I made a few cutesy avatars for a few colleagues and wanted to keep getting better at Figma's vector and component features. So I turned the illustrations into an avatar builder using components.

If you need cute little people for your project or team, please feel free to use, share, comment, and improve upon this! With time I'll add a few more variations and eventually a few friendly animals. Let me know if you can think of other ways to make this even more useful or fun!!

I've always found interesting the intersection of beauty and function, aesthetics and usability. Even just a few years ago I found a lot of designers put greater emphasis on the "beauty" part of the process, I think often because it was in effect cheaper than full-blown research and app re-writes. But I find more and more designers who are becoming better versed in statistical methodologies and marketing growth hacks but much less confident in the basics of typography, composition, grids, and to be honest some basic usability principles.

I appreciate designers becoming better versed in business terminology but also miss the tension that would occur between numbers-focused business owners and human/design focused practitioners. If everyone is on the side of crushing numbers, who is on the side of creating usable, human products? This I think is the true beauty that the authors are getting at in the linked article.

Hey Stefka, I'm new to OKRs and going through the process with the team and my manager now. Anthony posted a great response, which I largely agree with.

The process overall has been very top-down. The org gave us their OKRs, and then asked teams to develop their OKRs to support those org goals.

After some discussion, it was decided to give cross-functional teams quantifiable Key Results, but individuals qualitative ones. This means that my team has specific and measurable key results (conversion, retention, etc), but individuals on it will have KRs that are more closely aligned to their roles within their team or department. This part is obviously and somewhat purposely ambiguous as we try to learn more about what works and what doesn't work.

Another thing we decided is to make sure at least one OKR, if not more, are aligned to an individual's career growth plan and not necessarily team/company goals. For instance, I may have one related to giving talks or writing blog posts, neither of which align with an established team or org goal.

Other individual KRs might be something like "researching pricing strategies", "designing and testing a new product detail view", or "contributing to team meetings and alignment". These can all be measured either via feedback from managers or peers.

It's a bit messy, but so is pretty much everything we do!

I'm surprised by the number of people responding positively to the $60 theme option.

I understand the temptation, and if you just need "something" up, then sure, that's fine. If you are looking for a real web application that will grow over time, then I would be much more cautious.

I used to buy and then slightly adapt templates for clients. This sometimes was effective, but only when they wanted close to no changes done. And even then i often found problems related to security, updating, etc.

I then switched to using starter themes like Bones, Roots, etc and have had MUCH more success. I never have security or updating problems, and the code base is infinitely more readable. The first version of any site I made looked quite basic, generic even maybe, but it could then be customized as much as the client needed (and no more).

Do you have any digital/UI/UX people on staff? Paired with an on site experienced WP developer, you guys could iteratively and gradually produce a solid site for relatively little money. If you don't have any UI/UX designers on hand, I might suggest you dish up some cash to use an agency that has experience building actual usable and scalable products.

Either way, I would recommend starting simple and light. Don't put every feature you think you want in your first version. Start light and build up. Same with marketing. Soft launch, light-touch social media, and slowly build up to ad spots, campaigns, newsletters, etc.

Tigerspike is looking for a UX Designer: http://tigerspike.theresumator.com/apply/dX0ITB

and a UI designer: http://tigerspike.theresumator.com/apply/z1djfD

Job is in New York City, though there is also potential to work at our office in San Francisco. Email aaron.gitlin(at)tigerspike.com for more details or just to let me know that you sent through your application.

InVision, Flinto and Marvel are all good products that serve their need pretty well. I have a slight preference for Flinto/Marvel for smaller prototypes, as I think their UI lends itself well to quickly matching up say a dozen or so screens. In general I prefer InVision for larger projects, and that's what we use at my company. I spend a lot of time onboarding people too, but only because it's such a great tool and I want everyone to be able to use it.

Tools take time to learn and new technology has flaws. I have my gripes with inVision as well, but I find their support helpful and their recent integration with Sketch source files has changed my whole workflow for the better.

Is there room for improvement? Sure. But that's a good thing.

I think you've inadvertently brought up a larger debate over gender and its cross into UI Design :)

I tend to agree with most people here: if you don't need to ask, I wouldn't. I would avoid iconography in this case, it's fun but not very accessible.

This is the most boring option but I would stick with male/female, with maybe even an option for 'other'. This keeps things inclusive and you can rest easy knowing you haven't accidentally made a stand in a debate regarding gender identity.

Hey @Harish, we do work with a few internationals remotely, but these jobs require someone on site so probably no can do this time. Sorry!

Tigerspike is growing and needs Experience Designers (XD) of all skill sets and experience levels! We are based in New York City (Chelsea). We also have offices around the world, though I represent the New York one. If you are a designer in San Francisco or Sydney, Australia, let me know as well and I can put you in touch.

Junior-Mid Level UI designers: http://tigerspike.theresumator.com/apply/V9XE5z

Mid-Senior UI designers: http://tigerspike.theresumator.com/apply/OD0YBL

Mid Level (flexible) UX Designer: http://tigerspike.theresumator.com/apply/dX0ITB

Hey, this question has been bugging me a lot as well. Am I literally making double/triple the number of comps as I did before? What about the 6/+'s landscape orientation (which behaves as an iPad)? Plus the 6+'s wonky downsampling.

Need to rethink our whole workflow really, or triple the size of our design team?