Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/what-ive-learned-in-the-first-6-months-in-no-particular-order-f443428f5e38?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Trevor Byron 
<h3>(In no particular order)</h3>
<ol>
<li>I have so much to learn. Read read read: <a href="https://www.invisionapp.com/blog">https://www.invisionapp.com/blog</a> ; <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/">https://uxdesign.cc/</a> ; <a href="https://www.designbetter.co/">https://www.designbetter.co/</a>; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/User-Experience-Team-One-Research/dp/1933820187">User Experience Team of One</a></li>
<li>Don’t be scared of using an already established design system. Design systems save a lot of time and hassle and helps me focus on solving bigger problems. When working out brand new workflows and user experiences for a product, worrying about making a unique looking button, or dropdown menu is not always the best use of time. I use the <a href="https://material.io/">Material Design Guide lines</a> as my goto. Inevitably, I make specific changes when necessary, but having the base design rules frees up a lot of mental space.</li>
<li>Create a source of truth for yourself and the engineers to refer to. Establishing rules; font sizes, font-colors, hover states, button actions, hex-values will help save confusion. If you intend to break any of these rules, make sure you make it clear that you designs are intentional.</li>
</ol>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*UUkiOpISho24kI7HkANcjA.png">
4. Share you design often, ask for feedback. The earlier you can get feedback on design and the more you ask for teammates thoughts and opinions, the easier it is to get full company buy in as you move designs into development.
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*vIYfXzN3XsxPQ3XaKjqA3g.jpeg">
5. <a href="https://icomoon.io/app/#/select">Icomoon</a> is a great resource for turning custom icons SVGs into css font-families. In general, its easier to avoid making custom icons and its easier for developers to grab icons of pre-existing libraries. But if you need custom icons and want to implement them as a css font (this allows for easier color changes for hover states etc. as they are styled just like any other font in CSS)
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*YMviy5Lk7v5VQyZK6xaRPA.png">
6. Everyone interprets flat screens differently. I’ve found that the quicker I move my designs out of sketch and into Flinto or Invision and animate all the actions, the faster I can communicate my ideas and test how usable they actually are. Even in wireframe stages, I will do everything I can to avoid saying things like “imagine this happens when you click this”. They extra few minutes to actually animate that action seems to save a lot of time in the long run.
7. Practice all presentations. When I get up in front of the company and share some new design ideas, I’ve found that I will can loose interest and or confidence of the team if I have not prepared nearly everything I want to say. I have a tendency to want to over explain. Having a clear, rehearsed plan before I start a presentations keeps me from rambling.
8. Building a healthy relationship with Developers, even if they are on the other side of the word, is key to good work environment and getting builds right early on.
9. Videos are often better than words. When I’m writing up a ticket for a UI tweak for the Dev team, I’ll often capture a video of my screen recreating the error. This seems to work well as its pretty objective and can help simplify communication when your talking with folks whose first language is not english.
10. Take other designers from other teams out to lunch and ask them all sorts of questions, always. The more I surround myself with other, more skilled designers, the more inspired and confident I feel about my work.
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<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/what-ive-learned-in-the-first-6-months-in-no-particular-order-f443428f5e38">What I’ve learned in the first 6 months as the designer on a team of 1</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">Prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What I’ve learned in the first 6 months as the designer on a team of 1

(In no particular order)

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