Christen M.

Now that Config is over here's a good recap for design execs:

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If you're a designer and new to AI, I highly recommend watching this video (only 20 mins long if you watch at 1.5x speed), which provides a great primer for the topic of AI in UX. I find the content very well organized and easy to follow. It touches on the concept of AI at a super high level, various use cases, important considerations when designing with AI, and how Booking.com leverages AI to enhance their user experience.

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AI is the buzzword of the day, but it's simply the next step in our technology evolution. Evolving generative AI interactions are repeating human-computer interaction history. Remember those green screens and books filled with computer prompts, or learning how to use a search engine? Perhaps you do, maybe you don't, but either way AI has modified the way we do this by using natural language! #AI #technologyevolution #naturalanguageprocessing

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In a competitive job market, leveling up your skills is crucial. I highly recommend this course at The Designership - it's a great and inexpensive way to enhance your design abilities. No kickbacks involved. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eGfV5kXC #Design #SkillDevelopment #CareerGrowth #productdesign

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“The value of design isn't actually in producing visual artifacts, but in the process that leverages those artifacts.” Excellent article by Pavel Samsonov reminding us all of what it actually means to * design * something! Anyone who has ever interviewed me and asked me to “tell me about your process” has gotten an earful about this. The value of design will always be in producing a deliverable that embodies decisions made about benefits to the user-which requires understanding the user well enough to be able to make those decisions. https://lnkd.in/gBfMeVJn

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How do design system teams prove their value? Finding hard metrics around the impact of design system teams has historically been a challenge. A year ago, I met the design system team at Eventbrite who could confidently say that they saved 534 days of engineering effort with their design system. Here's their calculation: Time spent to develop a component pre-design system - time spent to install the design system component = Time saved In order to extrapolate this number, though, you need to know how many times a component has been used. And, that used to require a savvy dev on the team to build something custom. That's no longer the case. We built something at zeroheight that will allow you to track component use in a single repo or across all of your repos. This should help teams show how valuable they are, plus do things like: see which components to prioritize based on use see which product teams are adopting As an added bonus, anyone using the new feature set can also monitor design system packages, allowing them to quickly see which teams are using outdated packages. On a personal note, I'm hoping with data like this, more teams can confidently quantify their impact. And along the way, we'll get better as design system practitioners at identifying the right things to work on. This new feature set is in beta and totally free. Even if you aren't using zeroheight to document your design system, you can use it. Takes like 15 minutes and you've got rich data. Here's the sign up:

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I see the potential in AI tools, but let's hold up for a second. This recent mess with Figma's AI tool seemingly cloning Apple's Weather app is a wake-up call. It's a glaring example of what happens when we don't put proper guardrails in place. AI can be a game-changer, but not if it tramples on intellectual property and copyright. We need these tools to be smart enough to avoid ripping off existing work. It's not just about innovation; it's about respecting creativity and ownership. https://lnkd.in/gUHxJd_c

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✨ Theming seems like magic when it's done right. Allowing folks to change color sounds great on the surface but... can lead to visual inconsistency and completely inaccessible products without intention. → Customer style guides and the palettes they bring you vary greatly → Every component's color needs are different, based on interactivity and contrast → Managing every possible color combination is nearly impossible Our team has been working on ways to simplify theming that allows color steps to predictably map to specific use cases to ensure an accessible experience. Huge shoutouts to key resources along the way that helped us out! 🎨 The universal color palette by Kevin Muldoon maps out a systematic approach to solving for consistent contrast. He describes tonal categories that map to the contrast needs of specific components and semantic use cases. https://lnkd.in/gxYNKcaV 🚦 How to define color usage through semantic sets for design systems by Katie Cooper dives into how you can then map color steps to a consistent semantic color naming framework for use as variables and tokens in your design system. https://lnkd.in/gHswtck7 🖼 Color contrast grid by Nathan Curtis is our standby tool that we then use to take the resulting colors and produce a color safe mapping for the team to understand all of the possible color combinations and which are accessible. https://lnkd.in/gRNS-2Dd Bonus, there's a Figma plugin version as well https://lnkd.in/gUcATsNU All of this has allowed our team at Exygy to come up with a repeatable process. We hope that your team might find some of these steps useful: → Create color ramps with a robust tonal scale of shadows, mid-tones, 1/4 tones, and highlights → Determine contrast ratios for various foreground and background combinations → Extract repeatable color steps and map those to known semantic foreground and background colors → Repeat and test across all colors of your palette to ensure consistency and accessibility #design #ui #color #accessibility #figma #contrast #designsystems

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What does it look like to become your own behavior designer? In a recent episode, I had the privilege of having a conversation with Matt Baldwin PhD .Matt is a Behavioral Scientist on the User Research and Design team at Noom. Come and listen to us discuss a variety a topics around behavior, including: -The first steps in behavior change -Habit stacks and temptation bundling -Implementation of habits -Why motivation can only go so far -The importance of identity Behavioral Science with Matt Baldwin: Podgecast | 24 Check out this short clip, and catch the full episode on Noom Vibe (Link in the comments)

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Hey Linkedin, how annoying are you finding this update to the product? Here's where to turn off notifications from catch up: https://lnkd.in/gHuZd56U (my notifications are going off non-stop, had to turn them off) #catchup Hit the →Share button below and repost to help out friends and co-workers.

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Disclaimer: the job market is weird, sure, and "design" as a discipline has a massive titling/career-progression-labeling problem. That said... I continue to see SENIOR #designsystem Designer roles including "Drive the vision and project management..." as the first (or close to the top) requirement in the list. That is a LEAD or a MANAGER responsibility. NOT an individual contributor! Stop adding eons worth of work and responsibility to a SENIOR IC role and then get confused, upset, or act perplexed when the entire systems program/initiative isn't "on pace" or "delivering on it's promises". This particular one that erks me also includes "manage the system's backlog and roadmap" as if that's an IC designer's job... These aren't small companies, either. These are systems that would serve 100+ consumers across disciplines. So frustrating to see. /endrant

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I invite my UX colleagues to take this general UX assessment. Let me know what changes you suggest. The objective of the assessment is to help people without expert UX knowledge to better understand where their UX practices stand.

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A video I wish every, leader, product manager, & marketer would watch. (Designers Too!) Getting user-centered design through in a large company is often an uphill battle. This video hits the nail on the head. As companies grow, the gap between decision-making and the end user widens. Suddenly, organizational needs trump user needs, and the product starts to scream "departments that built it!" ❌ The video dives into other crucial points for product managers and marketers: Short-term wins over long-term vision: · A/B testing gets prioritized, but at the expense of long-term user satisfaction. · Design systems aren't a magic bullet: Consistency doesn't equal usability. A strong design system needs a foundation of user research, not just guidelines. ️❌ · Why matters more than what: When the "why" gets lost, users struggle to find value and drop off. Hurting the companies bottom line... https://lnkd.in/eSzDnhrQ #productmanagement #designthinking #ux #marketing

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#Config24. There's nothing quite like it when designers and makers gather to share, learn, and nerd out about our craft. Thank you Amperity for supporting our design team to take on this experience together at Figma's annual conference. There is so much to soak in, both from the presentations and chats across the community. Here are a few first takeaways: • Go faster with AI. From reducing tedium (auto-naming layers) to the emergent ability to turn flat UI into interactive prototypes with a click of a button. This philosophy is shaping the experience of designing in Figma. • There is a healthy and important debate in the design community about the implications of this AI-powered future. I love that it will lower the barrier for entry however agree with Jenny Arden: AI can get to good but as it can only remix what's been done before, it takes humans to get it to great. • Intentionality, creativity and craft matter even more. This theme came up throughout the two days. Tools should augment your process, not automate your favourite parts. • Shake the idea that difficult equals important. Simone Giertz overcame her performance anxiety by choosing enthusiasm as a driver for her work, resulting in a lot of fun and unexpected outcomes. • Aspire to be the team that sets the bar for quality. Peter Yang challenges PMs and people who care about product craft to choose quality and speed over scope. Cut features not quality corners to deliver beautiful products to customers, and quickly so you can learn. • How you structure your EPD teams will be reflected in your product. Resist symmetry. Nan Yu makes a great case for "heirloom tomato" teams that vary in size and shape in order to create an org chart you want to ship. • Figma redesign incoming. Figma's UI3 has been built on the core belief that way we design has evolved, requiring more immersion in the canvas. Minimizing UI aims to keep designers in flow, then make it easier to show and present work. On that... • Hello, Figma Slides. It just makes sense to show the work from the tool you built it in — and Slides (or Flides) will streamline this with speaker notes and quick layout features. • Does your design leave fingerprints? How might you weave traces of people, stories, acknowledge what you bring as a designer with a story of your own. Thank you Karla Mickens Cole and Nashilu Mouen from The Browser Company for this people-centered prompt.

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UX Design for Specialized Domains is something we at Boston UX know a lot about. Check out this great article from my co-worker Dorothy Shamonsky!

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Catching up all of the GPT-4o updates, loving these use cases that'll be so powerful for accessibility https://lnkd.in/g5nfHrQ5

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