a build in public app that's easy to read

a build in public app is something you open every day, so it has to be easy to read on the day you are tired. underway's screens had drifted the other way: black boxes everywhere, grey words on the black, a yellow button on one page and a charcoal one on the next. as of 13 october the whole app reads on white, with one dark header at the top of each page, colour marking what kind of thing each part is, and the main thing to press in yellow wherever you are.

rich, who films underway's own series in it every day, put the problem plainly after a week of opening page after page: everything in black is really hard to read, and every page he came to followed a slightly different scheme. the fix that worked was the one already used for the marketing brief's documents: a white list, a coloured mark beside each row, and the row turning light grey under your mouse. so that became the rule for everything.

what is dark now, and what is white

three things stay dark, because dark is where they belong. the header at the top of a page, which now sits tighter and says where you are. the screens where you record: the setup, the interview, the booth, boxing a screen share. and your footage: the player, the covers, the title looks. that is where the camera lives, and dark makes the picture the brightest thing on the screen.

everything else is a white panel with dark words. the cut, details, share and shorts on an episode. context, the vault's tiles, promote's choices, account's settings, the brief, ai answers, reach. a section that folds is white, turns light grey under your mouse and stays light grey while it is open. nothing you read sits in grey on black any more.

the main button is yellow everywhere

yellow used to be kept for the dark, and on the paper the main button was charcoal. that meant the same kind of press looked different depending on where you were, and a charcoal button next to a dark header read as part of the header. now the main action on every panel is yellow: export the episode, write my brief, post, film this. one yellow button per panel, so the eye goes to the thing that moves you forward.

a button that starts a recording still carries its small red dot, and the stop button is still red while the camera rolls. red means the camera or the mic is live, and nothing else.

colour that tells you what kind of thing it is

a screen of only black, white and grey reads as unfinished, and it makes you read every word to find your place. so every white panel's label now carries a small coloured mark, green, blue, purple and coral in turn down the page, and lists use the same colours by kind: the brief's documents, ai answers, the tray's sources. a glance tells you where one part ends and the next begins.

• dark: the page's header, the recording screens, your footage.
• white: everything you read, set or choose, with light grey under the mouse and while open.
• yellow: the main thing to press on each panel, and the number that is now.
• red: the camera or the mic is live.
• green, blue, purple, coral: what kind of thing a part is.

the phone too

the phone follows the same rule in the same pass. its panels are white, its capture screens and headers stay dark, and its main button is yellow. a choice you pick still lights up: on white it fills charcoal with white words, so you can always see which one is chosen.

why this matters for a daily habit

the hardest part of building in public is not the filming, it is coming back tomorrow. every screen that makes you squint is a small reason not to open the app. a page you can take in at a glance, with one obvious yellow button, is one less thing between you and the next episode. nothing about your episodes changes: the cut, the order, the words and the files are exactly as they were.

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