Brittany Chiang

I really need to know why Figma's interfaces for managing branch conflicts or variables are cripplingly slow or unusable at scale. I've given up hope that we'll have component tracking/metric improvements but these more recent features never getting follow up improvements when they come out half baked is so, so frustrating. Sincerely, someone whose org has security policies preventing the use of most plugins. Also also, "the plugin community will create a workaround" is not a solution.

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2 Comments

✨ I’ve been building something with Lovable, designed for a non-technical audience. I’m doing all the pieces myself: strategy, design, code, integrations, and the messy middle. The real challenge isn’t the features. It’s making the whole thing reproducible, template-able, because once the data layer is wired up you can’t just remix it on the fly. That constraint forces different design choices. You simplify earlier. You think harder about defaults. And you feel every ripple of those decisions. #ProductDesign #UXDesign #DesignStrategy #DigitalProducts #Innovation

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Design leaders — I’m curious how you think about titles. When I first joined Buildertrend, design operated more like a studio model: brought in late, asked to execute, and largely separated from product decision-making. We called it product design, but in practice it skewed heavily toward UX/UI support. Over time, I’ve landed on a simple articulation that’s helped reset expectations across product, engineering, and leadership: • UI designers care about what it looks like • UX designers care about how it works • Product designers care about solving customer problems It’s a yes-and, not a mutually exclusive choice — but the distinction has mattered. For us, “product design” signals that designers are embedded in teams, close to customers, involved early, and accountable for outcomes — not just outputs. It’s also shifted how candidates perceive us: as a product-led SaaS company where design has real influence. I’m curious how other design leaders approach this. Do titles meaningfully shape behavior in your org? Have you stayed with UX, shifted to product design, or something else entirely — and why? Would love to learn how others are navigating this.

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3 Comments

Agentic coding is the most empowering thing to happen to designers in years. But it comes with a new temptation: you'll see every flaw in your product and want to fix them all at once. Here's the process I use to act on that instinct without it taking over. I call it the Polish Queue. Throughout the week, while designing, building, and testing your big ideas, you'll notice something tiny that you want to improve in production. Right then and there, without spinning up a branch or a worktree, fire off a cloud agent to tackle it in one prompt. Cursor, Codex, and plenty of other tools do this really well. Then get back to what you were doing. Later that day or at the end of the week, when your creative reservoir is running low and you want a change of pace, revisit the queue. Review what got done in the background. Make a few tweaks. Ship a handful of PRs. I’ve been using the Polish Queue for a few months. Shipping improvements this way is often the highlight of my week! You don’t have to choose between polish derailing your day or letting it slide altogether. Queue it, ship it, and stay in flow. Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

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6 Comments

The industry's perspective on the value of potential Senior/Lead UX/Design Engineers is evolving. Here's a breakdown of the current and projected salary ranges: Today: - Senior/Lead roles: approximately $12K to $16K By 2030: - Junior roles: approximately $6K to $10K - Senior roles: approximately $12K to $16K - Lead roles: approximately $18K to $22K This data highlights that once the industry gets a better understanding of what these roles offer, the value of each of these roles will increase over time (similar to the way UX roles became more well-defined while also offering a better salary over time). #thoughtleaders #pioneers #lifeofapioneer #pavingtheway #buildingtheladder #value #salaryrange #evolution #uxengineering #uxengineers #designengineering #designengineers #frontenddevelopment #frontenddevelopers #changeiscoming #uxleaders #uxleadership #ux #uxindustry #uxdesign #hybridroles #careeropportunities #globaltopvoices #industryleaders #sgux #sguxleaders

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She's right that the old design process is dead, but I think she's underselling how fast it happened. Jenny says her September talk already feels outdated. That tracks. The gap between idea and shipped code is measured in minutes now, not sprints, and the tooling is only accelerating. The part about "seven agents constantly running" hits close to home. That's the workflow and when you're moving that fast, the bottleneck isn't design or engineering anymore. It's deciding what actually matters. Taste/signal is key. Jenny nails it: someone still has to be accountable for the decision. The three hiring archetypes are worth paying attention to. Especially the "craft new grad" one. People without baked-in process assumptions are adapting faster than senior folks who spent 10 years learning a workflow that just got obsoleted. Blank slate is an actual advantage right now. One thing I'd push back on: she says Claude isn't hireable as a designer yet. That's true if you're comparing to her deep specialist archetype. But for the execution layer she described, pairing with an engineer and polishing the last mile, it's closer than people think and if you're a designer/engineer its already here.

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This is a fantastic read on the evolving role designers must play. I love the section on the Inversion of Paradigms. How are you evolving your role as a designer? What's working, and why? What's not, and why? https://lnkd.in/eAMVaA7X

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This hit close to home. This quarter we've been actively rethinking our design process. Removing rituals, pulling back on some discovery activities, and prioritizing speed and learning over craft and critique. It can be uncomfortable but it's the right direction. This episode puts a lot of it into words.

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7 Comments

Hiring your first designer is a big commitment and it's hard to find someone. For most early-stage teams, it’s not the right first move and here's why: Startups have a fixed amount of time and can't afford to burn months recruiting, onboarding, and ramping up a full-time hire. What they really need is to build something that resonates, works, and scales as fast as possible. You can solve those problems in weeks with a fractional or embedded designer, then later decide if (and when) full-time makes sense. If it does make sense, a fractional designer can boost your chances of landing the *right* hire. Think of it as renting the expertise you need now, without paying for what you don’t need yet. If you are a startup founder facing this choice, let's talk. #startups #productdesign #fractionaldesign #founders #futureofwork

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7 Comments

Weird moment I'm seeing in my calls w/ designers right now. The holy-grail argument for "designing in code" has changed. It used to be about eliminating handoff: design in code so you skip the Figma-to-code translation. Still valuable, yes...1000% yes But here's what changed: We talked to dozens of companies, all building AI-assisted pipelines that are code-first. Design system in code. Product in code. AI agents writing code. But their design tool (Figma) isn't code-native, meaning agents can't call it, pipelines can't integrate with it. Their design work exists outside the system entirely. This is actually the core bet behind Subframe - a code-native design tool that integrates with AI. "Designing in code" is no longer about smoother handoff. It's about making sure the design is included in this new AI world.

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3 Comments