Looking back around 2000-ish when I was in high school, Friendster was the first social media app that was trending at the time. Similar to Facebook, Friendster was a place you could create an account, post anything on your wall, add friends, and even customize your profile page. People used different themes on their profile pages, others designed and built something unique from scratch.

Back then, you were considered a professional when your profile was customized with snappy graphics and silly animations. I remember being so excited about the endless possibilities to spice up your profile, so of course I decided to try everything out. For the first time ever, I installed and used Adobe Photoshop (I was using version 8 CS at that time), began studying simple photo edits and manipulations, and did some research on how to do HTML and CSS.

Every time I remember this from the past, I consider it to be the first time I found myself absolutely in love with designing.

Years passed by and I enrolled myself in a tech school for my college degree. The school offered engineering, computer, and design courses. I took a BS in IT with a specialization in digital arts, so I had tech courses with a major in design.

There’s a LOT to learn in the design field — from photography, creating 2D and 3D graphics and animations, editing photos and videos, building websites and mobile applications, and so many more things! All of the courses I had taken taught us more about introductions, tools to use and just the basics.

Four years later, I graduated and began the hunt to find my very first design job. I thought anything related to my degree was fine and worked for me. But turns out, it really wasn’t. There were so many job openings for design graduates, but I couldn’t seem to find anything that fit my skills and the experiences I had. At that moment, I was sure I was having a quarter life crisis and I went as far as to start questioning if I was on the right track (the story of every fresh grad, really). I was so overwhelmed with the skillset requirements that I thought, how am I supposed to know any of this?

I started to analyze and check every skill and ability that I had, until I remembered the moment and the reason why I chose this career path. That’s when I felt clarity on what I wanted to do.

I created my portfolio, took more online courses on designing websites and applications and then I started submitting CVs again. After being unemployed for months, I finally landed my first job as a junior web designer.

Regarding the question: Should you go to design or tech school? I honestly think it doesn’t matter. I believe it depends on the person and how they want to learn; whether they want a structured way by direct access to learning with professors and classmates or are hugely motivated to push at self-learning, the importance is the willingness to discover a new set of skills. Some might prefer learning through experience rather than through education.

There’s a plethora of different paths and ways to get training experience – you can take online courses, watch masterclasses, attend conferences and try new tech tools. Others have limited access to education: it might be expensive or difficult to manage in time. Others might be thinking to switch careers.

In my case, I entered tech school to learn extended areas of the design space, choose what field to focus on, and continuously learn my specific skills in UI design. If you’re applying for a job, what people might want to see is the experience you have.

Unfortunately, there’s no answer on what exactly you should do to become a designer. The advice I will give: don’t hesitate to try things on your own. You will find joy by doing the job you love and see yourself grow by continuously learning.

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You’ve probably seen this flat illustration style everywhere from Google, Facebook, Airbnb to pretty much most of the tech companies.

Facebook was one of the first big companies to push out these new illustrations throughout their site. The illustration system, developed by an L.A.- and Brooklyn-based design firm called Buck, is simplistic usually vectorized flat, minimal art style, of joyful cartoon people who are always in motion, running, dancing, or doing something creative.

The characters are depicted by disproportionately shaped bodies. Huge feet, small heads and hands, a variety of bright pastel color skin, sometimes holding a big object like a paintbrush. The designers from Buck called it “Alegria,” which is Spanish for “joy”.

 

Facebook needed a consistent illustration system that signals positivity, is inclusive, conveys the messages that they want to spread, and is cheaper to produce. Considering production timelines and tighter budgets, editorial illustrations were just not the right move.

The flat, minimal style would be ideal for the sake of replicability, meaning, many artists can work and contribute while keeping the look and feel of the characters consistent.

Soon, other companies adopted this trend and started using the Alegria style because of its simple, scalable nature.

The growing discontent

Because of the somewhat unsettling spread and adoption of the style among bigger tech companies, it was soon referred to as Big Tech Art Style, Corporate Art Style, Corporate Memphis, or Globohomo (global homogenization) art style.

With the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other immoral misconduct by other large organizations, the Alegria style with its cheerful minimalism was masking something more sinister. The Aelgria style was an easy way to appeal to the growing public awareness and discontent towards “Big Tech” and its “Comedy Mask”, bu hiding the companies true intentions and pushing hidden agendas.

For some, now it seems to suggest a culture of anti-individualism, or interchangeability, which from a corporate view is pretty much how consumers are perceived. Now associated with large companies and sociopolitical organizations that push for a globalized and homogenized society devoid of social and cultural identity, a perfect consumer…

Recently, some companies started to move away from the Alegria style, and are trying to disassociate themselves from the negative political predicament.

It seems that the new squishy 3D style is no exception to critique, most notably the GrubHub commercial.

It’s not Alegria’s fault for the growing hate. It’s certainly not badly designed, it’s everything you expect for a modern graphic design. In the end, it’s how it’s used and who is using it.

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Do you ever feel like you have no idea what you’re doing, that you’re faking it to keep your job, and that any achievements you’re credited with are creating a false ideal of your abilities? Do you ever worry that someone will discover that you aren’t as capable as others believe? That’s your impostor syndrome talking.

But first, let’s talk about why so many of us experience it. The condition was first identified in 1978 by the psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. It has been estimated that 70% of people feel like an impostor at some point in their careers. But, in my opinion, it all starts long before we join the workforce. It may soar to new heights as you advance in your career, but it begins much earlier. Impostor syndrome doesn’t suddenly appear overnight.

It begins in childhood, when we are first told — and begin to believe — that we are in some way insufficient. That what we’re doing or what we’ve done isn’t enough. To fit in, be accepted, and make friends, you would have to be someone different. That in order to be successful, you must act and be perceived in a certain way.

Impostor syndrome is common in technical and academic fields, but women are disproportionately affected. It’s a major career roadblock because, if left unchecked, it prevents them from applying for promotions, submitting papers to conferences, or doing anything else that would draw attention to themselves. That’s not surprising, given that women still face a lot of criticism in these fields, and their achievements are often undervalued.

Impostor syndrome is both good and bad. It’s bad in that it stops many people from progressing and sharing their capacity and talents with the world. On the other hand, impostor syndrome is also a symptom of breaking out of your comfort zone, and that’s where growth happens. Next time you experience this feeling, know that there are plenty of reasons to embrace it.

In the field of UX design, there are actually a lot of people who experience impostor syndrome simply due to the leap from informing design to actually designing. That invisible bridge between the two is filled with the stuff that can make people fear the fail or try and bluff their way to success. UX and “design” are different things. UX is closer to a research project riddled with experiments and design is closer to art and craftsmanship, in my opinion. The research should inform the design.

But UX people get into this weird situation where they’re not only asked to do the research, but they’re asked to basically craft the thing on some level. Why? Because companies might ask the UX guy to also do design and then the UX guy might not actually use fresh real data to support his/her design (after being asked to do that part) because the company doesn’t have the desire to fund him/her to do all that extra work and because of his or her own tunnel visioned bias.

Buttons and widgets will be in places due to seemingly applicable design patterns, an efficiency achieved through someone else’s research, but this approach also carries a risk since every situation has some uniqueness to it. But this risk shouldn’t be where we do UX without buying. Any risk should be brought up to the customer so that they can make the decision about it. There’s also the misconception that business have where they think they can bring in a UX person and s/he will draw pretty pictures and designers will make everything better just from that. And some folks might be pushed into that situation against their better judgement too, which doesn’t help things.

I kind of feel that the only people that don’t feel like an impostor sometimes are the ones that don’t realize how much there is still left to learn. Impostor syndrome is nothing more than your brain saying “you might know more than those that acknowledge you, but you have a long way before you know everything you could/should know”, which is a good thing.

In other words, impostor syndrome is a symptom of a mind willing to learn, which is the best feature someone working on any design or technology field can have. Surround yourself with people smarter than you, and keep learning.

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In the first part of this series, we tried to define what it means to ‘design ethically.’ We concluded that things start to get blurry pretty fast and there is no single definite answer. So what if we try a different approach – Is it perhaps easier to define what unethical design means?

Privacy

For a lot of people, privacy is what first comes to mind. Here’s a good quote from designer and activist Aral Balkan:

“When a company like Facebook improves the experience of its products, it’s like the massages we give to Kobe beef: they’re not for the benefit of the cow but to make the cow a better product. In this analogy, you are the cow.” Aral Balkan

Or maybe you’re more familiar with this simplified version:

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

You are the product, and your value is in your personal data. When you bring up this argument, there will always be someone who says something along the lines of “if you’re not doing anything illegal and you don’t have anything to hide, why worry?” But things aren’t that simple. Let’s take a look at what happens with your data that gets collected.

Companies use this data to sell you more

They analyze your interests, habits, and vulnerabilities and then use that to persuade you with ads in order to make you a better consumer. To be fair: companies greatly exaggerate how smart and powerful their targeting is so they can sell more ads, but it’s still a problem.

Data gets sold to third parties

You may have given access to one company, but it can end up in an entirely different place, which is not something you signed up for. Your health records, social security numbers, banking details, location history; all of this gets bundled into neat little packages and sold.

These packages present a simplified model of a person and contain their private, intimate details. There are systems that make automated decisions based on that data which can greatly limit someone’s choices, opportunities and life-chances. The way these systems work is often non-transparent, arbitrary, biased, unfair, and unaccountable.

What does this mean in practice?

For example, there have been cases where employers have been tracking the location data and search history of employees so they could stop them from forming unions and fighting for better working conditions.

Or, your government could use your location history and social media content to mark you as “undesirable” or “terrorist”, like during the protest around the globe in 2020.

 

This is why “I have nothing to hide” is a naive point of view — it takes for granted that there is a benevolent, objectively good force running everything from corporations to governments behind the scenes. Nothing is black or white.

Your data is not secure

Even if we imagine that governments and companies will never abuse collected data, security is still an issue. There are regular people behind those systems who have access to your data and can leak it or dox you. There are hackers who can steal your data for profit or just for fun. As long as it’s there, somebody can abuse it.

Accessibility

Another way you can create an unethical design is through accessibility. When you’re designing, you’re always making compromises:

• Who benefits from your design?
• Who gets left out, intentionally or unintentionally?

When you say “accessibility”, designers usually mean designing with high contrast and making sure the design can be used via keyboard. But there’s so much more to it than that.

Clubhouse has been the hot new app for quite some time now. It’s described as “drop-in audio chat”, and some of the most important tech discussions and networking happen there. But here are a couple of different ways it’s inaccessible:

• It’s hard to use by visually impaired people because of low contrast and no keyboard support
• It’s impossible to use by hearing-impaired people because of the lack of live captioning of audio
• It’s invite-only, which excludes people who aren’t connected to the elite tech-bro early-adopters
• It’s iOS-only, which excludes Android users

The team behind Clubhouse is clearly communicating that they only want people who can see perfectly, hear perfectly, own iPhones, and who are “culture-fit”. Everybody else gets left out.

You could argue if that’s intentional or unintentional, but there are some real-life examples that are definitely intentional.

 

This is an example of hostile architecture. The idea is to design objects in public with such a balance so it does its job but makes it impossible for homeless people to use it to survive. A popular example are benches that are kind of okay to sit on, but impossible to sleep on. Or ventilation shafts that homeless people cannot use to stay warm. They’re pretty clear about who doesn’t get to benefit from their design.

Dark patterns

When you compare something like an axe or a TV to digital products, there is one big difference. An axe or a TV just sits there and waits until you interact with it. But now, tools are the ones starting the interaction. They’re always on, always bombarding you with notifications, emails, SMS, begging for your attention. They don’t care what you want at that moment, they want your focus right now, and ideally all the time. And this is causing massive anxiety.

This is what the industry calls a dark pattern, a trick that designers use to make the things you don’t want to. This is just one example, but there are dozens:

• Roach motel: Designers make subscribing ridiculously easy, but unsubscribing next to impossible.
• Confirmshaming: Guilting users into choosing something that benefits your company by using labels that shame them into compliance.
• Forced continuity: When a free trial ends, the user silently starts getting charged.

Not anticipating negative behavior

While dark patterns are mostly there intentionally and used to reach business goals no matter what, sometimes it seems people working on the product didn’t realize that their product can be used for harm. This usually happens when there’s a lack of diversity on teams, and in tech, which is still mainly white, male, straight, and neurotypical, that’s often the case. Sometimes they imagine the world as a perfect, happy place, where nothing bad ever happens, a view which clashes with reality.

 

Here are some potential problems to keep in mind:

• Mental health: How is your FOMO design affecting people who are struggling with depression, or ADHD, or anxiety?
• Traum: Is your “On this day” feature showing your users a celebratory reminder that their friend committed suicide?
• Addiction: Is your addictive, habit-loop app ruining users who have problems with addiction psychologically and financially?
• Abusive relationships: Are your “Find my friends” and location tags helping abusive partners track and control their victims?

Consequences

So what are the consequences of using unethical design? Why do we keep seeing this sort of behavior again and again?

Big tech companies that embrace unethical design have lower usability, frustrated users, and a loss of trust…

But they are so big and popular that people have no option but to ignore the issues and keep coming back. Yeah, you could put photos of your dog and breakfast on your personal website, but who’s going to see them there?

Sometimes, companies have to pay…

But it’s usually a symbolic amount compared to how much they earn from their unethical practices.

Or they just get scolded

They apologize, promise not to do it again, and then turn around and keep doing the exact same thing. How many times have you watched a congressional hearing where Mark Zuckerberg had to stand in front of old people who don’t understand anything about technology and pretend he’s sorry for something that’s literally the core of his business model?

The truth is, our current system doesn’t really punish this kind of behavior. We’re still celebrating companies and people who do this. It’s up to you to decide if you want to accept it and be a part of it. You can’t really expect to change the underlying system on your own, but you have to start somewhere. And at least you’ll sleep better knowing you’re not actively ruining people’s lives.

In our last part of this series on Design Ethics, we’ll talk about all the part you can play in being more ‘ethical.’

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Last June 2019, Figma plugins were introduced and have been popularized and used excessively since then. By the looks of the Figma plugins library, it has received overwhelming numbers of submissions coming from developers, also famously called “builders” or “creators” around the world.

Figma plugins are used to help designers automate their workflows and speed up their design process especially when dealing with repetitive tasks such as multiple uses of components and elements. [s] Plugins are critical components to a designer’s workflow that can serve as little power-ups and help extend Figma’s product functionality.

On this list, I’m going to share with you the plugins that I have been using which helped me speed up my workflow when creating wireframes and mock-ups.

Content Reel

I absolutely love this plugin! Content reel plugin enables you to quickly add text-based, avatars, and icons into your designs. Just select one or more layers in your design, then choose a content type from the Content Reel palette to apply.

Choose from the following content:

• Text: Names, phone numbers, U.S. addresses, numbers, date & time, Lorem Ipsum, email addresses and URLs.
• Avatars: Male, female, or a mix of both.
• Icons: Glyph images from Microsoft’s Segoe MDL2 Assets font.

Unsplash

Unsplash is a platform where people can easily access and use beautiful images for free. With the unsplash plugin, you can export images to your design without leaving the figma app. Make sure to check out Unsplash’s blog post about how they’re simplifying their design workflow with plugins.

This plugin is best for when you need random pictures on your design. The good thing is, unsplash plugin offers categorized images so you can select a specific category that the image you are looking for fits best.

Google sync sheet

Google sync sheet allows you to sync data from a spreadsheet containing your elements. This is best used when you want to use real, defined, and specific text elements and images to your design. [s] Google Sheets Sync is also really handy because you can still manage your data with all of the benefits and features of a spreadsheet; making it a breeze to leverage formulas or make updates down the road.

To get started, here’s a pro-tip:

1. Create a simple component
2. Create a set of data in a google sheet
3. Arrange your data according to the order you want it to appear in (as I am testing it out, I notice that it fetches the data from top to bottom)

Note: It syncs well when your instances are coming from the same components.

More documentation available here.

Data Lab

Data Lab allows you to insert texts and components quickly and easily. This plugin supports numbers, names, dates, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and even lists. You can even upload your own defined set of data lists by uploading your google sheet data. It is easy to navigate and you can even select multiple text layers and then populate them at once.

How to use:

1. Run Data Lab
2. Select text layers or components
3. Construct content query with any symbols and variables
4. Click Paste data

Advanced features:

1. Names, Dates and Geo locations in English and Russian
2. Upload data from API or shared Google Sheet via LIST variable

Mapsicle

Mapsicle allows you to quickly and seamlessly place real maps on your designs. [s] An interactive map lets you pan to the perfect location, or you can search for any place anywhere in the world.

Once you’ve placed a map in your designs, head back into Mapsicle to adjust the location, style, zoom level and more. Mapsicle uses Mapbox maps to give you a variety of customization options.

If you want to define your own map, you have to create an account and get your own token at mapbox.

Brandfetch

Brandfetch saves you time from searching a brand logo and color scheme all over the internet by letting you export a brand or product’s latest logo with their respective color scheme and fonts without leaving the figma app.

Simply enter a company’s name and instantly get its corresponding brand assets into Figma. You can find your access token by creating an account (which is very easy and has a smooth process) and then copy/paste your plugin window (limited at 150 requests/month).

Iconscout

Iconscout allows you to insert millions of high quality icons, illustrations and stock photos right into Figma. Search any item from the large library of icons, illustrations, and stock photos. Search for the right item and click on it to insert it in your design. You may create an account or login as a guest user to get access.

You can download an icon or an icon packs. You can also filter it by relevance, popularity, or latest icons. You may also download free icons and/or stock photos or a premium one. Aside from that, you can select different styles like colored, doodle, dualtone, flat, glyph, and more and lastly, you may have an option in applying specific colors you preferred.

Blush

This is one of my favorite plugins when it comes to illustrations populating purposes. It contains sets of beautiful illustrations that you can add to your design. By just creating an account, you can use any illustration for personal and commercial purposes. If you need SVG-editable layers and more advance functionalities, you can subscribe to their paid plan.

Linky

This time around, I have this one task to deal with that requires me to provide my workmate all the social media assets and video thumbnails images by collating it in one document. Imagine dealing with 100+ of those images.

So, here’s my process without linky:

Its quite annoying right? But with the help of linky, I can reduce this process into 2 steps (shown in the GIF below). You can even shorten and customize the link! That’s a bonus point right? (Of course you have to go through a process of opening the plugin itself but after that, all are good and easy 😉).

Note: You need to sign up in order to use the link shortening feature.

Blobs

This one is one of those plugins that has very simple functionality yet is extremely helpful. Blobs is one of the most popular design pattern – it’s used thoroughly on websites, apps graphics, and even assets due to its smooth and fine effects when added as a background.

The plugin allows you to add/customize the complexity and contrast. Complexity is its pattern/shape and contrast means how many points are in your blobs.

Pattern Hero

Pattern Hero enables you to place selected elements or frames in a grid to create patterns. If you are a fan of icon/shape pattern designs, then this is the plugin for you! Use it to speed up your workflow and instead of copy and pasting assets multiple times, you can populate assets in just a few clicks with Pattern Hero.

That concludes my list of plugins that I am currently using the most while creating designs. With the help of these plugins, I am able to save a lot of time and ease the pain of thinking dummy data. Lorem ipsum, Joe and Jane Doe is old, let’s create designs that bring a presentation of live user experience.

Figma has an extensive offering of plugins that help speed up your workflow when it comes to exporting data, dealing with dummy text, images and placeholders.

I frequently update my plugin list, so if you have any favourite Figma plugins that you think I should check out, share them:

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