🐱 Catt Small 👩🏾‍💻’s Post

If you are working on a #designsystem inside your organization and you feel like you're being pulled in multiple directions all at once, I made a course for you! It's not a course about how to use Figma or React. It's not about design or development. It's about people, culture, organizational politics, all the hard stuff. It's available right now at Frontend Masters and it's incorporated so much of my learnings from the last 8 years. I'd love for you to give it a shot and let me know what you think. #onlinecourses #designleadership https://lnkd.in/gRpBeBst

It’s become less of design and more about communicating the value and defending your design nowadays. Great designs have become dependent on the ecosystem and the culture within which it strives, the overall alignment of the business and the economy. We have an army to convince (recruiters, stakeholders, users, leaders and the world). It could get tiring, demotivating and never ending. To everyone who is getting into design hone your communication and convincing skills as step 1 rather than thinking how much of figma or XD you know. With capable design leaders, you will eventually learn how to design. What no one can teach you is how to defend and stand up for the value you can deliver or intend to deliver. Often it is this confidence that makes someone take the leap of faith on your behalf. 

Delighted 🦥 to hit over 3.5k mentoring minutes over 2023. 😎 Takeaways of these minutes: 1. Prioritize: Rank user needs and focus on the most impactful features first. 2. Collaborate: Work closely with developers early to understand technical constraints. 3. Iterate: Use prototypes to test and refine ideas before full-scale development. 4. Educate: Help stakeholders understand the value of user-centered design for long-term success. 5. Simplify: Aim for the simplest solution that provides value, avoiding over-development. Finally, always be proud of your work. Designers are meant to be magicians “not everyone can understand this”

Whether you work with a corporate giant or run your show independently, the times are changing for the Design Industry. Your work alone cannot speak for you anymore. Read this post from Alifiya Naik. Communication is the key. Even for the designers!

3 mistakes designers make (and how to overcome them): 1. Becoming too attached to initial ideas 2. Using early ideas as constraints 3. Neglecting continuous problem identification Transform these mistakes into your strengths: 1. Don’t get married to your first idea: — Early ideas are just the beginning of your journey. — Schedule regular "idea audits" with your team to challenge and evolve your concepts with new data and feedback. 2. Don’t be afraid to take different paths: — Use initial ideas as breadcrumbs leading to the right trail. — Avoid tunnel vision by remaining open to multiple pathways. 3. Revisit and Revise Problem Statements: — Make sure that your solutions stay relevant. — Aligns your designs more closely with user needs and preferences. --- 🌱 Hi there, I'm Muskan! After a brief break, I'm back and adding more slots to my mentorship program, where I help engineers transition into design.

Ever wondered why Design Thinking is the cool kid on the block? Well, let's break it down! Design Thinking's been hanging around because it's as natural as craving pizza on a Friday night. 🍕 It's a problem-solving approach that's all about understanding what makes users tick – and guess what? Users aren't just the folks buying stuff. From HR, Operations to Talent acquisition, everyone is trying to deeply understand their coworkers or users. We all try to test our assumptions as soon as possible and present them to the management for implementation on all levels. Whether it is a colleague or a client, we focus on solving their problems. At Devōt, Design Thinking isn't just a fancy phrase. It's a mindset that helps us achieve better results. It's what makes happy campers out of our colleagues and clients alike. Double high-five! 🙌 #designthinking #devotteam

Coaching someone later in their design career that wants to go from a thinking/strategy role back to delivering design with a product team. Have any of you done this and what advice do you have?

From your early days in school, you learned about rough drafts, editing techniques, and the value of revisions… There’s a lesson in there: Iteration is the most important step in the design process. This critical step has been described in many ways: 👉 Build, measure, learn 👉 Creation, evaluation, iteration 👉 Revise and resubmit Iteration allows for experimentation and feedback. Whether you are writing code, building a product, or designing your life, try things, get feedback early, and try try again. How have you seen value in iteration? 〽️ #iteration #design #continuousimprovement

A week in design leadership - #10 and #11 In this week’s post, I share: 1/3: Design-Dev collaboration. The old devil. Working with development teams has been an area where we have drastically improved over the years. The operational aspects have smoothened with defined guidelines around collaboration between designers and the tech teams. But have we improved as a community? A recent encounter of our developers struggling to coordinate with an external design team makes me wonder. 2/3: Potential and promises vs output. When we hire designers, we do so based on available evidence of their strengths and weaknesses, assessing the risk vs. reward ratio, and then making the decision. Every hiring decision is, at least to some extent, a bet. Over the years, I have realized the difference between a designer's potential and the promises he/she brings with him/her and between net output and potential. When the individual fails to bring alignment by understanding the expectations better or performing at the best of their capability, the journey together often ends. Though it isn’t something new, it does feel bad, like it did during an instance a couple of weeks ago. 3/3: Do we give enough room to designers to be creative? As we wrapped up our campaign for HIMSS'24, I utilized my 1:1 meetings with the designers and writers involved to do a small retro. Everyone delivered beyond expectations. What is more exciting than working with a team that takes ownership and delivers based on an intrinsic drive? It was satisfying to see that the team wasn’t yet satisfied and had identified areas for improvement, including internal and external factors. One common assessment revolved around the old demon of less time-more work. Over the years, I have seen designers adapt and get better while working with tight deadlines. They aren’t often satisfied with the work, but they learn how to optimize their process and adhere to timelines, especially when delivery is time-bound. What is the definition of ‘enough time’ to be more creative? I think it varies between individuals. #uxdesign #designthinking #startupstories #designleadership Coditas

Weekend Reading: Using design thinking to effect change. Here is a framework from Patrick Morgan to create, present, and execute new ideas through persuasion and influence. The steps are: 1. Illustrate - visual communication 2. Mobilize - horizontal coordination 3. Prototype - show the reality 4. Articulate - present the idea 5. Cultivate - build relationships 6. Teach - share the idea Lots of fresh ideas! https://lnkd.in/g6XaYMWJ