Beyond Tools: How Building A Design System Can Improve How You Work

When high potential projects fall apart, it’s often a failure of collaboration and alignment. The tools, the assumptions, the opportunity, and the intentions may line up, but if people don’t communicate or don’t have a clear map to help them move in the same direction, even the best projects falter.

Communication failures are human problems, so they’re messy and hard to solve. They involve feelings and a willingness to have uncomfortable conversations. Human problems are abstract — sometimes it’s hard to even define the issue — and progress may be hard to see and measure. Because of this ambiguity, people often look to tools to fix things. Tools for better collaboration, task management, and to enable people to talk to each other.

Design systems are one kind of tool that people look to in order to solve problems that are fundamentally about failures in collaboration and alignment. Often, when people talk about design systems, they’re really talking about style guides because that’s the most tangible part of the work. The style guide is like the tip of an iceberg. It rises majestically up out of the surface, and it’s easy to forget the larger stabilizing force beneath the surface of the water that keeps the whole thing afloat.

Adobe XD Contest: Create An App Prototype With Your City’s Best-Kept Secrets

(This article is kindly sponsored by Adobe.) Every city has its hidden spots: the best place to see the sunset, a cozy coffee shop that makes excellent espresso, or that impressive building you won’t find in any guidebook. As a visitor, you might stumble across little gems like these by chance, but, well, no one knows a city’s secrets as well as the locals, right?
Now’s your opportunity to let fellow creatives see your city through your eyes — and to put your design skills to the test at the same time. Our friends at Adobe are launching the “Prototype your Creative City App” contest. The idea: Use Adobe XD to design an app prototype that helps others experience your city. Show them where you get your creative juices flowing, where you relax after a long day at work, or whatever else might spark your love for the place you live each day anew.

Today’s tech breakthrough is tomorrow’s standard.

As new technologies emerge, they often disrupt existing norms and practices, offering improved efficiency, accessibility, and capabilities. For instance, advancements in artificial intelligence, blockchain, and 5G technology are transforming how businesses operate, how people communicate, and how societies function globally.

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AI for everything

We now live in the age of AI. Hundreds of millions of people have interacted directly with generative tools like ChatGPT that produce text, images, videos, and more from prompts. Their popularity has reshaped the tech industry, making OpenAI a household name and compelling Google, Meta, and Microsoft to invest heavily in the technology.

Microsoft and Google have since moved beyond search to put chatbot-based assistants into the hands of billions of people via their office software. The tech promises to summarize emails and meetings; draft reports and replies; generate whole slide decks—titles, bullet points, and pictures—in seconds.

Microsoft and Meta released image-making models that let users generate shareable images of anything with a click. Cue a nonstop stream of zany mash-ups—and dozens of posts about Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants flying a plane into the Twin Towers.