Good read :)!

What I find interesting is that CAD software like Fusion360 and SolidWorks already has variables and equations, something I utilize quite often when doing both industrial and UI design and development.

If the project is completely multi-platform, I design for web first (it's the most device agnostic platform), and make sure the design accounts for:

1. Different device aspect ratios
2. Pixel density and resolutions
3. Colour reproduction on difference devices and print media (PANTONE > RGB and P3).

It's pretty complex to design a fully responsive project in Figma as they lack the tools to do so, so I add in supplementary documentation (sometimes as a comment) or in the brand guidelines.

I also have a master "frame" for any particular screen of an app, and have other reference child frames for other screen sizes as needed to show how the layout would work in various scenarios and edge-cases.

Hope that helps!

As Nelson has said, it really depends on what you're currently using.

For my team, we were using Sketch and Marvel to handle our design system and developer-handoff. One of the issues we faced was as we were expanding our typography system to other languages, our Sketch library was getting massive because of the way it handles font and colour (Sketch's style system for fonts is very rigid and 1 style = 1 font + colour + alignment, so adding a colour, or horizontal/vertical alignment to our headers makes our styles exponentially larger).

Figma has a more robust system where font styles only retain the point-size, tracking, and leading. Alignment and colour can be manually overridden, and the lack of 3rd party plugins makes it more accessible to our marketing, development, and C-team to export assets, as they do not require the app and can access the system via their web browser. However, Figma does not have Anima, so I'm limited to what I can do with respect to truly responsive components.

With Sketch I had 162 font styles for 1 language (9 colours * 6 text sizes * 3 alignments = 162); with Figma I have 7.

In the future, I would like to adapt my company's design system to a code library with better documentation... but my time is limited right now unfortunately.

tldr my design system in Sketch has 162 font styles, Figma has 7, but Sketch has better plugins to deal with responsive components.

Hahaha, they would get bonus points if the page source code itself was set in 90s-like syntax style

Is there a reason why they avoid it? In my experience (I use Marvel but it's similar to InVision and Zeplin) I send every stakeholder a shared link to designs, then they can easily access via their browser and then comment on it.

However, there were a few instances where feedback on spreadsheets were warranted because I need to extract data programmatically using Python or something related so I usually use Google Spreadsheets for that since they have an API for it.

Maybe this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but MIT Press has a curated list of books on Design Thinking (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/design-thinking-design-theory)

One of the books (Frame Innovation) is authored by one of my former professors, Kees Dorst, on how to approach solving complex and highly networked problems; I highly recommend it :)

Yep! Illustrator is much better at vector manipulation than Sketch in my opinion, so I tend to do most icon and illustrations on there, and then export to Sketch afterwards to put into my design library where I can apply overrides and stuff to it.

My workflow mainly consists of Sketch/Marvel/Principle for digital, and Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop for print. Additionally, I also use a projector to visualize what large prints would look like (like booths or large billboards), to overcome size limitations of monitors.

But my favourite app to use is Cinema4D and other 3D apps whenever clients or work warrants a need for it, or if I'm doing physical product prototyping.

Agreed. I got the MemoryTech Nile Rucksack, and the bag is like a black hole; it has so much room and just wraps around everything I throw in it due to its design and material. I took it with me to climb Mount Fuji last August, and I was able to clip my flashlights on the shoulder straps (sort of like Iron Man haha), a 3L water pouch, all my clothes, and snacks :)

Comic Sans seems to have a similar effect for me :⁾