Mentoring resources
This is my evolving collection of links and resources to share with mentees.
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Product/UX design
Portfolios/Learning
Standing out from the crowd with your story - My article/talk for BeMore conference about using your passions and skills
A Designers Guide to Interviewing - ebook, a great resource for portfolio/interview prep
Degreeless.design - wide range of learning resources
UX Interview Questions - practice!
Accessibility/Inclusion
UX Designers Accessibility Guide - I took this class on Udemy for Accessibility and recommended it
Stark Library - Good resources for learning accessibility
My booklist
- User Experience Team of One - Nice primer for the whole UX process
- Dont Make Me Think - Classic guide on intuitive experiences
- Articulating Design Decisions - Great for being an effective communicator across teams
- The Making of a Manager - How to become a design manager
- Sprint - Handbook for running a design sprint
- Org Design for Design Orgs - Building and managing design teams
- Design Leadership - Build and grow teams
- Technically Wrong - Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
- Building for Everyone - Designing for diversity
- Demystifying Disability - Not design specific, but good perspectives
- Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design - Inclusive design methods
- Design for Real Life - Inclusive practices
- Design for Cognitive Bias - Adjusting design processes for bias
- Design That Scales by Dan Mall - My notes on the book
- Design System Handbook (free)
- Make Time - same authors as Sprint, how to focus on what matters each day
- Quiet by Susan Cain - encouragement for introverts
Design systems links
Design Systems Slack - great way to learn and ask questions
My notes on the book by Dan Mall
Reference systems
eBay Playbook - my team's DS site :)
Browse the Figma community UI Kits section for official Material Design and iOS kits.
Simple Design System by Figma is a powerful resource for anyone learning UI and DS skills.
Design systems job description
- Designing and documenting components:
- Good UI/UX design experience in general
- Detail oriented, quality obsessed
- Skill in articulating design decisions (by talking and writing)
- Skill in writing (support conversations and documentation)
- Basic understanding of design systems
- Knowledge of accessibility/WCAG
- Experience working closely with engineers
- Willingness to help move ideas forward, looking for new opportunities to improve our work
- Presentation skills - to evangelize and rally the teams toward a vision for the system
- Teaching skills - to show teams how to use the system, how to contribute, etc
- Collaborative - to provide support for users of the system and work with them on requests for new patterns, negotiating folks toward alignment
- Systems thinking - how do design decisions apply broadly
- Experience with creating and maintaining a DS
- Experience documenting DS
- Experience with DS tokens, to collaborate and speak same language as engineers
- Experience providing design specs and QA support to DS engineers on web and native platforms
- Understanding the crossover between accessibility and design systems