A collection of learnings from designers that have mentored and influenced me:

From Buzz

• To create a vision of the future through design work, and not wait for anyone to give you permission. Show, don’t tell!
• Don’t settle for obvious solutions. Ask why and dig to really understand. Think about how to simplify, and find really simple ways to address the need.
• Establish design principles, and your own opinions and agenda about the product and its future, to give guardrail to design decisions.
• Prioritize by a scale of user pain, if something’s a 2, they can live without that! Sometimes you need to shadow someone to see what’s really painful, could be a simple solution.
• Start with an exceptional, aspirational solution, then work backward.
• Make users feel badass, anything that isn’t is draining their life source and indirectly making them fat.
• Think: Is there a better way to solve this problem?
• Create small wins (CANI) and shorter feedback loops.
• Stress sketch! Sketch a lot of reps of a design until you can’t wait to get to the computer.
• Assume positive intent and lead with curiosity.
• Spend time initially shaping your opinion on something before you share it
• Users don’t care about the product itself, they care about what it lets them do and what kind of person they can be with it
• You can impact behavior positively in small ways through interaction design.
• You don’t need to give much thought to internal tools.
• For marketing design, break the design system and refine it later.
• Account for no one reading a word on the page.
• Think about your personal agenda for your design work and your career, and see how you can implement that throughout your work. You might feel burnt out if you don’t do this.