My Takeaways from Remote Design Week

Amidst the COVID-19 situation right now, many of us are self-isolating and working remotely to prevent the spread of the virus. Although we are in a challenging period, it was amazing to participate in Remote Design Week that brought together people from around the world passionate about design. On a span of 5 days from April 27 to May 1, each day was packed with various talks, workshops, yoga session, panels and more. Collaboration is a necessity especially in design and so it was important to be familiar with the methods to design effectively. Luckily, we’ve got a lot of tools to use to take us through the design process. There were demos on Figma, Miro, Mural, Artboard Studio and more that I enjoyed. I personally use Figma extensively and it was great to get a better understanding of additional tools to integrate into my workflow.

After tuning into Remote Design Week for the whole week while frantically working on my projects, I took away a lot of learnings. From this event, I wanted to expand my knowledge of the design field, grow my network and also apply learnings to my work. I want to document and share some aspects of the event here that resonated with me! (I’m not sure how much I can share so I’ve just highlighted some main points)

Unity, Not Uniformity, With Design Systems

One of the most fascinating talks that enlightened me on design systems was that of Hayley Hughes’ from Shopify. She shared how Shopify developed their design system, Polaris, to help teams work together and create a great experience for merchants. The concern with design systems is that often there is an emphasis on uniformity over unity. This creates mediocre experiences and limits creativity. To build better design systems, we should take into consideration the journey of our audience and the touchpoints they have with the brand and product or service. Instead of just focusing on the appearance and styles of the interface, it was important to weave in aspects of how the elements fit together in various situations. The main factors to take into consideration are the audience, environment, task, domain, brand and platform.

“Relationships first, systems second. Context first, systems second. “
- Hayley Hughes, UX Manager @ Shopify

Collaboration Tools: Figma, Miro, Mural

There was a lot of coverage on the many tools out there for teams to collaborate remotely and inspire each other. I’ve used all of them before and I especially love Figma’s ease of use and breadth of functionalities. The collaboration aspect of it is great as I usually share my work with clients and they leave their feedback instantly. The designers shared about creating a table of content to direct teammates to the appropriate sections. This reduces confusion and gets everyone on the same page. In the Remote Design Sprints workshop, frog design showed how to use Miro to facilitate design springs. For Miro and Mural, I like creating sticky notes of my ideas and sharing them with others. There was an activity where people could share ideas on what to do during meetings and also drag over “stickers” to the appropriate emotion labels. Getting to know each other personally prior to meetings is very meaningful especially during this period. I’m glad there are so many tools out there for people to work together!

Assumption Tracking

When it comes to designing a product, people tend to make a lot of assumptions based on their biases and beliefs. Before making a decision based on an assumption, it is crucial to provide evidence as to the validity of the assumption. Chantal Jandard and Cody Farthing put together a talk on how to track your assumptions. They provided a worksheet where you could list out the phase, confidence and risk level of your assumption. In order to validate assumptions, conducting the appropriate types of research is key, especially user research. This method helps align teams on decisions, reveal any dangers or gaps and bring focus to your scope.

There were other amazing workshops throughout the week such as Measuring the Value of Design With UX Metrics. That one was filled with lots of useful formulas to assess the benefits, usefulness, emotions and satisfaction that came from the experiences created. Overall, I took away with me valuable learnings on how to design remotely as well as the steps to take to develop my career further. If you want to discuss this event with me, feel free to message at jchristyliu@gmail.com! :)