Adobe + Figma, The rise of the TikTok pattern, iOS 16 UI Kit

Designers will go through the five stages of grief over the coming weeks or months. And then, very little will change for the next 2–3 years. This is a pattern we see pretty consistently in acquisitions, especially Adobe ones such as Macromedia (showing my age there) or more recently, Substance Designer & Painter.

Mourning Figma: the end of a chapter →

—

One topic, multi-perspectives

• Adobe is buying Figma. What does that mean for you?
• Why Figma’s acquisition is bad for designers. Figma took on a giant, now it’s part of their team.
• Keep calm and Fig on. At the end of the day, our work will remain the same.

By the way, we asked UX Collective’s followers on Twitter about good alternatives to Figma. Here’s what we found.

—

The Follower: Using open cameras and AI to find how an Instagram photo is taken.

—

Jobs

• UX & UI Designer @ Metropolitan Planning Institute of Tijuana. The Metropolitan Planning Institute (IMPLAN) of Tijuana is working on the development of a Digital Twin, a tool that will be very useful for all municipal agencies where 2D and 3D photorealistic models are representative of reality.
• UX Designers @ Butterly. Butterfy is building an open-source platform (web app) for crowd-collecting and -curating the Internet’s most constructive and insightful content.

Submit a job opening or get your portfolio seen by hiring managers

—

Little gems this?week

The rise of the TikTok pattern

Magical constraints (or How to turn bugs into features) →

Why are Vanity Metrics still problematic? →

We love to hate Clippy — but what if Clippy was right? →

Make me?think

• With Stable Diffusion, you may never believe what you see online. “Stable Diffusion’s public release has raised alarm bells among people who fear its cultural and economic impact. Unlike DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion’s training data (the “weights”) are available for anyone to use without any hard restrictions.”
• Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven. “There’s nothing wrong with a fondness for data. The trouble begins when you begin to favor bad arguments that involve data over good arguments that don’t, or insist that metrics be introduced in realms where data can’t realistically be the foundation of a good argument.”
• How influencers become brainwashed by their audiences. “This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one’s own persona. The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers wish us to be.”

Tools and resources

• Figma alternative. The first Open-Source design and prototyping tool meant for cross-domain teams.
• iOS 16 UI Kit for Figma. Now with Dynamic Island.
• Color fonts. The first batch of color fonts arrives on Google Fonts.

UX Collective · DOC · Bootcamp · Guide to Design · Sponsor