439 - Adam Noffsinger

Adam Noffsinger is a Product Designer who was previously a Senior Staff Product Designer at Patreon, where he helped creatives get paid doing what they loved.

He was also previously at Apple, Cruise, Dropbox, and Uber.

Now, he's the founder of Found, the simple, beautiful way to save the places you love, whether exploring locally or traveling abroad.

He's also working on Savor, something new at the intersection of nutrition and AI.

Twitter (X) → x.com/anoffsinger

Adam's Workspace Tour

Hardware

• Apple Studio Display
• Apple 16-Inch Macbook Pro
• Apple 11-Inch iPad Pro
• Apple iPhone 15 Pro
• Apple Magic Mouse
• Apple Magic Keyboard w/ Touch ID

Furniture

• Jarvis Fully Standing Desk
• EQ3 Nixon Office Chair
• Floyd Shelving System

Fun stuff

• WFHD Birch Phone Stand
• Braun Wall Clock
• Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook
• Inventery Bolt Action Pen
• Lego Technic Ford GT
• Lego Technic Land Rover Defender
• DSPTCH Bookpack (Discontinued)
• Miles 🐶

Tools I use (i.e. my macOS dock)

• Arc
• Notion Calendar
• Obsidian
• ChatGPT
• Figma
• Xcode
• Visual Studio Code
• Origami
• Adobe After Effects

What is the most recent item that you've added to your workspace?

My sister gifted me an Inventery Bolt Action Pen for my birthday last month. This thing is incredible. It's heavy and has a satisfying bolt that locks into place to expose the pen tip. I bought extra ink cartridges for it to experiment with line weight and ended up going with the Pilot G2 Fine Point 0.7mm—it's perfect.

Getting this pen also helped push me back to sketching UI in notebooks. I've been sketching on my iPad for years but have been feeling a little encumbered by that process lately.‍

How do you spark creativity?

It varies quite a bit—I wish there was a simple answer.

If I'm not feeling particularly creative or inspired, I find it most helpful to start exploring whatever sounds the most exciting or interesting to me at the moment. The inertia from this can help propel me into solving tougher problems or may unlock a creative solution that's orthogonal to what I'm focusing on.

Another surefire way to spark my creativity is to take a break and get away from my computer. Staring at my monitor for too long tends to lock me into certain ways of problem solving that don't always produce the most creative results. This is the same reason I find sketching in a notebook to be helpful. Getting away from electronics and the canvas of whatever design tool you're using removes artificial boundaries to your thinking.‍

What does your typical day look like?

I just started working on a new company, so my routine is still crystalizing, but it looks something like this:

I wake up around 8am, make a glass of cold brew (never hot coffee), and browse the web for inspiration. Sources vary, but Twitter is a constant. I capture inspiration in Eagle.

I work on a team with East Coast-ish hours, so if I have meetings, they'll generally be in the morning between 9am-12pm. If I'm not in meetings during this time, I'm doing creative work.

After lunch, I make an espresso at 1pm. I have an ECM Casa V and love the ritual of grinding and making espresso. Sometimes I make lattes, but I enjoy a simple black double shot the most. During this time I do most of my design work. I'll make an additional shot of espresso around 3pm and continue creative work.

Around 4pm, I tackle less creative tasks when my energy tends to dip.

At 5:30pm, I go to Crossfit. Fitness is a huge part of my and my partner's life and we take class together most days.

After working out, if something excited me during the day at work but wasn't a priority, I might spend another hour or so working on it. If I'm inspired to work on a side project, I might do that too.

We always wind down the day on the couch with Miles, our American Staffordshire and Cattle Dog mix—he's an absolute cuddle monster.