Ridd came up with a new tutorial on how to use Kernel for designing in Figma 10× faster with real data. Kernel is a new product that “makes it easy to generate and access the content you need so you can design faster than ever”, and connects Figma to other services like Notion, Airtable, Google Sheets, and OpenAI.

Ridd just launched Dive with an amazing lineup of design educators. In this tutorial, he designs the new Dive website and shows how his use of components to speed up workflow in Figma, talks about visual design principles and his approach to UI design in Figma. Lastly, he shows how easy it is to go from Figma to Framer to a published website.

Ridd explains why it’s better to think of each container component as having a single slot instead of a bunch of individual slots.

Ridd shows how to use the new beta to expose the subcomponent state, avoid breaking down components, and set preferred values for “slots”.

With the recent improvements to variants and components, Ridd makes a point that the benefits of using base components are no longer worth the cost for the design systems work. That said, they’re still great for exploratory work.

Ridd with a pro tip on using Variants. Good prep work for the design tokens in the future!

Ridd finally launched his YouTube channel! That’s an instant-subscribe. There are already a bunch of great videos, including the latest on building a product design inspiration database in Notion. See also his best practices for component properties.

Ridd shares five awesome strategies for using component properties: strategic nesting, progressive disclosure, minimizing decisions, emojis, and streamlining the instance swap.

Ridd: “Switchboards are main components that have been pulled out of a chunk of UI so as to function as a single place to control all of the prototyping connections”.

Ridd warns that using component properties introduces a new type of responsibility for designers and explores what the most effective handoff deliverable actually looks like.

Ridd is rethinking his approach to content systems with the introduction of Component Properties.

Ridd shows why the new Instance Swap component property “blows the roof off of what we can do with components”.

Nice trick on using “after delay” animation in combination with a Lottie file to avoid an infinite animation loop and play it only once.

Ridd discusses a few key principles for using base components: How often are you iterating on the component? How complex is it? Avoiding problems with Interactive Components. Pairing primitives with slots. Bringing in base components early on to speed up the process.

“Slots Components for Dummies” by Ridd, who is one of the biggest proponents of this approach. Great guide to one of Figma’s ultimate superpowers.

A practical walkthrough by Ridd of how you can use slot components to build a scalable system in Figma that is efficient and flexible.

Ridd shares his approach to organizing files in Figma.

Ridd shows how he automated a repetitive part of his workflow with Automator.

Ridd shows an unconventional approach of using Interactive Components from the very beginning of the design process. Also, love his tip on using a second Figma window for the real-size preview!

Ridd with a step-by-step walkthrough to help you design form components that scale without drowning yourself in variants.