Rachael L Moore

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using the new feature set can also monitor design system packages, allowing them to quickly see which teams are using outdated packages.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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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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I flag brand integration as a critical skill for product designers to develop–it’s a versatile ability to add to your skill set. I’m not talking about learning how to create a brand (logo, color palette, typography, etc.). The skill I advocate designers to cultivate involves the ability to assess and understand all attributes of an existing brand–visual identity, voice/personality–and skillfully integrate those elements into the product experience. Do this, and you add tremendous marketability to yourself because you will know how to ensure that marketing's brand-led first impression will make a seamless handoff to the product experience. We’re in a state where, like Moore’s Law, there is exponential growth in the importance of branding for all businesses, not just corporations. If you know how to wield it in the design of the product experience, you will distinguish yourself.

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I've treated my entire career as a journey to get as many snaps as possible to make what was once unknown for me (making, doing, thinking, directing, delegating, etc.) into a highly developed muscle that situationally flexes as necessary. AND I continue to adapt to my surroundings, and sacrifice what I may have once considered to be core to my integrity as a design professional in order to meet the moment fully. It hasn't felt like a clear progression into the commodification wall that Ryan describes; more like bits and pieces, here and there, more or less in various domains. Operating today in an early stage startup within a speculative industry (tech) for a conservative problem space (pharma & healthcare) yet with intelligent leadership who are true SMEs creates a stew of interesting trade-offs and opportunities as a function leader. Generally speaking, I've experienced what Ryan describes, but as with analytics in basketball, there's a big difference between a generalized approach to manifest offensive efficiencies and the individual choices one must make in a game seven. Matchups dictate adaptive strategies.

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So late to the post, but ICYMI, we launched some stuff at #Config2024 last week. We've been cooking up a lot on our pillar — going from building Figma's second product (FigJam), to dreaming up its third, Figma Slides. Here's what we announced: Figma Slides: I'm especially proud of the designers on the team: Keeyen Yeo Khalil Cader Jakub S Ryan Reid Natasha T. Kylie To. For always asking "what if?" even though slides are a file format as old as time, for dreaming up new ways to interact with AI, for sweating the details on a tool that balances the needs of designers and everyone else alike. Try it out → https://lnkd.in/e_R6Pi_v FigJam Pages: We brought a fan fave Figma feature to FigJam! Big ups to rocky chen ✌️for striving pixel-perfection on this one → figjam.new

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Isn't it strange how the types of process materials in portfolios is different than how real work is done in UX? I talk about what materials we commonly see in portfolios that are never used in real work, then I talk about some that we really do use. https://lnkd.in/g45JT7Qk

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For anyone wanting to learn more about how we're working on AI as a design team here at Klaviyo, have a listen to this interview with Alexandra Holness

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Most designers are trained to present work to our peers, but as your career matures, your audience expands to include many other departments who don’t speak “design”. This article resonated with me and offers some sage advice about the use of storytelling and a “business lens” to craft more compelling presentations. #ProductDesign #Storytelling #UserResearch #BusinessObjectives

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Wish your startup could ship even just 15% faster? Now imagine 50%. Design systems are for enabling just that and more. At Jasper, we surveyed our engineers after we migrated over to our new design system (from essentially not having one). We asked how it has affected their velocities—obvi, see the results below. My team's estimation was for a 20-30% increase, so seeing an AT MINIMUM 50% INCREASE in our initial results made more than a few scratch their heads in why we didn't do this sooner. Even if you're a team of 3, you need to have the foundations of a design system in mind from day 0. Consider your startup's trajectory if you could be shipping even 15% faster from day 0. I also happen to be available to join a team in need for what i'm saying and bring the same successes we had at Jasper. HMU. If you or your leadership still has hangups, here is a fun and quick read by Ana Boyer on some of the myth you might be holding onto. https://lnkd.in/gE74Qjgx

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In my conversation with Sanjay Raval we discussed hiring practices for design roles in tech firms, including recent change in hiring pattern, assignments, and the issue of ghosting. If you’re interested in understanding the hiring process from a recruiters perspective, you should watch this video. https://lnkd.in/ggwSgGuw For a more efficient viewing experience, I recommend watching it at 1.5x speed.

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10 basic lessons of a design system. Being someone who has worked within and created many design systems, brand guidelines, and UI libraries, I've encountered many bumps along the way. What would you add or remove from this list? #designsystem #UX #lessonslearned #basics https://lnkd.in/evFxwP79

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I'm trying to recruit some Alpha testers for a new AI product I'm building. The problem: Reviewing customer interviews and writing up findings takes too long. PMs & Designers usually don't have time to re-listen to research interviews, so they miss important insights. The solution: Upload your customer interviews to Decode, and let the AI do the work for you. In minutes, turn customer interviews into actionable insights. Decode will transcribe videos and use AI grounded in what the customer said; it will not provide insights unless they are accompanied by a customer quote. All insights are linked back to specific timestamps, so you can navigate to them with one click. I hope Decode can dramatically speed up user research, making it easy to extract unbiased, grounded insights. DM me if you'd like free access to the Alpha program or tag a researcher/designer/PM you know that might be interested in trying this out. Thank you! #buildinpublic #GenAI #buildinginpublic #UserExperience #productmanagement

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So immensely proud of such an amazing group of people who've been working so hard on this big set of launches at Figma for #Config2024. ICYMI what we launched today, this blog post recap covers it well: https://lnkd.in/gX3KSWj3 I wanted to share a couple fun tweets from a few of the fantastic designers/leaders that worked on some of the things you may have seen in our keynote this morning. * This is not even close to an exhaustive list of those who worked on today's launches, but just a quick lil glimpse showcasing a few who happened to post about them today (also linkedin obscures the links for some reason, but they're all just fun behind the scenes tweets not shady sites I promise lol): Figma Slides - Keeyen Yeo: https://lnkd.in/gmxBH3wq - Mihika Kapoor: https://lnkd.in/gr54Upnu - Natasha T. / Ryan Reid: https://lnkd.in/gd-v9gE3 Redesigned Figma (UI3) - Ryhan Hassan: https://lnkd.in/g868XAze (can't wait to watch the behind the scenes talk with him and Joel Miller and KC Oh as well as Wayne Sun's when they come online later) - Tim Van Damme: https://lnkd.in/gQyvqzYr - Nikolas Klein: https://lnkd.in/ge_kKyvD Figma AI - Jordan Singer: https://lnkd.in/gXmFeXTM - Oscar Dumlao: https://lnkd.in/gkACVY_c - Marco Cornacchia: https://lnkd.in/gMt3BvVY - Vincent van der Meulen: https://lnkd.in/gCrHvcVu - Jediah Katz: https://lnkd.in/gMxEu7i8 - Giorgio Caviglia: https://lnkd.in/gCNVQrKC And more: - Jenny Wen (pages design by rocky chen ✌️): https://lnkd.in/gd_6RHAv - Soundharya Muthukrishnan: https://lnkd.in/gsnibt-j - Daniel Destefanis: https://lnkd.in/gu6mYBe6 - Becca Ramos: https://lnkd.in/gqM7RGKQ We hope you enjoy these updates, and excited to meet more of the amazing community at Config for Day 2 tomorrow! I'm particularly excited for Marcin Wichary's talk tomorrow at 3:40 https://lnkd.in/gvJNNerg

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🤖 This is an absolute must-read/watch for any designer/design leader navigating this wild new AI world: https://lnkd.in/ezxmvYfi Josh Clark is second to none at demystifying this new crop of technologies, demonstrating how to wield AI as a design material, and thoughtfully balancing optimism & opportunity with skepticism & care. I'm so excited to see the ideas presented in this talk transform into book form. Looking forward to reading Sentient Design, Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred! #ai #generativeai #design #ux #ui #machinelearning #development #webdevelopment

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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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Had to share this thoughtful article about the conflicting feelings we have as designers with new AI tools.... made me consider the threat of too much standardization over innovation, or letting your own creative instincts atrophy. Check it out and lmk your thoughts

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As designers, we often find ourselves needing to defend our design decisions—whether we’re presenting to stakeholders, working with developers, or chatting with our team. You’ve probably heard the question, "What informed this design decision?" especially if you’re in a product-led organization. We get asked this question for various reasons, depending on who's asking. But a key reason is to make sure our design choices are based on real user needs and behaviors, not just personal preferences, assumptions, or gut feelings. Picture this: you’re in a design review meeting for a new feature, and someone asks "What informed this design decision?". The best way to respond from the user's perspective is by using data from the product. Data helps set the right context for the question. This means explaining which metrics were measured, what was observed, where it was observed, any further tests conducted to confirm findings, the insights drawn, and so on—until you can clearly state the goal of the change and its impact on the product and users. Using data to back up design decisions not only strengthens your argument but also builds trust with all stakeholders. But remember, this shouldn't be done in isolation. Make sure to involve everyone on your team. Everyone needs to be on board before and after changes are made. I’d love to hear your thoughts! How has data-informed your design decisions? Share your insights in the comments below! #ProductDesign #Data #Analytics #UserExperience #DesignThinking #ProductAnalytics

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Check out this blog post from my teammate Brandon Lin about how we migrated our mobile rendering codebase to use Typescript without disrupting developers!

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Does your team write design documents for new systems or big features? How good do you think you are at that? Learn from a great article about how they do that at Google 👇 - the structure of a design doc - when not to write it - ideas on review and maintenance My additions to the article would be: - use C4 for diagrams - consider Architecture Decision Record (ARD) as an alternative to design doc https://lnkd.in/ekiYcGc5

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