New article and Figma resources from Spotify Design: “If we only design for speedy devices, we also risk finding out late in the development process that our feature performs poorly on devices used in emerging markets — and at this point, it can be costly and painful to make significant changes. When designing for a global audience, we have to do better, which is why we developed Performance Context Cards and Performance Action Cards: tools for our teams (and yours) to use during certain stages of the product design process.”
The design team at Spotify discusses balancing conflicting goals of creating a playful space for experimentation and fostering interdisciplinary team collaboration in the Figma files. The key to achieving both is balancing the exploratory nature of design with a logical organization in your shared work. “A chaotic mess of brilliant designs is incomprehensible without a helpful file structure but too much structure early on might stifle your team's inspiration.”
Nice write-up on how Spotify updated their icon system and streamlined the contribution flow with Figma. Shaun Bent shares a few more details in his Twitter thread.
Had some fun playing with @figmadesign variants for our Spotify mobile design system. In this example, moving from 36 to 4 track row components, resulting in a much cleaner asset panel! ✨ Having both global and variant descriptions was a nice bonus! pic.twitter.com/V3tWdNfUa4
— Mattias Johansson (@mattiasjo) October 28, 2020
Psyched to integrate @figmadesign variants into our Spotify web design system. It's so much easier to use this way- we had 105 buttons components before and will now have 3! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/An3N0e6QiH
— Juli Sombat (@jsombat) October 28, 2020
Spotify Design shares how they have shaped Figma to their needs and culture. This post focuses on file structure: “Allowing multiple people into the same file doesn’t automatically lead to better collaboration. Our files would need to be organised in a way that is visible and discoverable by everyone. After all, you can’t collaborate on work that you can’t find.” See also: Spotify Ways of Working.