Design Musings
Thoughts from working in a 9-5 office as a full time product designer. I update this post whenever a new thought pops up - think of this as my personal /r/showerthoughts, but for design.
Oct 14, 2020
Why are we switching to Figma? Given all of FB’s fancy internal design tool plugins for Sketch I have yet to find a reason to switch to Figma. I understand for folks using generic Sketch that Figma is an upgrade - auto layout alone is enough to switch. But we’ve had that internally for ages and I have not yet seen a single use case where two product designers have needed to be in the same design file at the same time. Heck what company out there has the luxury of actually assigning two designers to the same project?? FB has plenty of money but rarely have I seen two designers working on the same thing. So…what exactly does Figma bring to the table that Sketch + internal plugins don’t? 🤔I’m guessing its just a way to future proof against Sketch which has gone for years without a decent update.
July 29, 2020
“You are not the user”. But should you be? Over the years as a designer, I’ve heard this phrase a lot. And for good reason. If you end up designing just for your own personal use case, you are likely to end up with a design that is not inclusive and doesn’t work for a majority of people. However, I’m also starting to think that a good designer is someone who actually uses the product in their personal life and wants the product to be good. i.e. If you are not at least a semi-regular user of a product, as a designer you are probably not doing it justice either. Now this won’t always be possible. If I’m designing a UI for a medical device that a doctor will use, I’m basically never going to be a user of that interface. But if I’m on a team where I don’t ever intend to use the products for my personal use…will I really be able to make a good experience for those who do?
July 5, 2020
Should I work outside of tech as a designer? Perhaps bringing my design skills to an area outside of tech might be more valuable? Like working on local government websites, or working on medical services. Or doing work in areas that might be short staffed, like non profits. These all seem great ideas until I remember that I’m here on a H1B visa. Working in a big tech company seems to be the only safe way to ensure I don’t get kicked out of the country. Womp, womp.
Is there any lasting impact of my work? Reflecting back on the last 8 years of work, I see that I was rewarded the most for work that was an urgent business need. I am not sure however if that’s translated into a lasting legacy. I wonder what project of mine has had the most positive impact on the world.
May 2, 2020
Prototyping in 2020 is such a mess. There still is no good tool that lets you prototype complex things and is also easy to learn and has good community support. I’m still sticking to framer classic, one of the few tools that allows “open ended prototyping” i.e. you can make things as complicated as needed and it allows me to put stuff on actual phones so I use them for user research. Framer X, Origami, Figma are all limited in some capacity.
Should I switch to Figma? Most of FB design is making the switch. I am still debating. Internal FB design tools have made Sketch so powerful for me, it’s hard to see a good reason to switch over. It’s been a similar thought process for prototyping tools as well - should I really bother switching right now if these new tools are mostly about the same?
Designing at FB is 40% designing and 60% talking. There are so many people to bring on the same page and so many dependencies to account for (newsfeed, notifications, different setting states, sister teams in location) I spend a whole bunch of time just making sure all different teams are properly aligned for my projects to have a successful launch.
If you want the best design work, pair 2 designers on the same project. This is for some reason really hard to do. Mostly cause you’ll always find your company to be short of resources (yes, even at FB). But when ever I’ve had another designer with me on a project, the overall quality of my work has simply been better - it’s better looking & more consistent with UI guidelines. Edge cases are better thought out. The solutions are simpler. I think it’s cause my worst impulses as a designer are kept in check by another design thinker in the room.
Creativity cannot be sustained 5 days in a row. I don’t think there has been a single week in my career so far where I’ve been able to produce design output 5 days in a row. I think the max I’ve done is sit in Sketch/Framer for 3 straight days.
