08: Navigating through the maze
We are all busy people—we’re busy with work, our kids (hey, I had a new baby this week!), and the perils of life. In this issue of Mahalo Design Digest, I’ll link to a handful of articles published in the past weeks around designing more efficiently, cutting corners, and making our lives easier. After all, that’s why I created Mahalo Design Digest—to help those with busy lives quickly browse some of the recent articles that will impact your thought process about design. Have a read below! —Cody
It’s all about the systems
Does your company have a nifty, component design system yet? It’s all the rage. If you don’t know much about them Jon Gold from Airbnb says that “design systems allow designers to reuse styles, components, and patterns, which in turn gives them time to focus on higher-level thinking.” In the last few weeks, many new design systems have been published for us to gawk over.
You’ll notice that with Atlassian, the design system spans far greater than just its product. It’s about the entire experience with them, starting with the brand, which covers both product and marketing. While Shopify doesn’t exclude the marketing and brand elements, I prefer how Atlassian organises its content.
Airbnb is one step ahead of the game with its advancement, trying to bridge the gap between design and engineering. The team found one of its main bottlenecks to be the design Sketch templates, so they did something about it. And to all the proactive employees out there like Jon Gold, I tilt my hat. Truly impressive stuff. I particularly think the ease of using real data would be a huge advancement in design process. TradeMe, if you are reading, I’d like this in Angular form, with some chocolate sauce on top. 😉
Cutting corners
“There’s a happy middle ground that can be found on desktop that takes into account simplicity as well as clarity and efficiency.”
I really connect with the author Oliver Brooks in this article. Our new responsive web app for Trade Me was designed from mobile-first perspective for a lot of good reasons. It’s replacing our dated touch website, and soon to replace our desktop site, but the feedback on the desktop site is that it doesn’t look or feel like Trade Me. It’s true, a lot of the design decisions we made were from a mobile-first view and now we’re going to go back to revisit the desktop experience. Oliver reinforces a lot of our current thinking at Trade Me, and it’s a great read as it challenges the way we build our products.
Efficiency is king
“The more we can look to other disciplines, the better off we’re going to be.”
I really appreciate the frankness of this interview with Intercom’s Stewart Scott-Curran (even thought it’s a clear punt for the design tool, Wake). I like when he starts talking about breaking the design bubble, chatting with other disciplines, etc. If you are reading Stewart, I’d love to hear more about how you go into your community to see the impact of your work.
Quick design tips
As I was busy being dad to a newborn this week, my friend Shawn Leslie helped me out. He shared this article with me saying it’s “not for design pros, but a good resource and/or primer for people to share with marketing departments or the boss for making presentations, etc.” —Shawn Leslie 🤙
Shooooots — that’s awesome.
“Take the spark that’s within you and the skills that you’ve honed, and use them to light up the whole damned planet.”
Steve Vassallo wrote an epic book, The Way to Design, available for free on the internet. Its on being a design entrepreneur and starting a company. Hook, line, and sinker. I’m not done with it yet but it’s super inspiring just a few chapters in. Give it a read and let me know what inspired you.
Don’t forget…
Atomic’s Product Design Weekly
Muzli’s Weekly Inspiration for Designers
Curated posts from Designer News Email Digest
Mahalo Design Digest is a way to give thanks to those in the wonderful, awe-inspiring world of design, UX, and digital-experiences! I (along with periodic guests) will curate links from around the web for you to be stoked on. If you want me to check out what you’ve been up to or an article that inspired you, send me a message! — Cody Iddings
