Miles Hillier 💭

I flag brand integration as a critical skill for product designers to develop–it’s a versatile ability to add to your skill set. I’m not talking about learning how to create a brand (logo, color palette, typography, etc.). The skill I advocate designers to cultivate involves the ability to assess and understand all attributes of an existing brand–visual identity, voice/personality–and skillfully integrate those elements into the product experience. Do this, and you add tremendous marketability to yourself because you will know how to ensure that marketing's brand-led first impression will make a seamless handoff to the product experience. We’re in a state where, like Moore’s Law, there is exponential growth in the importance of branding for all businesses, not just corporations. If you know how to wield it in the design of the product experience, you will distinguish yourself.

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Great advice. Remove all friction when sending your portfolio. Keep it simple and remove all restrictions.

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Figma’s ConFig ’24 released several new features that caused many to continue to sing their praises. However, there is a trend their business model that is problematic. New features are initially available to all in beta. Once the feature goes into production, there will be a charge to use the new feature. Figma seems to be building an a la cart feature menu creating a nickel and dime growth strategy. The problem is that Figma has already surpassed the exorbitant pricing of Adobe products. Has Figma considered the full spectrum of their user base? While some enterprises may be able to float that price tag (For managers, it still can be a hard sell for budget approval), small businesses and independent designers will find the cost to be challenging or prohibitive. While Figma may generate some initial profit, it may not work in the long-term once the romance is gone.

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Etsy was recently seen A/B testing AND eventually shipping a more visible search with the help of a higher contrast orange background button color (instead of a ghost-like icon only approach). Full screenshots: https://lnkd.in/gVJThW3W Now I don't work for Etsy (as much as I'd love to design some experiments for/with them) so we can't see the actual numbers beyond this feint probabilistic residue from the public domain. However, the amazing Andrey Andreev who runs experiments at Metro recently ran a very similar one and shared a solid result on GoodUI - with a positive impact to sales and searches. N = 896,009 SRM Check = Pass p-val on Increased Sales = 0.0139 (I know some people might like this to be even lower for a primary metric; but there is also reinforcing evidence on increased searches with an even lower p value at "ultra stat-sig" levels using Ron Kohavi's language; p < 0.00000001). I inverted the a/b test and categorized it under the Filled Vs Ghost Button pattern - further weakening the ghosts and strengthening the high contrast filled button styles on multiple metrics. https://lnkd.in/gmD8Exvc Thanks Andrey for a somewhat of an unintended replication, as I know your source of inspiration came from somewhere else on this one. :) Have you tested anything similar or different. If so, what did you discover? I'd be super curious to see more examples where increases to search have either ❌ failed or ✅ succeeded. Please share independent of outcome. ps. We also have a handful of similar "visible search" experiments where companies tested adding or hiding search: https://lnkd.in/gvWqzrK5 - further supporting this direction. [EDIT]: Note the additional confounders / variables in the Metro test - a stronger border, a change in background color of the search box as per Jakob Nielsen comment. They may be similar along the lines of the increased visibility theme - but possible additional variables nevertheless. #experimentation #ecommerce #replication #optimization #ui #ux

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You don’t need a formal UX title to showcase your content design chops. Emily Wachowiak shares tips on how to put together a standout portfolio. Read more on the Button blog: https://lnkd.in/gdmvUcRD #UX #ContentDesign #UXPortfolio #UserExperience #UXWriting

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My top 3 project selection tips for design leaders doing portfolio presentations: 1. Pick projects that have a good mix of what you did directly plus what the team did. Very rarely is anyone looking for a pure people manager while hiring a design leader. Your personal contributions need to stand out in your work. It doesn’t have to be IC work (but if you do that, show it). It could be a doc you wrote, an insight you uncovered, a strategy you formulated etc. Differentiate between what you did yourself, what you directed the team to do, and things the team might have driven independently. Make this distinction clear as you present your portfolio. People want to see you can do smart stuff yourself, can direct a team well, but will also build a high functioning team that does good work. Also, if you would like I can do a separate post in these 3 modes of operation for any design leader. 2. Pick projects based on the role you’re applying for. It doesn’t have to be and most certainly won’t be a 100% match. But for example, if what the team needs is scaling a successful product, pick examples where you enabled scale. This needs to be deeper than “I’m applying for fintech so here’s another fintech project”. Your project selection should show you understand the challenges for the company and have transferrable skills. 3. Pick projects where you can show both macro and micro user insights. Scale the macro according to your seniority and level. For example, if you’re applying for a Director role, you better have projects that show you driving user insights at Director scale (for instance something that drove resourcing decisions). At the same time, the project should also show micro insights appropriate to role. For example, key interaction design flows redone by your team for the goal. Or even things like font/color selection and how that drove impact. Use these guidelines and apply the filter for what fits with your past experience and this new role. If you have the same portfolio presentation for completely different roles, something is off somewhere. You only need to present 2-3 projects in a presentation, pick the most appropriate ones. If this sounds complicated and like a lot of work, it is. Project selection is THE foundation for how your presentation will play out.

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Many designers fall into the trap of getting way too attached to their own designs. David Fano has seen designers get caught up in all sorts of stuff: — Buttons that look cool but don't really do much — Interfaces that are more flash than substance — Design systems that are more complicated than they need to be The thing is that none of that matters if you're not solving the user's actual problem. The best product managers know that the user is king. They focus on solving the user's needs, not just making things look good. It's easy to get lost in the weeds when you're deep in the design process. You might find yourself going down the rabbit hole of pixel-perfect layouts and animations that are super on-trend. But that’s how to lose sight of why you're designing in the first place. Your job is to make the user's life better, not just to make something that looks cool. As designers, we need to be real with ourselves: — Does this feature actually make the user's experience better? — Are we solving a problem that users actually have? — Or are we just geeking out over our own design skills? Always keep the user front and center. — How do you balance making great designs with actually solving user problems? Watch the full episode with David for more talk on user-centered design, now live on our new content series at minimumviablepodcast.com.

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Are you ready for the rise of fractional design leadership? Here's my prediction: 👉 By the end of 2024, companies will commonly engage design leaders in a fractional capacity. 👉 This could either look like... A. Design leaders engaging in contract roles to strategize and lead specific product initiatives supported by in-house teams. or B. Design leaders joining agencies specializing in fractional leadership, creating a leadership-as-a-service model. This could include additional support from teams sourced from either the agency or the client. 👉 Companies right now are balancing cash flow with growth and innovation. The increasing risk of disruption in every industry underscores the need to adapt to survive. Fractional leadership can jump-start areas where product teams feel 'stuck.' Moreover, fractional opportunities can unlock significant career-growth opportunities for designers, a path that is traditionally more scarce and has lower turnover than IC roles. What's your take on this? Is fractional design leadership the future, or am I completely off? 🤔 #management #technology #careers #leanstartups #future

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With Adobe, Figma, and others adjusting policies to support the training of LLMs (which you can totally opt out of btw), it's interesting to witness the design zeitgeist recognizing how business goals influence designers and the importance of data integrity in design. Taking it a step further by replacing "designer" with "human" allows us to connect with everyone we design products for. The practice of design operates at the intersection of business and human activity, a concept we are on the brink of internalizing at a profound level. Embed this and act accordingly! #businessvalue #dataintegrity #design #ux #productdesign #ai #llm #figma #adobe

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Portfolio tip for design leaders: Unless your values/leadership style/‘how I lead’ slides are unique or clearly showing why they make you a good fit for this specific role, skip all that in your portfolio presentation. It’s a waste of time and if it sounds like what all the other candidates are also doing(which is true 90% of the time), it will make you blend in. Not good: Generic words like empathy, team building, servant leadership etc Good: Super specific values that apply to this role Better: Super specific values that are actually then evidenced in the work you will shortly present

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Figma's pricing makes no sense for agencies that work collaboratively with clients. Even if they aren't making edits, to see dev mode a user must have a paid design seat. 🤦‍♂️ Even if they pay for an account themselves, you need to pay for them again to have edit access to your file 🤦‍♂️ Very shady way of doubling up on fees - the opposite of what originally was a huge driver of Figma's success. Do better, Figma

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Anotha' day, anotha' person discovering how OOUX (Object oriented UX) can make their lives easier... Last Friday, I spoke at 200OK Dev Conference hosted by Techlahoma Foundation with my talk "UX in a Bottle: Intro to Object Oriented UX for Web Devs. We walked about: • What OOUX is • How it works • How to apply to any project My favorite part about OOUX, which is why I shout from the roofs is that ANYONE (not just devs) can do it to better understand a problem, breakdown requirements in a thorough way, and make something easier to understand. Phenomenal job by all the speakers: Kristy K. Boone:  EI + AI = The Human Side of Tech Camille Hall: The Frontend Revolution: Building Seamless AI-Driven User Experiences with React.js Rhia Dixon, MBA: Getting Good (or Better) at Code Reviews Joel Tosi: Blending Product Thinking with Architecture If you want a copy of my talk, or any of the other speakers - comment below and I'll link you when the playlist comes out! Shout out the Techlahoma team, led by Queen Emily Harden, Geoffrey Harden, Maxx Crawford and the rest of the volunteers and Atlas School for sponsoring and hosting us. And of course, Sophia V Prater for bringing OOUX into my life. I'm ramping up my OOUX posts, so follow me so learn how to apply OOUX into your projects and life. #ooux #webdevs #ux #productdesign

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I am constantly examining my own limiting beliefs, and that practice has changed my life. What patterns or narratives are so engrained that they hold me back? Where did they come from? What if I let them go? So liberating. Now, what happens if we turn this practice onto our industry? This article is based on a workshop on this topic that I gave last month in NYC at the Advancing Research conference put on by Rosenfeld Media. The set-up comes from the results of a study using dscout's Express tool in which I asked, "Imagine you walk into a museum and see a painting depicting the UXR Landscape right now - describe it." Responses were (um) quite vivid, and got me thinking about the limiting beliefs they represent, the industry orthodoxies they gesture towards, and what it would be like to flip them -- which is work that is both internal and systemic. As Sara Wachter-Boettcher put it so eloquently (as ever) in a chat we had about this, “We can’t heal or change the system until we can see what we’ve internalized and learn to shift those scripts.” Thanks to Stevie Watts for help whipping this into shape, Allison Corr for the *delightful* header illustration, and Katie Johnson who I will always give credit to for introducing me to the power of identifying orthodoxies. May we ever be flipping them! #peoplenerds #humancentereddesign #UX

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Designers sketch, pixel-pushers jump right into Figma. If you aren't sketching, you aren't designing. I hold this truth deep within my bones. Check out my new article explaining why and how you can grow as a designer. https://lnkd.in/gP5buNHf

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If you're using Knapsack you've got yet another thing to get excited about. Our new Figma integration can supercharge a product team's workflow is with spec alignment. At a glance you'll be able to see whether or not your components align with the Figma comps across your different frameworks. Here we can see that the React component is almost aligned, but we need to update the spelling from 'outline' to 'outlined' in the prop type. Catching these misalignments early ensures teams stay in sync throughout the design and development process.

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If we're not talking about design maturity, agile process, or craft, then us designers are probably talking about ✨quality.✨ I certainly see my interviewer's eyes light up when I mention this magical word. "Design is the one that has to hold the quality bar," I tell them. But what if that didn't have to be true? For a truly high-quality product, I don't think it should be design holding the line. It has to be something baked into the organization - everyone holds the quality bar. Even though "quality" is a slippery thing to define, if we can define it and hold ourselves to it, we can reduce the tension in the org and start to think less about the mere baseline quality for the product and more about raising that bar - delighting the user. I very much enjoyed Luke Anthony Firth's take on how they folded quality into their product building process. Have a read! https://lnkd.in/g4SenmYZ #designleadership #productprocess #productdesign #productquality #designquality #opentowork

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From my experience - want to be a better ui/ux designer? Here are five simple steps: 1. Think like a user. Always put their needs first. 🧠👥 2. Be a problem solver. Good design isn't just about looking nice—it also fixes issues.🛠️ 3. Learn from others. Make their great ideas your own, then make them even better. 📘🌍 4. Practice all the time. It's like exercise for your brain. 🏋️‍♂️🎯 5. Show off your work to everyone. Even people who might not like it can give you useful feedback. 📣👀 So, who's ready to step up their design game this week? #DesignTips #UxUi #StartupLife #UserExperience #SkillUp

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Got this years ago. Great life advice, sure, but also some of the best #design advice I've ever gotten. Before you solve the problem right, make sure you are solving the right problem. 🙃 #productdesign #userexperience #ux #advice

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I get asked pretty often what resources are out there that help people break into the UX field. Ryan's great and could offer some really good well informed insights. if you're curious about some interview prep, give this a look

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