Transcript
Building Eskiz, chapter two: a dashboard you can talk to
Synthetic voices · A dialogue adaptation of this article, not a verbatim reading.
01I came here to open a project
Narrator: I'm Khalil, and this is Maya. You open Eskiz to see what changed on Riverside House. You have about a minute before a call.
Maya: If this dashboard gives me eleven little boxes, I'm closing at least one of them. Probably the tab.
Narrator: So we give the middle to the Brief. It tells you what changed. Scroll, swipe, or press the down arrow and the next section takes its place.
This part of the article02The bar at the bottom
Maya: And the bar down there? Command K opens it. You can pick a command and get on with your day.
Narrator: Or say, open Riverside House. For a question like which projects changed this week, the answer lands right on the dashboard. You can open it, keep it, or dismiss it.
Maya: So the project is still the main character. Good. It has a lot going on.
This part of the article03Keep a view
Narrator: Suppose you check for blocked drawings every morning. Go to Add a section, ask for blocked documents, and look at the preview. You can change the layout or the filters before you keep it.
Maya: I'd put that right under the Brief. If I'm going to have a problem every morning, at least give it a good seat.
This part of the article04Open All projects
Maya: All projects works the same way. Say show this as a table, or change the layout yourself. The filters sit right there where you can see them.
Narrator: And you can take a filter out without asking the machine to remember why it put it there.
This part of the article05The microphone needs manners
Narrator: Hold Space outside a text field, talk, and release to send. Or tap the microphone for hands-free. Getting it to wait for the end of a sentence took work.
Maya: Open Riverside... House. That's a pause. I hadn't changed my mind about the house.
Narrator: The Companion and the meter show that it's listening. You can read the captions, interrupt the reply, or move the conversation to either side when you need more room.
This part of the article06Learn on the page
Maya: Here's a distinction I like. Create a project opens the form. How do I create a project takes me to the button and waits while I try it.
Narrator: We looked at Mobbin's onboarding research. What stuck with me was getting to the first useful action. Let someone open their own project. When they need the next lesson, they can ask. The full tour is there to replay, too.
This part of the article07Where the credits went
Maya: Where did the credits in the header go? I could have sworn I saw them.
Narrator: Open your avatar menu. The plan and available credits live there. The header chip comes out for the tour and when you're looking at billing. Credits let us include an allowance and meter heavier AI use.
This part of the article08Stamps for doing things
Narrator: The chain in the header opens your working-day streak. Save a canvas to make progress. The calendar also marks days off and grace days.
Maya: The stamps are the bit I'd show someone. First canvas. First spoken request. You open the collection and there's a list of things you can actually try.
This part of the article09What does back mean?
Narrator: We tried Luna, Haiku, OpenAI Realtime, and a small model called Needle. Needle picked the right action about forty-six percent of the time in our initial test. Looking up commands by similar wording also gave us some very convincing wrong answers.
Maya: Say go back and watch the trouble start. Previous section? Previous page? Undo? Those are three very different afternoons.
Maya: So you rewrote the names and descriptions, tested again, and got close to ninety-seven percent in one internal routing run. I'd still make separate tests for which action it picked and what it filled in.
This part of the article10Show that you heard me
Narrator: Now we send the transcript to Jev to pick the action. Next section can run right away. Ask for a project called Riverside Annex, and the screen can show progress while Haiku extracts the name for the form.
Maya: And ElevenLabs streams the spoken reply while I can already see what's happening. By the time it says the form is ready, I can be reading it.
Narrator: That's the feeling I want. Ask for one thing, see it happen, get back to the drawing.
This part of the article11Until next time
Narrator: Thanks for listening. Follow along for more articles, experiments, and things that worked on my machine.
Maya: Some of them might even work on yours.
Narrator: No promises. Have a lovely day. Go make something.
Maya: Preferably a cup of tea first. Bye!