Una Kravets

There’s a subtle difference between “educating” stakeholders and making the impact of your work visible. One of these can help you win promotions, autonomy, and co-conspirators. The other can distract you from your craft at best… or devalue your work at worst. Thought-provoking article from Sara Wachter-Boettcher on how designers can reframe “advocating for design” in a way that avoids burnout and sidesteps the gaslighting.

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I really enjoyed this conversation with Alex Smith from Fuego UX on value of designers learning to code, team collaboration, culture, and thoughts for new designers entering the market in the age of AI. Plus, it's short and sweet - just under 12 mins! If anything peeks your interest that you'd like to hear more on, let me know as I may be able to go deeper in future talks or blog posts :)

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The design job market is tough right now (for new and experienced folks alike). I've had many people reach out to me for advice to whom I've always replied that my journey has been far from perfect. I've had my fair share of failures (& some successes) as a designer and I'm happy to share the lessons I've learned along the way. If you or someone you know wants to talk about anything design (portfolio, interviews, layoffs, team fit, rejections, product feedback, etc.), I'm happy to chat. :) #productdesign #adplist #mentorship

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2 years with Nectar! 🤘🔥 My favorite highlights: → Our team’s growth from 23 employees to 90 employees. Product alone grew from 6 of us to 21 strong now 🙌🏼, and we’re a sleek, efficient, resilient team under Brian Cressall and Nate Tingey. → Established Nectar’s Design System and built our component library, significantly improving speed, consistency, and quality of design and implementation. → Completed a massive UI design refresh for the existing product (bless the devs still building it 🫡 ). → Launched Nominations, the largest and most impactful new feature we’ve built at Nectar yet. → Completely scrapped a project, because it was the right thing to do. Grateful to work on a team that’s hyper-focused on our ultimate goals, and is sincerely willing to let sunk costs be irrelevant. → Ideated, designed, and launched our new product Internal Communications in 8 weeks with a small, mighty team 🤯 I’m still amazed we managed it. → $40M Series B funding in April 2024 with PeakSpan Capital. → Saw our efforts, motivation, and passion pay off when Nectar was recognized as the 2nd Fastest Growing Company in Utah County, 1st fastest growing software company in Utah, 8th fastest growing software company in the U.S., and 87th fastest growing company in the U.S. (across all industries). → 300% increase in revenue in Q3 2023 vs Q3 2024 (Q3 was also 50% above our revenue Q2 2024). → Saw every department at Nectar grow in excellence. I’m in awe of the caliber of Engineering, CS, Marketing, Sales, and what they accomplish. → Relished the challenge and variety of asks in the beginning as Nectar’s sole designer, including working on print design (looking at you, 28’ tradebooth) and animations for the first time. That animation announcing Nectar’s new logo a year ago? That was my first animation, and I’m still proud of myself for figuring it out enough to make that 😂. → Spent way too much on Holiday gas station runs (RIP old office). This is a long list, but for the record I cut it in half from what it was 😅. I’m grateful Nate reached out on LinkedIn right at the perfect time when I was looking to switch things up, and that we’ve made a great team ever since. Getting to work closely with our little product design team—Nate, Mason, Tyler, and Maya—and many, many others keeps me growing and keeps me motivated on the daily. Nectar’s mission and way of working resonated with me from the beginning. It’s rewarding to see our company continue to gain momentum and maturity, all while seeing how much room we still have to grow. Very, very grateful to be part of the journey. As we say, it’s still Day 1 at Nectar. 🚀

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I’m noodling on a new thing—The Imperfect Designer. It’s a space for designers and creatives to talk about the messy side of the journey: burnout, perfectionism, self-doubt, and finding balance in both career and life. 🧘 I’ll be sharing my personal thoughts, ideas, and inspiration for navigating a career that embraces imperfection. Why not follow along and see where it goes? 🚀 This is for everyday creatives—whether you're in product design, UX, another creative field or just trying to figure out how to balance life with your work. #Design #healthandwellness #Creativity #SelfCare #WorkLifeBalance #Creatives #personaldevelopment

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Had to share this thoughtful article about the conflicting feelings we have as designers with new AI tools.... made me consider the threat of too much standardization over innovation, or letting your own creative instincts atrophy. Check it out and lmk your thoughts

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"For increased readability, we’ve rewritten sections of our privacy statement with simpler, more consistent language." Is there a better summary of the benefit of UX Writing for privacy related work? Well done, Amber and Heather.

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🎉 News for Product Designers 🎉 While we’re working on some big updates for Mockin, we’re excited to share a small but helpful new feature — Resume/CV Checker. It’s designed to help you polish your resume and get actionable recommendations! 🙌 Want to try it out? 1. Like this post 2. Comment on this post 3. I’ll enable the feature for you Let's try it now https://mockin.work/ P.S. Your feedback is invaluable Let’s build tools together that make life better and easier for the design community. 🚀 P.S.P.S. Yes. it's free!

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Incredible!🤯 I fed my site, opendesigndocs.com, to Google‘s NotebookLM and had it generate a podcast about it. It took the context of the site and created a surprising amount of relevant content that sounds quite natural. Why is Google not advertising this! Take a listen: https://lnkd.in/gDQxxBCJ I imagine the next step would be to add different voices, tone, etc.

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Do you want consistency between designers and front-end developers? Use of design tokens. When everyone uses the same terms, it simplifies things for both teams. Here's Google's introduction to design tokens and how you can implement them: https://lnkd.in/gpWMwqVz

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Our team at Big Medium is doing so much to bring the worlds of design systems and AI together. We're well beyond the "here are some nice hypothetical experiments" phase and it's exciting to be in the "we're helping teams implement these solid " We did an online event to discuss how we're using AI in design systems: https://lnkd.in/e4wUWsqy and wrote about some of the use cases: https://lnkd.in/e-ZgsVqT But it's wild is those examples shared a few short months ago seem quaint compared to to the terrain we're now navigating. We're doing some amazing stuff and seeing surprisingly-good results. Hope to share more soon, but in the meantime, if your team could use help supercharging your design systems efforts and/or exploring how best to integrate AI into your design organization, feel free to get in touch! https://lnkd.in/gk3JpKbN #designsystems #ai #llm #uxdesign #design #webdevelopment

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I bet the future of digital work will be all about small, talented, and nimble teams that are super focused on one area of a product. We’re already seeing tons of contract roles popping up, probably even more than full-time jobs, as companies lean into the flexibility and cost savings that come with contracting. These smaller teams would keep things focused, delivering value regularly, but still have the freedom to dive deep into their field using AI and other tools. The best part for digital folks? More flexibility with time and project choices. This setup lets devs and designers juggle multiple projects at once and pick the ones they’re actually excited about. They can work more or less depending on their schedule or ambition. #futureofwork #digital #tech #teams

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My pal Vitaly Friedman is second-to-none when it comes to delivering thorough, thoughtful, and actionable design advice. He's released a few courses that are really valuable for practicing designers and design leads: 🧠 Smart Interface Design Patterns: https://lnkd.in/e-v-jsCG 📏 How to Measure UX Impact: https://measure-ux.com/ #design #ux

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Thoughtful breakdown review about eBay Playbook!

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Warning: This is a long one… In September, I marked a major milestone—10 years in the design industry and 16 years since my year-eight self decided what I wanted to be "when I grew up" (and pirated a copy of Photoshop). It was a bittersweet celebration, though, as I was facing my first redundancy. Though I’ve been between jobs by choice before, this time felt different—it wasn’t on my terms, and that hit a little harder than I’d expected. The thought of diving back into job hunting made me really question what I wanted my next chapter to be. Having just turned 30, I began to ask myself where I really wanted to go from here. I’d freelanced on and off throughout my career, worked at multiple agencies, and collaborated with hundreds of businesses. Yet, time and again, I noticed the same issue: branding was often just an afterthought—or not even a thought at all. I lost count of the times I was asked to design a website for a decent-sized business with little more than a logo and a couple of colours. Too many businesses were struggling to evolve in the fast-changing digital world. So, with this unexpected opportunity to take my career in a direction of my choosing, I’ve decided to go all in as a brand designer. Friday was my last day at my previous role, and today I’m excited to announce the official launch of Unlikely—my own design venture, focused on helping businesses create brands that truly represent them and stand the test of time. I know this isn’t the easiest time to launch a business; AI and economic uncertainty are challenging industries everywhere. But if I don’t take this chance, I’ll never know what could have been. So here I am, taking the Unlikely path. If you’d like to support this journey, please follow my pages, share this post, or pass along my website to anyone who might need help transforming their brand. Thank you to everyone who’s been part of this journey so far. Here’s to new beginnings—and to making the Unlikely, possible. www.gounlikely.com

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Companies increasingly recognize the value of “Super ICs”—senior individual contributors who combine strategic thinking, solid execution, emotional intelligence, and coaching abilities. As budgets tighten, these self-managed experts can drive significant impact without requiring the overhead of a hands-on management layer. By blending leadership traits with hands-on delivery, they help organizations: • Execute complex initiatives while maintaining a broader strategic vision • Maintain emotional balance and showcase resilience, particularly in high-stress, changing environments • Serve as mentors and coaches, elevating team performance in a lean structure These qualities make the “Super IC” model an appealing, cost-effective approach for companies that want to achieve more with fewer resources. #Leadership #BusinessStrategy #hiring #2025

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👋 folks - It’s with mixed emotions that I share my nearly five-year tenure with Mahana recently came to a close. I’m truly proud of the products we developed and humbled by the support we provided to the people in our care. I’ve spent some time reflecting on what’s next and am stoked to let you know that I’m opening my books for ✨freelance/contract✨ work again. Let’s make cool stuff together! 👀 Peep some of my work 👉 https://janakhoffman.com/ 🗣️ Leave a comment 👇 or send a DM to set up some time to talk about your content needs. #blogging #contentdesign #contentmarketing #copywriting #freelance #uxwriting

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Shared some thoughts about showing up for yourself and the purpose of passion projects. Head over to Substack if you want to follow along. https://lnkd.in/eXgkZ8ne One thing I’ve learned throughout my career is the power of personal projects. Early on, gig posters were my first dive into self-driven work. They shaped the way I approach design and illustration—pushing me to think in ways that went beyond anything I learned in college. Over the years, these personal projects have continued to emerge, offering opportunities to explore and experiment. These projects aren’t just for fun; they’re opportunities to flex creative muscles and discover new ways of thinking. They also keep you creating. Consistency is a huge part of growth. Whether you’re a writer, artist, or working in a trade, it’s just like working out at the gym. You have to continue to show up before you start seeing results. Sometimes, it takes years to get the results you’re looking for—all the more reason to start today and show up again tomorrow. Play should inform the work you do at your day job too. More than once, I’ve solved complex problems at work while "playing" with personal projects. Stepping away from the grind and diving into something playful sparks fresh ideas, opens up possibilities, and often leads to solutions I wouldn't have found otherwise.

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I can't tell you how many times I've heard less than explicit dismissals of an idea I've had for a design solution in my career. Yet I never do that to myself. Nope. You'll have to pry my cold, dead hands from my ideas if you don't explicitly present rationale that I can comprehend. I love Ive's quote about the need for a suspension of disbelief in the solution, as solutions are never fully formed. You know, I rarely experienced people straight up poo poo'ing ideas while working with clients as a design consultant. Even in-house, back east, I found people open to explore the possibilities. It was only until I ran into WC SV culture did I find bean counters prematurely attacking solution ideas like a dolt yelling "No one walks like that!" while watching a double dolly shot in a Spike Lee joint. Exhaust your thinking, making, and communicating before you ever give up on your ideas. Solutions, as Ive states, are always incomplete. Keep invested.

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