Eswarya Kotha
I design for the moment between confusion and clarity.
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We seek perfection, but why forget the errors and mistakes that got us there?
For the challenge, I built 418, I'm a Teapot: a fictional editorial magazine about digital errors, broken protocols, and the small absurdities of failing software [cuz why see boring working software ?]. The name originates from a real HTTP status code that became internet folklore. The tension that exists between technical rigour and the feeling of absurd warmth became the magazine's whole thesis.
The concept: Most software works most of the time. This magazine is about the rest. Every section is an editorial dispatch from a different kind of broken: a curated grid of articles on famous errors; an archive of the past and the present; a gallery of "Artifacts" treating real error states as museum specimens and finally, sealing it off with a slot-machine ad for a completely non existent product.
The workflow: It took me a good 48h which looked like this:
1. Searched for editorial references that the comic-zine could be grounded on,
2. Generate variation to explore various aesthetic differences (Feature: Variations)
3. Building sections, one section at a time.
4. Using the Direct edit function to prompt the change directly (Feature: Direct Edit)
5. Fun native motion and hover states to mimic breaking/ errors of the website
6. Ensuring they stick to the Accessibility guidelines for everyone to enjoy (WCAG 2.1 Level AA Standards) (Feature: Accessibility Audit)
7. Generate prototypes along the way to understand the functionalities (Feature: Instant Prototype)
Iteration was the whole game, it took me dozens of passes to get the story right. And stitch worked the best as a collaborator you pushed along with and not just being a hopeful generator of ai slop.
Hmmm, so what did I think of Stitch?
The visual generation was genuinely impressive because every pass was coming out close to what I wanted: how I wanted the editorial layouts to work, the typography, the halftone background, and the article cards.
Where it got harder was the interactive behaviors. Prompts took me around 5-6 passes to get the animation right, only for a UI element to change completely.
A few wishlist items for Stitch to become my go-to tool:
- When I have multi-step prompts to execute, they often get partially executed. Cleaner instruction handling would help
- A "lock element" feature so unrelated edits don't accidentally regenerate things that were already working
- Better state preservation across sessions, some refinements would silently revert to its error state
- Ability to revert back to its previous state, see the thinking of the model and edit directly to direct the design generation
And finally, 418 - I'm a Teapot is a small joke about a serious idea: that errors aren't failures, they're the moments software is most honest about itself. A editorial magazine about the beauty of broken things, using a tool that's still becoming itself.
App link: https://stitch.withgoogle.com/preview/17348996978976062269?node-id=5d820d0846a6468db9618a6f3b319876
Netlify: 82fb0d13-oops-digital-error-zine.netlify.app (https://82fb0d13-oops-digital-error-zine.netlify.app)
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