How Figma rose above other design tools even after entering the market late
It is safe to say that the entire design and product community is excited about Figma. But how did Figma make itself a dominant tool for every designer and, more importantly, the tech giants that employ hundreds of designers for their product features? Let’s dig into this topic and understand how Figma applied the same variables to other tools to make their mark in their respective industries.
History 👴
- Figma had its first public release on September 27, 2016. On October 22, 2019, Figma launched Figma Community, allowing designers…
How Grammarly engages with users while respecting user privacy
Grammarly is no longer the new kid on the block. It makes its users writing better than it actually is. It is easy to install and checks for grammar horrors on every word that touches a web-editing interface — like emails, documents, essays, message texts, and scripts.
Start — Stop — Continue from 2020
I always keep a running journal of things that I come across on social sites and valuable links shared by friends or colleagues from my network. Here’s a list of 55 notable learnings that I want to keep in mind as I roll over to the new year of 2021. I have divided the list into design, leadership, hiring (hiring/getting hired), writing/communication, and relaxation for ease of reading. Scroll below to see the entire list of learnings from the year 2020.
Design and being a designer
“Design doesn’t happen in the deep, cold vacuum of space. Design happens…
What makes a low code solution compelling? How do consumers decide to spend money on it?
Low-code solutions are all the rage these days. But what is low-code really? Low-code is a visual approach to software development. Low-code abstracts and automates every step of the application lifecycle to enable the rapid delivery of various software solutions. It breaks the traditional silos of business and IT to promote continuous collaboration. Increased business demand for software solutions and a shortage of skilled developers have propelled the adoption of low-code development platforms to the forefront.
To give you an example, in the consumer space, tools like Webflow and Squarespace are excellent for low-code website designing/building. While designing a website…
Studying and unifying the payment systems in Grab — South East Asia’s top super-app
A crash course on Super Apps
Rise of Super Apps
If you have ever been to one of the bustling Asian countries, you would have noticed the growing trend of super-apps. Super App is an app that puts a bunch of services together into one bundle. Some of the countries have their homegrown super-app that caters to the needs of individuals and businesses.
What attracts consumers towards investing in your tech-education startup?
If you are running an education tech startup, chances are you are either struggling to gain signups from users 😐 , or you are killing it 💯. Registrations and paid customers are falling right — left — and center, and you are looking to scale your platform in ways no one has ever done before; if you are a founder of a thriving education tech startup, congrats 🎉 , you have made it 🙌.
But if you are struggling to make a mark, working to scale your services/courses, and increase your…
What are designers doing, and why are they getting no-where?
This might be worldwide truth that the collaboration bit between engineering and design isn’t a straightforward business. Often product managers become the glue between both the teams and pass messages between them. Although team leads are keen to organize workshops between design and engineering, practical workshop actualization is challenging. When all efforts fail, companies try to break down teams into squads and force different disciplines to sit next to each other in “pods” and talk more while sharing the same desk. Unfortunately, none of these team-building tricks work. …
Make beautiful, simple, easy-to-understand icons.
If you are a Visual, UX, UI, or Interaction Designers in today’s fast-moving tech world, you understand that iconography is an integral part of anything you make. Rules of iconography are straightforward. Every designer learns them at some point; that is, iconography should be simple, easy to understand, and should support the message/action that the user can perform on the interface. Although, there’s a lot more to iconography.
One of my favorite guidelines to follow if anyone wants to practice iconography is the material design guidelines by Google Design.
Make it simple like Mickey.
Fact: In May 1928, when Mickey…
Branding efforts by an Ed-Tech startup across mediums
You might not know this person, but I am sure you would have seen one or more of his videos at some point. His name is Nuseir Yassin, and he makes videos for a living (video blogger). He calls himself “Nas” (a short form of his name). He traveled the world for 1,000 days, creating a thousand 1-minute videos after graduating from Harvard and quitting his Venmo job. And that’s how his trademark name — Nas Daily (Nuseir publishes daily), was formed. Check out an article on his journey.
The story behind and around Pringles brand refresh
This weekend, I walked past the chips and snacks aisle and noticed a different branding to my favorite “Crisps” brand. Is that Pringles, I asked myself? Or a knock-off product? But after reading through the packaging, I was pleasantly surprised and came to understand it was, in fact, the real Pringles. I took a minute to line-up all the flavors available and snapped the cover picture for this article.
What’s New?
Julius Pringle (aka Mr. P) from Pringles got a refreshed look on Pringles' labels in 2020. Mr. P never changed his face in…
