Jered Odegard

I don't know when or how it happened, but Config has become one of the major yearly conferences in our industry. Given how much Figma plays a role in the practice, it's common for design system teams to watch with anticipation/excitement/dread for what's coming. In our latest episode, Davy Fung and I discuss the reveals from Config and what that may mean for folks in the design systems practice moving forward. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gRMBzfbJ #designsystems #figma #congfig #podcast

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Many designers fall into the trap of getting way too attached to their own designs. David Fano has seen designers get caught up in all sorts of stuff: — Buttons that look cool but don't really do much — Interfaces that are more flash than substance — Design systems that are more complicated than they need to be The thing is that none of that matters if you're not solving the user's actual problem. The best product managers know that the user is king. They focus on solving the user's needs, not just making things look good. It's easy to get lost in the weeds when you're deep in the design process. You might find yourself going down the rabbit hole of pixel-perfect layouts and animations that are super on-trend. But that���s how to lose sight of why you're designing in the first place. Your job is to make the user's life better, not just to make something that looks cool. As designers, we need to be real with ourselves: — Does this feature actually make the user's experience better? — Are we solving a problem that users actually have? — Or are we just geeking out over our own design skills? Always keep the user front and center. — How do you balance making great designs with actually solving user problems? Watch the full episode with David for more talk on user-centered design, now live on our new content series at minimumviablepodcast.com.

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This just happened at Config 2024... Figma has introduced some major updates at Config 2024. The updates include a new user interface, AI integrations, auto layout suggestions, Figma Slides, and an improved DEV mode. The new AI tools can create UI mockups, offer visual search, and automate text translation and image background removal tasks. One downside is that Figma will now use our intellectual property to train its AI, which is a concern. Where will this all lead us in the next few years? That's something we'll know when we get there. #Config2024 #Figma #ProductDesign #News #AI

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Figma’s ConFig ’24 released several new features that caused many to continue to sing their praises. However, there is a trend their business model that is problematic. New features are initially available to all in beta. Once the feature goes into production, there will be a charge to use the new feature. Figma seems to be building an a la cart feature menu creating a nickel and dime growth strategy. The problem is that Figma has already surpassed the exorbitant pricing of Adobe products. Has Figma considered the full spectrum of their user base? While some enterprises may be able to float that price tag (For managers, it still can be a hard sell for budget approval), small businesses and independent designers will find the cost to be challenging or prohibitive. While Figma may generate some initial profit, it may not work in the long-term once the romance is gone.

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With over 7,500+ views within less than a month, my recent article published in UX Collective has been saved by over 1000 designers in their design lists on Medium. https://lnkd.in/gx64VpQH This article talks about minimizing the efforts on design and development to create better design systems for your product via utilizing a single set of scale for multiple purposes like dimension, padding and margins, border width and radius, and much more... Please give it a read and let me know your feedback and suggestions.

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My thoughts on Figma Slides: Each of the major tech companies have their own slideshow software and they all excel at different things: Google Slides is good for quick and dirty decks with lots of collaboration, Apple Keynote is brilliant for animation and rich presentation, and Microsoft PowerPoint is included with Office and the industry standard. Figma Slides (which I will call “Flides” so as not to confuse with Google’s Slides and to honor Mihika Kapoor's original artistic intent) is the first *design-focused* presentation tool. Adobe has no serious players in the game (although some companies use InDesign?) and Canva is about on par with Google Slides, leaving a vacuum in the design-heavy slideshow tool space. Auto Layout, Embeds, and Interactive Polls are so obvious in retrospect it’s a miracle the other tools haven’t implemented them already. It seems the killer app for Flides is the same as Figma: great design tools, interactivity, collaboration, and the promise of fast-paced feature shipping if they stay as dedicated to it as their other sub-tool, #FigJam. The main issue I see is that it’s too easy to fall back on normal Figma if you don’t want to pay for Flides. Most of the people who wanted to use Figma for their decks already were — just less efficiently. I could take or leave the generative stuff, I guess you have to have an AI story for every launch if you want to be taken seriously now. Also, no export to PPT makes this DOA for most business use cases as any non-designer just wants a PowerPoint. Maybe that will change over time, but there are decades of momentum behind PowerPoint A few other thoughts: - The text tone adjuster reminds me of Apple’s GarageBand Drummer interface and I think it’s going to define tone adjustment going forward. It’s a very nice piece of interface. - Slides started as a hackathon project — showing how a group of creative people will always find a way to get a good ROI on play!

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This is likely why your product sucks. You are cramming way too many features into one interface. I have a rule. It’s called the “Rule of Two”. You are only allowed two OBVIOUS features per interface. Obvious features dominate visual and mental space. They’re pricey. They’re pricey in terms of real estate. They’re pricey in terms of cognitive load. They’re pricey in terms of attention span. You’ve used products with more than two “obvious features. How did they make you feel? Anxious? Frustrated? Lost? For example, take a look at the remote control on the left. Overwhelming anxiety. Don't be the brand that gives your customers overwhelming anxiety. Don’t be the brand that makes "SB-IR Remote-HH." Master the subtle art of feature prioritization. You'll destroy competitors. And, you will make your customers fall in love with you. sinpl rlly 🥂

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Don't underestimate the power of community. In the design community, sharing isn't just caring (although, there's a lot of that 💚). From driving initial interest and attracting beta users to motivating your team and validating your ideas, tapping into this passionate and creative network can have a significant impact on your product's success. In my latest post for Plain Sight Ventures, I dig into how engaging with the design community can help you propel your product and brand forward and earn its place in your marketing strategy. https://lnkd.in/gHsgrDS9

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The tipping point towards the enshittification of products: When the focus on the user changes to a focus on the user's wallet. The video below offers a good breakdown. https://lnkd.in/d5kakH-u

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Button component ft. Craze (YC S22) My thumb of rule for adding components to our design system is if I use it more than 3 times across projects - it's getting added. Invaluable amount of time gets saved by adding a powerful enough component. When you 🛳 features the speed with which we do, time is of the essence. My favourite Figma feature inside design systems is preferred values. You can see me use it inside buttons to fetch regularly used icons . . . . . . . . #figma #designsystems #craze #hr #hrmanagement

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Have you thought about the physical accessibility of your digital designs? Getting physical controls right is really hard, and industrial designers spend a lot of time learning about how to use data as a starting point for making design decisions. As we create digital designs that we interact with using our bodies, it's going to become important for digital designers to understand physical ergonomics too.

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Really annoyed at Figma's price gouging here. There is no reason other than greed: https://lnkd.in/gfdrEiWH Oh, and I emailed them about it and this line from their reply was particularly poignant: "Additionally the minimum for enterprise is a $5k invoice minimum. 6 enterprise seats or made up with other products." To put that in context... our monthly Adobe bill (for 8 CC, 7 PS, 6 Acrobat licenses) is ~NZ$2k... Amazing how quickly enshittification sets in... #Figma #Design #SoftwareLicensing

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Missed the State of Design Tokens discussion with Donnie D'Amato BFA., MA., Jacob Miller, and Kathleen McMahon? They chatted about: 🔹 Where engineers are in the design tokens conversation 🔹 Whether there will be tokens naming standards 🔹 What should be the source of truth for your tokens 🔹 And much more ▶ Watch the recording to listen to their hot takes ➡ https://bit.ly/49Rp0An #designtokens #figmavariables #designsystems

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I'm joining Femke for a 60-minute live event about building a culture of design in a startup as a team of one. Early-stage startups often have engineering-heavy teams with room for only a single designer or none at all. In an environment like this, designers need help to have their voices heard. It's challenging to build a design culture in companies like this and it presents the designers with a unique set of challenges. But it doesn't have to be like this. Designers can build a culture of design within a company by finding design champions in non-designers. These champions can be engineers, product managers, or other team members. They can help move design forward by their active participation in design. Join us live on Jun 5th ↓ https://lnkd.in/e6kExFqY P. S. 137 designers have already signed up.

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Is it really that hard for UX/UI designers to get hired out there? The short answer is yes, it can be. But there’s a big reason why that no one is talking about which is… 👉🏽𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀’ 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗻’𝘁. In this week’s video, I talk about 2 really important factors to consider as you progress in your product design career: ⚡️Your Skills Gap  ⚡️Your Job Strategy and 9 actionable things you can do right now to (actually) get ahead in this insane job market 🙃 🔶Assess your skills ↳ Do an audit to understand where you’re strongest (and weakest). 🔶Fill in the gaps ↳ Create a learning plan (and block in time) to upskilling through self-study or a course. 🔶Network ↳ Create a networking calendar where you make time for genuine online interactions or events (and don’t just sign up, miss it and wait for the replay, actually show up and get involved!) 🔶Become Liam Neeson  ↳ Companies want to know that you have a ‘particular’ set of skills. Show ‘relevant’ work in your portfolio. 🔶Understand the business ↳ Companies hire designers to de-risk their design investment. Show them how you do that through by speaking their language of metrics and outcomes. 🔶Understand the tech ↳ Get your hands dirty digging through API docs, exploring GitHub repos and get interested in the tech stack that is being used. 🔶Don't guess at your portfolio ↳ Use something like Hotjar to view your case study’s heatmaps, see what visitors interact (or don’t interact) with and adjust accordingly. 🔶Do it differently ↳ If everyone else is doing a text/image case study, do a video walkthrough of your work. 🔶Track your progress ↳ Keep track of the jobs you apply for, the skills you acquire and write down your skills stories so that you can measure, improve and share! These are the things I do with students in our DesignerUp course, so if you’re looking for a tailored approach to learning and a mindful community to help you, check us out! → https://lnkd.in/d-MdwxCp 🎥Watch the full video (link in comments) 𝙒𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙜𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙣𝙤𝙬?

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As designers, we get asked about our opinion on the quality of a digital experiences pretty regularly. Much of the time there’s a lot of variables that make it difficult to give people a straight answer. Other times, the experience actually does have some standards of what you should expect from it. Data tables are an absolutely vital enterprise UX pattern - so the P&P crew actually assembled some standards you can use to assess your UX for data tables. We recently created a web page for our UX checklist for data tables, so I wanted to share it (it’s in the comment below). I hope it’s helpful! #enterpriseux

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I’m noticing a peculiar design related anti-pattern of sorts in the post ZIRP economic environment. It’s where companies have the budget to staff design talent, albeit in lower numbers, but the development budget is so limited that teams are unable to implement the work designers produce. This is the third economic downturn I’ve experienced and we always get pendulum swings. In this one, there seems to be a bias toward austerity and implementing the least expensive solution.

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The Atomic Unit of Design is the Team – "Design at scale"" is perhaps the most interesting challenge facing the design industry right now. How do you maintain quality and not get bogged down as your team grows? Much of the public discussion focuses on design systems, which plays into a mechanistic orientation that limits design's impact. In this talk, Peter will stress how "Design at Scale" is humanism at scale and share what's needed to keep people at the centre of this work. Before you build design systems, you need to develop a strong design culture and put the work in to find and keep the best people on the team. Also, the key to maintaining quality as you scale is robust team leadership, and Peter will explain the crucially pivotal role of the design Team Lead – https://buff.ly/49gW8RY

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Etsy was recently seen A/B testing AND eventually shipping a more visible search with the help of a higher contrast orange background button color (instead of a ghost-like icon only approach). Full screenshots: https://lnkd.in/gVJThW3W Now I don't work for Etsy (as much as I'd love to design some experiments for/with them) so we can't see the actual numbers beyond this feint probabilistic residue from the public domain. However, the amazing Andrey Andreev who runs experiments at Metro recently ran a very similar one and shared a solid result on GoodUI - with a positive impact to sales and searches. N = 896,009 SRM Check = Pass p-val on Increased Sales = 0.0139 (I know some people might like this to be even lower for a primary metric; but there is also reinforcing evidence on increased searches with an even lower p value at "ultra stat-sig" levels using Ron Kohavi's language; p < 0.00000001). I inverted the a/b test and categorized it under the Filled Vs Ghost Button pattern - further weakening the ghosts and strengthening the high contrast filled button styles on multiple metrics. https://lnkd.in/gmD8Exvc Thanks Andrey for a somewhat of an unintended replication, as I know your source of inspiration came from somewhere else on this one. :) Have you tested anything similar or different. If so, what did you discover? I'd be super curious to see more examples where increases to search have either ❌ failed or ✅ succeeded. Please share independent of outcome. ps. We also have a handful of similar "visible search" experiments where companies tested adding or hiding search: https://lnkd.in/gvWqzrK5 - further supporting this direction. [EDIT]: Note the additional confounders / variables in the Metro test - a stronger border, a change in background color of the search box as per Jakob Nielsen comment. They may be similar along the lines of the increased visibility theme - but possible additional variables nevertheless. #experimentation #ecommerce #replication #optimization #ui #ux

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