Mara Kestrel Booking from February 2027

Uses

What I use

People ask. None of this matters as much as time spent watching the work, but here it is.

Desk

A secondhand standing desk
Raised for calls, lowered for writing.
One 27-inch screen
One screen keeps me honest about focus.
A good lamp with a warm bulb
Edinburgh winters are dark by four.

Design

Figma
For layouts and shared reviews with clients.
A5 dot-grid notebooks
Everything starts here, usually badly.
A blue pencil
The cobalt on this site is a tribute.

Code

VS Code
With a quiet theme and very few extensions.
SvelteKit and TypeScript
What this site is built with.
Playwright and axe
Every project gets end-to-end and accessibility tests.

Field kit

A cheap Android tablet
If it works on this, it works on the ward.
A clipboard and a rain cover
Paper works in a storm. Batteries don’t.
Ear defenders
For writing up notes on night buses.

A sample list. Replace with your own tools.

A tidy home office with a large monitor, speakers and shelves
Photo: Faizur Rehman / Unsplash
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Mara Kestrel
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Night Ward A ward board for night-shift nurses that turns forty competing priorities into one calm list.
Tideline A public flood-warning service that shows how sure the forecast is, not only what it says.
Northline fares A fare finder that leads with the cheapest valid ticket and explains the rules in plain words.
Quire An accessible design system I maintain, where every colour pair ships with its contrast ratio.
Furrow An offline-first harvest log for small farms, designed for wet gloves and no signal.
Designing for 3 a.m. Most interfaces are designed at 11 in the morning by rested people. Some are used at 3 at night by exhausted ones. Here is what changes.
The case for fewer alerts Alert fatigue is a design problem, not a discipline problem. Four questions I ask before any notification ships.
Write the empty state first The first screen most people see is an empty one. Designing it first makes the rest of the product clearer.
Design tokens are a contract, not a palette A token named after a colour tells you what it looks like. A token named after a role tells you what it promises. Only one of those survives a redesign.
What a flood map taught me about uncertainty People trust forecasts more when you tell them how sure you are. Showing uncertainty is a design skill, and a public duty.
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