Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Wojciech Dobry

Hello Design Folks! I’m Wojciech, and I’m a product designer at Phase. I just want to drop you a few lines…

If you’ve read some of my writing before, this article is going to be very different. No technical stuff, no tutorials, or hard thesis. It’s a love letter for you. I’ll do my best to keep it short — promise. 🤞

Remember why you became a designer?

I’m not sure about you, because we all have different stories, but I’m sure we’ve got at least one thing in common: the need to create.

This letter is for you and I don’t really want to talk about me, but it would be good to get to know each other a little.

Since I remember I’ve been curious how things work. I’ve learned mostly by destroying things… Apparently, I tried to improve them. These classes took me a while. Finally over 10 years ago I’ve started my true design adventure. Now I’m able not only to destroy things but to analyse, create, and improve them.

I started my career as an architect. I learned that the function is always the most crucial part of any product. I also realised that the creative process requires knowledge, experience, and tools that don’t limit or distract you. Tools that you don’t have to think about.

How come you’re a software hacker?

Again, I have no idea… but I’m software hacker. I don’t know when and how it happened. New software, release, download, learn, hack, use. Every single time. Sounds familiar?

“Need some new software shortcut, hack, plugin, extension? Ask Wojtek.” — I bet that many of my friends can confirm this statement.

But why am I a software-guy? Because I was never satisfied with my software. I’ve tried most of the design apps released after 1998. 3D, 2D, prototyping software, WYSWIG tools. Almost everything since Corel Draw 8.0 — I’ve still got its “Bible” on my bookshelf. None of these tools were working properly for my design needs.

And you know what? I’m sure I’m not the only who’s unsatisfied. Because there is an army of designers that create not just new software but plugins, extensions, and widgets for existing ones. And it’s not bad at all, it’s great we can finally do our work with a set of proper tools {do we?}. It’s even better that people see the need for better tools.

We are all so ‘toolish’… 🙃

We are just being fooled into thinking we are getting new tools. We are living on ground zero during the Game of Clones. We see ‘new’ software or plugins every month — but they are just clones. In the best case scenario they are 3 clones combined into one. What’s even more interesting, they are clones of print or motion software.

Folks, we are using software made for print and animation. Improved to be fair, but definitely, we don’t need more improvements on print and animation software. We need a digital design tool from scratch, made for the way we really work. Don’t we?

Paper is not our output. Interface animation either. Try to deny it, but our final output is code. It doesn’t mean that we have to write it. And that’s all the market can offer us right now. Pick between cool images vs. smooth animations vs. ‘coded’ prototypes which cannot be properly handed off.

Join the solution with me and others

A couple of months ago I joined the Phase team — back then the company didn’t even have a name. We were an undefined team of dedicated professionals that wanted to change the way digital design is created.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/d13e94abd818c40d094d23dd402b7cb4/href">https://medium.com/media/d13e94abd818c40d094d23dd402b7cb4/href</a>

We went deep into the basics of digital design software. From a simple layer opacity picker behaviour, by a complex components system to the proper output — code.

We’re designing screens, not pages. With Adaptive Layouts, Element States, Component Libraries and Design Systems. Using Real Digital Elements. The output of digital design is Code. We want to help you spend more time being creative.

Right now many of you are on the hype train with us. There are tons of questions coming from you guys. We believe in transparency and we want to be clear about our road map. There is one crucial question: when and what will we deliver?

May 2018 we will deliver first version of our product. You will be able to use all interaction features based on the import from Sketch.

Feel free to talk with us and join our Slack channel.

Best,
Wojciech — Product Designer @ Phase.com

The title was inspired by Claudio Guglieri article ‘A Love Letter to Freelancing’.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

My ❤️ Letter to Digital Designers* was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My ❤️ Letter to Digital Designers*

Cool stuff, every week

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