#034 Ending 2022 with major life changes
Thank you for sticking around and not unsubscribing (yet!)
Hey there!
Thank you for sticking around and not unsubscribing (just yet).
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Long time!
Hi everyone! Yes, I have been MIA for a while. My wife and I finally made the big move of relocating to the UK. YOLO.
Moving countries meant switching jobs, setting up a new house, getting used to a different way of living, and starting to create a social circle. All of it has been fairly exhilarating.
I want to talk about the job switch. After a brief and high-growth stint at Nykaa, I joined as a Senior Product Designer at Ticketmaster. I am working on building their design system for their enterprise products.
Needless to say, Nykaa gave me space to explore and build a design system. As the company grew, so did the need for consistency between its business verticals. Nykaa’s app experience needed to feel holistic. Building on solid foundational bits that other teams can leverage, we set out to create something that creates guardrails for designers and developers.
For those who may not know, a design system is built to help (especially) design and engineering teams to work better together. The system may comprise a library of user-interface(UI) components(think buttons, text inputs etc.) defined by well-documented guidelines to help designers and developers create consistent user experiences. Ever wondered why using a Youtube website on a laptop and an app on a mobile phone feels so familiar? It’s because similar UI elements and their behaviors of a well-defined design system.
The best part about building a design system is that there’s no one size fits all approach. The way one may start working on it will vary with every organization. As Lauren LoPrete said in a recent talk at Config’22, ‘Design systems are a cultural change disguised as a UI kit.’ Having a design system means expecting team members to acknowledge, use, improve, and contribute.
Ticketmaster comes with it’s own set of challenges. Hence, working on a design system is a constant process of learning and unlearning, making as many friends as possible, and striving to build an environment where the team is empowered with tools to ship cohesive and consistent user experiences.
I’ll share more of my learnings here in the future.
Hoping 2023 brings lots of success and happiness to everyone. Happy Holidays!
Good Reads and Collections
The Best of Material in 2022 - Some of Material Design’s top moments from the past year.
How Facebook designed the like button—and made social media into a popularity contest - In terms of sheer impact, the like button was one of the most successful pieces of code ever shipped. But when you examine the quality of that impact, its flaws become glaring.
My work at Spotify - An account of Spotify’s early design in the words of the founding designer, Rasmus Anderson.
Apps and Tools
Mac app: Coffee
A tiny time tracker for Mac
iOS app: Ableton Note
Note is a place to form ideas, experiment with sounds, and find direction.
Icon Set: Futicons
Futicons are a set of icons for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Interplanetary Travel, Artificial Intelligence, Crypto, Blockchain, Cyborg, Future Transportation, and Sustainability.
That’ll be all for this one. Hope you enjoyed reading this. Share it with someone who you think will like Hyperlink licking on the button below👇 . Stay safe and see you'll in the next issue!
Also, you can follow me on Instagram for musings, Twitter for ramblings, and Command Space for work.