Mobile-first human-legible build

Between Nowhere

Solo prototype2026

Between Nowhere started with a practical worry: in a power, cell, or internet outage, most people I knew had no idea how emergency signals would get through. When I looked into getting my ham radio license, the online study tools felt as dated and hard to navigate as the stereotype of radio itself. I built a public-source human-legible prototype to ask what it would take to make radio feel useful, learnable, and a little cool again for someone who has never held one.

Role

Self-directed product designer and builder of a public-source human-legible prototype.

Builder signal

Turned the official Amateur Radio Technician question pool into guest mode, animated lessons, practice exams, and review surfaces.

Legibility signal

Used the project to learn a technical domain by designing the beginner path through it: orientation, practice, recovery, and confidence.

Why it belongs

Shows human-legible UX, beginner cognition, plain-language technical explanation, and the discipline to reduce intimidation before asking for mastery.

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Concept library

Animated amateur radio concept system

Concept libraryAnimated amateur radio concept system

Case study path

What this case study covers

01
How the landing page makes a beginner promise before asking for commitment.
02
How guest mode lets someone try the human-legible loop before account creation.
03
How the home dashboard creates orientation and progress cues.
04
How Learn explains concepts before drilling questions.
05
How Practice prepares for the 35-question exam and 26/35 pass mark.
06
How Review organizes the official question pool by subject.

Guest legibility

Guest home, practice, and review surfaces

Guest legibilityGuest home, practice, and review surfaces

Guest mode

Lower the activation energy before asking for anything.

The most senior thing about the design is what it does not ask for first. Human-legible products fail at the front door when a beginner has not yet decided they belong in the topic. Between Nowhere lets someone start learning before account creation, payment, or commitment. The first interaction is with the material itself. The system orients them; it does not ask them to be oriented before it will help.

Concept library

Animated radio concepts

Concept libraryAnimated radio concepts

Animated concept system

The human-legible layer starts with visual explanation.

Radio ideas like polarization, squelch, gain, voltage flow, and emergency coordination become small visual teaching objects instead of flat quiz prep. The human-legible layer gives beginners a better route through the content. They need to see the idea take shape before a question asks them to prove they understand it.

Scenario legibility

Guest home, practice exam, and review pool

Scenario legibilityGuest home, practice exam, and review pool

Legibility modes

Learn, practice, and review are different cognitive jobs.

The product separates Learn, Practice, and Review because they answer different learner questions: what is this, can I do this, what did I miss? Most study products collapse those jobs into one mode and make the experience feel either too instructional for a test-taker or too aggressive for a beginner. Naming the modes separately lets each surface do its own job well, and the learner always knows what kind of progress they are making.

Human-legible system

Guest legibility path into the first concept

Human-legible systemGuest legibility path into the first concept

What it taught me

Information only helps when the learner has a path through it.

Between Nowhere is the project most directly about teaching. The discipline underneath is scope: keep what helps the learner orient, practice, and recover from a miss; leave the rest out. That transfers beyond ham radio. Any technical human-legible product has to reduce intimidation before it can build mastery.

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