The Best Product Design Teams on Medium
Teams to follow, and the people who write their stories
I love poking around on Medium and finding other design teams that are collectively using the platform to share their thoughts, ideas, and behind-the-scenes processes with the rest of the design community.
We’re all a bunch of copycats, and even though we might be trained designers with professional degrees and beautiful portfolios, we don’t really know what we’re doing (right??). Luckily, there are plenty of great product design teams graciously giving us insight how they do great work.
Below is a list of product design teams that I think are putting out the best content on Medium, and I’ve included my thoughts as to why I think they’re great. I’ve left off some teams that simply haven’t posted much or use other platforms to write (like Google Design, for instance). But if I’m missing any other must-haves, please let me know in the comments!
TL;DR:
Etsy Design
Creating experiences that foster creativity, community, and the re-imagination of commerce in our ongoing mission to build a more fulfilling and lasting world.
Honestly, it’s worth reading purely for their incredible illustrations. This is a fairly new publication but is already producing great stories. Etsy includes stories of professional growth from their designers as well as insightful breakdowns of their processes with specific examples.
Key Contributors
Angira Shirahatti, MarcoSuarez, Victoria Bian, Alex Wright, Henry Bayuzick
Most Read Articles
Shopify UX
Lessons learned from Shopify’s design, content strategy, front end development, and user research teams.
I love the humor of Meg Robichaud, and have learned quite a bit from her perspectives on illustration. It’s not something I’m familiar with in practice, but she breaks it down well. Shopify’s team branches out into designing for eCommerce quite a bit (as you’d expect), touching on accessibility, conversion, and a bit of front-end dev (for good measure).
Key Contributors
Meg Robichaud, Verne Ho, Steven Michael Thomas, Tessa Thornton
Most Read Articles
Dropbox Design
Stories and musings from the Dropbox Design team
This team is young on Medium, but when they published The making of a 1-minute Dropbox Video (link below), I was blown away. It’s exactly what I think product design teams should be doing: breaking down something people see everyday but have no clue how to do it. You see the detail and planning that goes into not only the product design, but all of the marketing around it.
Key Contributors
John Saito, Jason Mar, Kurt Varner
Most Read Articles
Facebook Design
Experiences from the people designing products that billions of people use every day.
Have you heard of Facebook? According to their bio line, they have billions of users. I think this startup is gonna be big! Facebook posts a lot, and across a diverse array of design subjects. From key issues surrounding design process to tech-oriented articles around VR, to Facebook’s impact in the broader global community.
Key Contributors
Geoff Teehan, Caitlin Winner, Tanner Christensen, Matej Hrescak, Jasmine Friedl, Beth Dean
Most Read Articles
Uber Design
Stories from Uber’s Design Team
Uber Design is a quickly becoming a design leader in the community almost as fast as they became disruptors in the transportation industry. They haven’t posted a lot, but I genuinely hope that changes. They do a great job pulling back the curtains and illustrating how they design products many of us use everyday.
Key Contributors
Didier Hilhorst, Matthew Moore, Uber Design, Ethan Eismann, Erik K
Most Read Articles
Designing Medium
Stories from Medium’s design and research team
This team writes about almost everything it seems. On one hand it’s a bit difficult to understand their focus, but on the other, the varied topics make for a nice break from the heavy design process-focused writings of other design teams. My favorite of theirs, Crafting link underlines on Medium, is an entertaining look at one of the tiniest design issues (I think it’s also the first Medium article I ever read).
Key Contributors
Peter Cho, Paige Bennett, Tess Rothstein, Marcin Wichary, Brad Artziniega, Sasha Lubomirsky
Most Read Articles
Designing Atlassian
Tales from the Atlassian design team
Full disclosure, I found this as I was writing this article. So while I’m not intimately familiar with their writing quite yet, a quick scan of their archives indicates they take it seriously and are writing a lot about design process. There are plenty of articles about user research, but what I love most about their writers is the personal stories they share. Sure there are the typical best practices and design process articles, but they also include a lot of personal reflections, which are often easier to relate to than listicles.
Key Contributors
Alastair Simpson, Adriaan Fenwick, Marie-Claire Dean
Most Read Articles
Salesforce UX
A collection of stories, case studies, and ideas from Salesforce UX
This the only enterprise product team of the group and while that is arguably the ugliest word in the world of design, it’s full of some of the most challenging design problems around. Salesforce also happens to be massive, with a lot of depth in research, design, and front-end development. Their articles reflect that diversity. There is literally no topic they don’t cover in the world of UX — great for students learning about the world of design and aspiring leaders trying to build teams.
Key Contributors
Jesse Hausler, Ian Schoen, Kaelig
Most Read Articles
I’m the principal design partner for Innovatemap, a product design and marketing agency based in Indianapolis, IN. We help startups and scale-ups bring marketable, valuable, and usable products to market.
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