Hello everyone!

As the days get darker and the environment gets moodier, designers sink deeper into their thoughts about the purpose and future of design. Now is the perfect time for exploring what we are moving towards and what we might have accidentally left behind while getting there. This month’s Design Breakfast is focused mainly on exploring challenges that designers can encounter when creating design systems for expanding device ecosystems and ever more demanding professional environments.

Meet our curator of the month

Joel is a generalist designer, doing both UX/UI and service design, who is especially interested in creating order from chaos through design systems and research methodology. For him, the best part in every project is to dive deep into the very specific information and use cases involved in those projects. In his spare time, he tries to fit interesting experiences into simple models by designing rules systems for all kinds of games, especially for tabletop roleplaying games. He has a LinkedIn profile and you are very free to contact him there, but he doesn’t use it all that much. 

Joel's picks

The future of design systems

By Jen Cotton

A very informative talk from the Clarity 2021 conference about all the challenges that the different types of modern devices and cross device interactions impose on designers of design systems. It explains how designers of modern day design systems need to take into account more than just the ordinary ways of presenting information and controlling devices that we can find on computers and mobile phones.

Viz palette

By Elijah Meeks & Susie Lu

This is a very good tool that helps with solving one of the most difficult tasks that a designer of design systems can face: evaluating the usability of data visualization colors. It creates an analysis of how similar the defined colors are with each other - also when they are inspected through various types of color vision deficiency.

Hardest problem in computer science: Centering things

By Nikita Prokopov

I noticed this article being shared on Futurice’s internal channels and liked it very much. In the article, Niki goes through a plethora of real-life examples of how technology (well, not always just technology) makes the act of centering things much harder than designers would like it to be. As designers, we need to be interested in these kinds of details as well, instead of just focusing on creating fireworks and testing the limits of technology.

Know your curator better

Tell us about one project you've worked on that you found particularly interesting or challenging?

My current project has been especially interesting. The task has been to create a new internal management service to replace the client’s aging service that they had gradually custom-built over a long period of time to support their very specific kind of process. We had a lengthy “Service Vision Sprint” (research project to clarify the vision for the future version of the service) to dive deep into the client’s processes and needs, but even after that there are still new and interesting details behind every corner about what the client’s experts are really doing as part of their work and what they really need to complete their everyday tasks.

What emerging technologies or trends are you excited about?

Figma variables, especially when their capabilities are expanded. UX/UI design has been (and still continues to be) too disconnected from the capabilities that could come with proper scripting tools. Another thing I am excited about is how AI technologies are starting to help people with vision and hearing impairments. One of the coolest examples I’ve heard about lately have been applications that use AI generated speech to describe the contents of recorded videos.

What hobbies or interests are you passionate about?

One of my most long-term hobbies has been 3D modeling but I’d have to say that the hobby I am the most passionate about is game design. I just can’t seem to resist the challenge of trying to create the vast complexities of stories and experiences using as concise a set of rules as possible. In addition, I am also very passionate about learning and debating about beliefs and worldviews, because those are at the heart of how we experience the world.

Join us 

Senior UX/UI Designer

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