Sho Kuwamoto Profile picture
Oct 13, 2021 12 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Hey there. It has been a week since @figmadesign's #Schema2021 conference, so as a public service, I thought I would rate all the talks on a scale from 1 to 10.
Opening Keynote by @skuwamoto

Really boring. Who is this guy anyway? Lots of talk about old stuff and I don’t see how it’s relevant.

No charisma. Definitely skippable.

Rating: 0/10 Screenshot of Sho talking about freeform vs structured desig
Guidance over governance by @jenyee_ and @lucaorio_

I loved everything about this talk!

A+ thinking around dealing with contributions from your design team, having fun while working, and a demo of their amazing plugin (Moria) which they use for everything.

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Jen and Luca
Mastering the art of code - aligned UI kits by @HonzaTmn

So useful, and chock full of advice on how to set up your design system, as well as how to alert your team to breaking changes.

I learned so much! Tons of useful, directly actionable info.

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Jan's talk
Reimagining Atlassian design system, from product to platform by @jenniesyip

Possibly the talk most densely packed with info nuggets.

Super interesting look at the evolution of Atlassian's design system. Great advice at both the tactical and conceptual levels!

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Jennie
User-centered design system resources by @jeremydizon, @loonyruni, @myomelette and Joanne Deng

Great information of course, but.. can you believe how good these presenters are? I wish I had presentation skills like this!

Super useful, and super entertaining!

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Runi, Michael, Joanne and Jeremy
Design tokens on Asana's Design Systems team by @ainsleywagon, @jina and @IvyCodes

It’s so interesting to see a team of design tokens experts explain every aspect of how they use design tokens at Asana.

Must watch if you want to learn about tokens.

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Jina talking about colors
Building custom Figma plugins by @GunuruPrasanna and Kelly Gorr

Super accessible intro to creating plugins in Figma!

Lots of concrete examples of how Microsoft takes advantage of this with their own plugins, many of which are publicly available.

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Prasanna talking about Microsoft's plugins
Material You and Figma by @rodydavis and @margeeta

Material is like a meta-design system. You take it, customize it, and then you use THAT for your team. Mind blown.

See how Google thinks about this, and the Figma plugins they built to make it all easier.

Rating: 10/10 Screenshot of Ivy and a color system
Ok. That’s it for my completely objective and fair ratings for these videos.

In all honesty, there is a ton of useful info in these videos so you should check them out here

Uh oh… did I accidentally catch Luca mid nap?
For those of you who had a tinge of doubt about my joke at the start of this thread, let me set the record straight:

Yes, I think my keynote turned out rad, and you should watch it! :-)

I was just being silly but humor on the internet is hard.

Thanks all!

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More from @skuwamoto

Sep 23, 2022
I’ve been thinking a lot about how @figma does product work.

And what makes Figma “Figma”?

This, in turn, made me realize I never followed up on my previous thread about roadmap prioritization.

So here goes….

Caveats:

1) This is not a formal process. It’s just an attempt to describe how things have historically worked around here.

2) I am only describing the editor teams. Other teams (like growth) work very differently!

2/n
At the company level, prioritization is about strategy and resource allocation.

As a company, we decide on the most important areas of focus at the exec level, and staff teams accordingly.

3/n
Read 22 tweets
Sep 20, 2022
One of the reasons I'm so excited about this new set of features is that it lets people use composition effectively.

I know that "composition" (used in this way) is an engineering term and not a design term, but I think it applies.

1/n
At its core, "composition" means something like

* Build small parts that can work well together.
* Build large parts out of small parts.

This applies to design systems because they are getting so large and complex that maintaining them is like maintaining code.

2/n
By exposing nested instance props, you can now build a large component (like a dialog box) out of small components (like a button) and expose a UI to your end users that lets them configure everything properly.

3/n
Read 6 tweets
Apr 28, 2022
I spoke about burnout recently at a company all-hands, so I've thought about it a bit.

In my experience, burnout doesn't come (only) from overwork.

It comes from an imbalance between things that bring me frustration and things that bring me fulfillment.
...and it's pretty easy for the scales to tip over right now. Just existing in the world is pretty frustrating. So if work ends up being a little frustrating, you can can slip into burnout pretty quickly.
Burnout can feel like...

...I worked super hard on this and no one cared.
...or they just found stuff to criticize.
...or I just got more work dumped on me.

It can even feel like...

...I didn't even do anything last week and no one noticed.

...like... do I even matter?
Read 10 tweets
Mar 27, 2022
People often ask how @figma prioritizes its roadmap. It’s a hard question, which I’ll try to tackle over time in small bites.

This first thread is about user input

1/n
Note 1: Everyone thinks differently. This is just something that works for me.

Note 2: This thread is more applicable to b2b software than consumer.

2/n
We all want to make our users happy.

Depending on what you work on, that can feel quite abstract.

To put myself into an empathetic mindset, I use an analogy.

3/n
Read 20 tweets
Mar 26, 2022
Playing tourist today
Lunch
Museum
Park (not pictured)
Snack Photo of JG Melon, a restaurantInterior of Guggenheim museumVan Gogh paintingPlate of noodles
Weird smokestacksGray and white buildingPlanter boxPerfumery
Read 4 tweets
Oct 12, 2021
I couldn't be more excited about a feature release than this one.

Combining branching with realtime multiplayer was a huge technical and UX challenge, and the team has been relentless in their pursuit of a seamless solution.

1/n
Why is this hard? On an engineering level, writing code for Figma can sometimes feel like a distributed computing problem.

Multiple networked clients are making changes to a single data representation which needs to eventually sync up.

2/n
Now throw into the mix the notion of multiple versions of that data representation, along with user expectations for how you can see the different versions, merge between them, etc.

It's hard to make this all feel seamless, and the team has done a great job!

3/n
Read 4 tweets

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