Returning to craft, rapid personas, Figma component properties

“I went back to the craft because I missed delivering products and services for people. The transition away from management (where I mainly designed slide decks) back to designing products wasn’t an easy switch; many of the tools and practices have changed over the years. For a while, I asked myself daily if I still ‘had it’, whatever exactly ‘it’ is.”

How returning to the craft taught me to be a better leader →

Editors’ picks

• Diabetes tracking . Comparing the UX of diabetes monitoring systems.
• Rapid personas . A play for your UX Playbook.
• Strategic research . How to kick off strategic research if you are NOT Spotify?

SND: a library of carefully crafted UI sounds for UX developers.

Jobs

• Product Designer (all-levels) @ SurveyMonkey . This is an opportunity to apply your design craft and thinking toward products that give individuals a voice and produce decision-making intelligence from data.
• Product Designer @ Solstice . Clean tech Series A startup with a compassionate and supportive team. Have impact scaling clean energy access and energy justice.

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

Make me?think

• Would carbon food labels change the way you shop? “As the climate impact of food becomes clearer, consumers are considering how they can alter their diets. The food we eat is responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions — but what is the actual carbon cost of your weekly shop?”
• Baby pics, life lessons, and obits: what happened to LinkedIn? “These changes helped transform the site from a staid social-networking platform for white-collar workers and the recruiters who court them into more of a content platform, where personal milestones, cultural events, and current affairs are refracted through the lens of professional development.”

Little gems this?week

How to have a staredown with your smart home security camera →

Navigation patterns in VR: how to help users jump between scenes →

Designing user interface aesthetics that sync with the natural environment →

Tools and resources

• Figma component properties . Super-helpful tips when working with component properties.
• Designing pricing pages . Design patterns and techniques to design better interfaces.
• Dataviz color . What background color should your dataviz have?

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. So we created the design newsletter we have always wanted to receive. Feel free to forward this to your friends.