Back to Carleton design Config 2026 - Recap Three days at Moscone Center, San Francisco . Dozens of sessions, side conversations, and Figma product reveals. Here's what stuck — the sessions worth rewatching, the people worth following up with, and the ideas that hit. Badge & tote Config is always strong on it's branding Venue Vibes Fresh Config branding inside and out Moscone Center San Francisco…
A11Y Camp 2026 — UX Takeaways Bay Area Accessibility Camp · May 29 2026 8 Takeaways for UX Designers This year's edition of the Bay Area Accessibility Camp included a wide range of interesting topics. It was hosted at Github headquarters in San Francisco, CA. Here are some of the main takeaways from my own notes, supplemented by AI transcriptions (Granola) and reformatted to slides by Claude.…
All the current hype with vibe coding is around speed and power, which constantly ramps up with each new model that’s announced. Do we need all that? What if we focused on using AI to slow down instead of speeding up? Tools are fragmented but the opportunity is clear. It’s easy to see the benefits of automating the tedious, routine production steps of building digital products. Speeding that part…
Artificial intelligence is a vast and complex thing, but it’s surprisingly easy to start playing with new AI tools. I’ve been exploring these to find what’s possible and practical to use in our everyday product design work. There is a lot of opportunity in the areas of user experience, product design, and design systems to bolster our capabilities with these new tools. The quality bar Generating…
Sometimes the internet feels like a dumpster fire but once in a while it feels like the pinnacle of human accomplishment. When I find a specific niche source of knowledge that piques my interest in just the right way it can be amazing. If you share my love of learning how things work, the technical details of design, or the history of technology I have a golden nugget for you. It’s a great…
a UI kit a sticker sheet a component library a brand book a code library design tokens usage guidelines one size fits all generic, off-the-shelf, prebuilt A design system CAN contain these things, but it’s much more than these parts. So, what is a design system then? An effective design system is about people working together to support its company/organization. It should be collaborative by folks…
Figma’s Config 2024 was a crazy adventure. Moscone was packed with even more designers (12k?) than last year who were looking to get the scoop on new features, make connections with others, and get inspired by the range of great speakers. My highlights were meeting my new team in person (hey eBay OX), connecting with several mentees from ADPList in the real world, and catching up with some old…
Designing a soundscape As electric and hybrid vehicles have become more ubiquitous, I have noticed the sounds coming from them. Walking around our neighborhood grade school became a study of EVs and their drivers. As a safety feature car makers now add external speakers to play sounds that warn pedestrians and bicyclists that the quiet but fast cars are nearby. These sounds are called Acoustic…
Kill the Date of Birth dropdown! I always cringe when I see a birth date (DOB) input using multiple dropdowns for day/month/year. It’s just lazy design and perpetuates poor experiences. Join my crusade to stop this tragic design crime from living another day (pun intended)! We have so many options for inputs that are far better for sharing dates like these. I bet this mess started in the days when…
I had the opportunity to attend the Design Systems Leadership Summit by Knapsack in San Francisco. It was a great event with great conversations in a beautiful location. Historic Venue The SVB Experience Center is a great new iteration of this historic pavilion at One Bush Plaza. The small circular building contrasts with the massive nineteen-story office tower across the Japanese-inspired plaza.…
Tada!🎉 Figma just announced the release of Typography Variables at their Framework event . Design systems (DS) specialists have been waiting for this ever since they announced variables as their exciting new token feature at last year’s Config conference . Sitting in that massive audience at Moscone Center, I knew variables would be a huge deal for DS teams like mine, but it was missing a key…
So with my extra time after the layoff, I decided to try out the device everyone is talking about, the Apple Vision Pro. This new spatial computer has gotten so much attention from tech media before and after its official release. To catch up, watch a review from MKBHD or laugh at Casey wearing it around NYC. Hot takes! Here are my first impressions of the user experience of Apple Vision Pro.…
I’ve followed Dan Mall’s work for a long time and I’ve enjoyed watching him share and teach what he’s learned about design systems. When I saw he was working on a book, I knew it would be filled with super smart guidance for design systems teams. If you haven’t already, go add Design That Scales to your cart right away. It’s 5 stars, two thumbs up, a must read. Anyone curious about Design Systems…
Building experiences that work well for a diverse range of customers is a key part of living out our values of inclusion at PayPal. Accessibility is the label for all the work we do to build inclusive experiences. It’s a huge topic to explore in UX design and design systems but lets focus on some tangible strategies I use in my daily work. Accessibility + Design Systems When I joined the company,…
It seems like I just shared my recap of mentoring in 2022 but now it’s time to reflect on 2023. Mentoring on ADPlist.org I had another great year mentoring designers on ADPlist.org. I met with a wide range of folks from experienced pros to students just entering design profession. As the job market was constrained lots of our time was focused on how to break into the industry. I don’t have an easy…
Note: This article was adapted from my talk at GOV.UK Design System Day on October 11th 2023. Full slides on Figma with illustrations by Blush . A collaboration journey Like many types of projects, the creation of a design system has a story arc embedded in it. First we define what we want to make, who its for and plan the goals. Next we kickoff an exciting startup phase to craft initial patterns…
Video, slides and notes from my talk at ADPList.org’s BeMore Conference on September 20th, 2023 Video: Figma slides with illustrations by Blush Speaking notes: Hello! I’m James I don’t know everything… My career has not been a straight line. I studied Industrial Design in college, worked at design agencies, did side work on web dev, and tjem switched to architecture. Next, I joined a startup where…
Don’t be trapped by the allure of the slider. What’s a slider? Sliders in UI were inspired by physical hardware controls. Soundboards often include sliders for controlling the volume of each audio channel. The board’s user can make adjustments by moving the slider within a limited range, such as 0 to 100%. Let’s translate this idea to software. Sliders can work in a similar way for digital…
I had a great time at Figma’s annual Config conference June 21-22, 2023. This year it was huge! 8k+ fans at Moscone Center San Francisco and many more watching virtually. The kick off was a great keynote revealing some mind blowing new features for design systems (tokens/variables), prototyping, and dev mode. Later sessions included really practical advice for designers on a wide range of topics…
User & System User Experience/User Interface design is about making a system (device/application) as usable for the user (human, customer) as possible. User is in the name! So why do we often forget that part? We end up designing for the system instead, to the harm of the user. We speak for the humans using the machines, not the other way around. A foundational principle of UX is to give the user…
The Giant Dipper, by Daniel J. Schwarz via Unsplash There is a famous wooden roller coaster, The Giant Dipper , built-in 1924 at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk that still entertains visitors today. The classic up-and-down action is enough to thrill you every time. Like this roller coaster, there are many ups and downs in building a design system at a corporate scale. 🎢 Leaving the station: Full of…
Mentoring on ADPlist.org I had a great year mentoring designers on ADPlist.org and I’m looking forward to meeting even more in 2023🥳. One of the highlights was getting the chance to speak at their BeMore conference last fall. It’s so rewarding to connect with folks around the world while chatting about UX careers, design systems, accessibility, inclusion, and life in general. The learning goes…
My first podcast! I had to jump on here during my Thanksgiving break 🦃 to share some fun news… I’m the guest on the latest episode of the Research Lab Podcast by SundayPyjamas with Nishi Panchal . 🎉🎉🎉 Watch it now Or listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. We covered a lot of ground, from the basics of Design Systems to my hot take on the Figma acquisition and…
Clarity Conference 2022 This year I attended Clarity Conference , the premier design system conference, virtually along with my PayPal teammate Silvia Recinos . I’ve captured my favorite lessons from two days full of great design systems knowledge. #clarity2022 Day 1 - Morning It’s that time of year when Design System folks gather together at Clarity Conference. This morning was filled with great…
Conference speaking recap: BeMore 2022 Mentoring Builds Leadership Skills I had a great time talking about “Why Mentoring Builds Good Leadership Skills” with the panel at ADPList.org ’s BeMore Festival 2022. Watch the recording: Shout outs 🎉 Big thanks to the folks at APDList for organizing this fantastic event. Check their YouTube channel to see all the other sessions covering a wide range of…
Tech Gone Wrong Attention tech workers, innovators, computer nerds! We’ve all enjoyed the spoils of this booming industry we love so much, but I have bad news…tech has gone wrong. Everyone should have noticed the headlines by now. The list of tech companies behaving poorly is growing. You’ve seen the results: It’s now standard practice to sell user data for profit Manipulation practices are…
I love sharing good design news and articles with my design friends and colleagues. Ask anyone in our slack channel, hah. Where do I get all these great links? Well, I consume a lot of stuff, maybe too much. I’m jumping between Slack groups full of designers, email newsletters that curate links and Medium articles on anything design. Let me share my sources… Slack Groups Designer Hangout Spec…
Poster by Ben Barry Hack has become the buzzword mantra in the valley. It symbolizes the scrappy working style of a startup trying to build something new with very little time or resources. Startups may hack out of necessity, but now big companies can hack too. Hackathons provide a format where quick and creative projects can be born. Each time I have joined this tech-company tradition, it has…
As a designer, I love patterns. From nature to technology, they make the world go ‘round. UX Design teams collect patterns in different forms, from style guides to design wikis to sticker sheets, they all aim to unify the work of a group of people. To be productive as a team, we need a cohesive direction, and the pattern library is our attempt. Its a place where anyone on the team can see what our…
I love exploring new avenues for creativity. After years of working on stationary pixels it was great to play with some moving pixels for a change. I just completed a video project. Here is the story… I’ve been working with the owner of a local prototyping shop for many years on their various branding and marketing efforts. They transform drawings from engineers into realistic product prototypes…
Creative people often have a story to tell about the adventurous path they took from where they started to where they ended up. I love hearing them describe their unique adventure, with its ups, downs, and surprises. Finding your creative calling and matching it to a sustainable career is a complex design challenge, and its process is never linear. It often starts with a naive student studying a…
Thinking about the design process for a set of icons I’m working on, I realized it felt very familiar. Icons are a great analogy for design as a whole. A good icon is simple, clear, and almost obvious. A good icon hides the effort and skill that led to its existence. A good icon doesn’t make you think. A good icon spans context and culture. Ditto for…
##TL;DR Mobile apps are fun. I got to design my first one. Prototyping is essential. Mr. Developer is your friend. Go download it. ##Full Story So if you want to read the whole story, this may take a while. Lets start with the wide view. The mobile movement is no longer new. I’ve been a smartphone user since the original iPhone and remember things before the AppStore. Fast forward six years and…
A year ago I stood up. I hacked together a standup desk using cheap parts and a little imagination. I was determined to avoid the detriments of a sedentary work life. The quickest way to try this new work style was to follow one of many Ikea hacks. For hardly any money, I was able to combine parts that worked for my wide, side-by-side MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt Display setup. I kept part of my…
Working on a native app project has allowed me to experiment with new design tools. Here are a few of my favorites: LiveView lets you display anything from your Mac onto your iPhone/iPad. You simply overlay a window frame on your design file and boom your design is projected on your device screen. This is great for visual tests like font size, touch target sizes, and color contrast. I’ve used it…
I’ve been working on focus. We live in a world of distractions and it’s way too easy to lose time to things that are in front of us instead of what’s a real priority. Smart devices have multiplied and so have their power to get our attention. Each notification is a clever pull for your attention. You have new messages, you have an appointment tomorrow, someone likes something. Sure it’s great to…
I recently attended Designers+Geeks , at Yelp HQ in SF, and took some notes on LukeW 's great talk, It's a Write/Read Mobile Multi-Device Web . I had soaked up lots of knowledge from Luke at AEA SF back in 2011 so this time expected lots of similar charts on the growth of mobile device usage, and he delivered. If you need to make a case for mobile to reluctant stakeholders, check out his site for…
I just spent two days watching users pick apart my precious design concept. I've had better nightmares. As a designer it’s easy to make assumptions, since that is part of our job, but when real user behavior doesn't agree, it’s time to let go of your precious and pay attention! Getting real user feedback, formal or guerilla, is critical to my success as a UX designer, but it’s hard. It’s much…
Ok, that title may sound like link bait but this topic needs just one more opinion. You may have heard about this year’s most polarizing design topic: the shift from “skeuomorphic” to “flat” design in the latest version of iOS. Like many designers, I’m an Apple devotee and like many designers, I have admired recent so-called ‘flat’ interfaces from competitors and was hoping Apple would make a big…
A discussion about simple interfaces with Brian Anderson and Tyler Bell got me thinking. So I jumped on Editorially and started typing this post. Editorially is an example of a new breed of software where the interface isn’t in-your-face (see what I did there?). It’s designed to let your content be the focus while providing a refined set of features, available when you need them, instead of the…
Podcasting seems to be in a phase of growth. Suddenly there are dozens of good shows about the web and creative industries. It's not a new medium so maybe the growth has been more steady and I hadn't noticed until now but I'm loving the results. I grew up with talk radio on around the house which I think gave me a special interest in listening to a good conversation. I love good music but I seem…
Design is a chameleon and I love it. One day design is a piece of paper with text, a moment later design is an ephemeral atmospheric expression. There is so much in the world that craves thoughtful arrangement that the need for design is endless and dynamic. My niche of design is especially volatile. The web changes every second, and as the technologies evolve so must the designer. This forces…
The facts Icon fonts are simply fonts that have symbols and glyphs (e.g. arrows, folders, magnifying glasses) instead of standard alphanumeric characters. Icon fonts are like dingbat fonts, but are designed specifically for UIs. Icon fonts, like other web fonts, use the CSS @font-face rule to display icons in web browsers. (Wikipedia) Advantages Resolution Agnostic: Crisp at any resolution, even…
This is part of a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart , held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility @elliotjaystocks Designer, Author Description Recent developments in web technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 have allowed us to build a richer web, full of advanced visual treatments like…
This is part of a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart , held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Alexa Andrzejewski Founder - Foodspotting Description Good designs are useful, usable and desirable. But what is a good experience? While crafting the experience of her own startup, Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski found answers…
This is part of a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart , held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Design Principles Jeremy Keith - Author Description All software is inherently political, reflecting the biases and beliefs of the people behind it. These beliefs can be made explicit through the publication of design principles:…
This is the first in a series of posts summarizing my notes from the extraordinary conference An Event Apart , held December 12-14, 2011 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Jeffery Zeldman : Legendary Web Standards Guru, @zeldman , Zeldman.com , Author: Designing with Web Standards , Co-Founder: An Event Apart , Founder: Happy Cogg , Founder: A List Apart , Publisher: A Book Apart . Description…
Backstory Fonts on the web have been limited by licensing restrictions setup for the print era by the font foundries who create them. Only a few limiting choices have been available to designers, while print licenced fonts remained untouchable (except in images/flash). As a result, we've been working in the "web safe" range of fonts, Times, Arial, Georgia, etc. The work around was using other…
I hardly shout at all, but I have to make an exception. GET THIS BOOK!!!!!! Seriously! Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson is a must-read. I won't try to summarize it, you need to experience every word. I will note some of my favorite parts: "Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way…
I have completed a redesign of my personal portfolio website. Visit carletondesign.com to check it out. I thought I would let you in on the design and development decisions behind the project. Design First, let me say designing a site for yourself can be a bigger challenge than pleasing your pickiest clients. I went through multiple iterations of several different design directions before settling…