small hop and asks you to click it. It only asks once, and it stops asking once you've found its Avatar State.
A still mouse is usually someone deciding where to go next, and that felt like the right time to make a suggestion.

https://t.co/pzZVTnGhrc (desktop)

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then someone poked my little guy

Here it is: https://t.co/RE5NhDbXZC
Click him 3 times, fast.

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Remember the glowing seeds that land on Jake in Avatar? I made them land on you.

Try it on desktop: https://t.co/m8hdwRURxX
How I built it: https://t.co/b7SLXjXd3j

Music: James Horner, "Pure Spirits of the Forest" · Film: Avatar (2009)

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

This is the part I'm most happy with. You can shoo the woodsprites(Atokirina) away with your hand, the way Jake does in the movie Avatar. Gesture-based interaction inside a mirror-AR experience, running on just the webcam. Took a lot of iterations to make it feel this smooth.

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

been tinkering with Google's MediaPipe pose tracking, running live in the browser for a project I'm working on. More on that soon.

https://t.co/Uf3Fvc3saK

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Almost there...
Can't wait to make this one live

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

None of my past projects have lit me up like this one.

Still polishing a few things, but its soo close. Can't wait to make this one public

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Been experimenting with a few Synesthetic Motion v2 directions.

https://t.co/JTqBDVXI37

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

such an insane level of attention to detail, I've seen landscape video UIs and regular portrait layouts before, but this “hinge state” feels like a whole new pattern

[alexey @sekachov]

the reflection when duo is semi-folded! geez, apple, you didn't have to go that hard.

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Been quietly iterating on a new mobile preloader for my portfolio. It’s all in the tiny transitions, tap through and see if you can spot the differences.

https://t.co/gkjuKjO873

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Scrolling back up and actually reading everything claude code wrote, line by line and comment by comment, has been weirdly fun. I’m picking up terminology, seeing how it names patterns, and finding better words for behaviours and interactions, has been a new kind of doomscroll.

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Playing with how columns expand and rearrange themselves. One version crossfades between states, another smoothly nudges the layout into place in a kind of “magic move” transition

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Explorations on cursor gaze microinteractions with tilted eyes

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

Explorations on cursor gaze microinteraction 🧪

[Thejas @thejas_hr]

nav bar visual directions