Design, for me, is about creating clear, useful experiences that help people get things done. I believe the best solutions come from understanding users’ needs while building tools that can grow with them. Here’s how I approach this:
Building Design Systems That Work for Everyone
Making Components Better
At Workday, I helped improve our design system to work for all users, including those with different abilities. I built tools in Figma that made our design process smoother and faster. The real win was seeing designers and developers use these tools to create better products. We had fewer mistakes in our designs and more teams wanted to use our system.
Teaching Through Stories
I love making complex ideas easier to understand. I created an interactive guide that showed designers how to use our components through simple, visual examples. It worked better than we expected – more people started using our system correctly, and we spent less time answering basic questions.
Learning What Works
Understanding How People Use Our Tools
I believe in listening to feedback and watching how people use what we build. I set up ways to track how our components were being used and met regularly with teams to hear their thoughts. This helped us spot problems early and make improvements that actually helped people do their jobs better.
Testing Ideas Early
My background in both design and coding helps me create working prototypes quickly. This is especially useful for testing complicated features before we spend time building them. It’s much easier to make changes when we can see how something works in practice.
Building a Design Community
Hands-On Workshops
Running workshops is one of my favorite parts of the job. I make them practical and engaging, mixing technical learning with creative problem-solving. Nothing beats seeing someone’s face light up when they figure out a new way to solve a problem.
Working Across Teams
Having experience in both design and development helps me connect with different teams. We started doing design reviews together and talking about technical possibilities early in the process. While we don’t always agree at first, these discussions lead to better solutions that work for everyone.
Making Things Better
Building Helpful Tools
I enjoy creating tools that make our work easier. I’ve built several Figma plugins that help teams work faster and catch potential issues early. This gives everyone more time to focus on solving real problems for our users.
Improving Our Process
I created a clear way to update our design components that considers everyone involved. It’s not just about making changes – it’s about understanding how those changes affect different teams and making sure everyone knows what’s new and why it matters.
Measuring What Matters
I look at success in practical ways:
- Are teams using our components more?
- Are we seeing fewer mistakes in implementation?
- Are designers and developers working together better?
- Are we spending less time fixing basic issues?
- Most importantly, are we making everyone’s job easier?
The best feedback is hearing that our work helped someone solve a problem more easily or made their day a little better.