Tanmay Singh

Design Interview Cheat Sheet. We spoke with hiring managers at major tech companies about why strong designers receive job offers — and why others don’t. From Meta to Google to Apple, the patterns were the same. These are the 5 areas you need to strong pass, not just pass, if you want the offer: → PROBLEM UNDERSTANDING & RESEARCH Did you ask the right clarifying questions and frame the problem before jumping into solutions? Strong Pass candidates: → Identify all key stakeholders & constraints → Uncover hidden user needs → Define success criteria clearly → Frame the challenge in business and user terms → USER-CENTERED DESIGN & EXPLORATION Did you explore a range of solutions that balance user needs with business goals? Strong Pass candidates: → Explore widely before narrowing → Show how ideas map to user problems → Balance creativity with feasibility → Connect every choice to outcomes → VISUAL & INTERACTION EXECUTION Did you translate ideas into clear, usable, and beautiful experiences? Strong Pass candidates: → Deliver pixel-perfect, accessible designs → Nail hierarchy, spacing, and interaction patterns → Create scalable systems, not one-off screens → Maintain brand cohesion without losing usability → COLLABORATION & FEEDBACK Did you work well with others and integrate feedback effectively? Strong Pass candidates: → Seek out diverse feedback → Use critique to improve beyond expectations → Raise the team’s thinking, not just their own work → TRADE-OFF & IMPACT EVALUATION Did you balance constraints and make informed design trade-offs? Strong Pass candidates: → Anticipate downstream effects → Explain reasoning clearly → Optimize for both short-term and long-term impact Company specifics — Some companies have “unsaid” unique criteria: • Meta → scale thinking • Google → interaction depth • Apple → visual craft & storytelling • Amazon → customer obsession • Stripe → precision & detail Originally from adplist.org. *** P.S. - Every week, I explore the hidden design insights behind the world’s most popular products. Join the crew & subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/guJJsBaT If you found this useful, consider reposting ♻️ to your network. #design #careers

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🚀 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, 𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀. We’ve seen ladders for product designers, visual designers, UX writers — but for those architecting 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀? It's been a fog. Now, models like the one by Javier Cuello (https://lnkd.in/gHEQSpZU) bring much-needed clarity. Not the model — but a strong lens into how this role evolves. Here’s how the craft scales across levels: 🔹 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 → From building blocks to influencing org-wide thinking 🔹 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 → From fixing pixels to fixing processes 🔹 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 → From documenting to defining contribution and scaling quality 🔹 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 → From supporting designers to shaping how the org designs This isn’t a side gig. It’s 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲. 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽. 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. If you’ve been quietly holding the system together — this is your sign. Your role is real. Your growth deserves a map. #DesignSystems #DesignCareers #SystemThinking #DesignOps #UXLeadership #CareerGrowth #designsystem #design #career #roadmap #linkedin #linkedinconnection #linkedinfamily #ui #ux #designers #2024 #2025 #2026 #trendy #viral

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These 15 qualities can get you into any design team. (I choose only those with these traits. And it’s not just Figma skills or pretty visuals. Swipe through the full list in the carousel. Why it matters: ✓ Teams need thinkers, not just executors ✓ Design is more about mindset than talent ✓ Culture beats craft every time Here’s what great designers do: 1️. Use AI to work smarter 2️. Connect their work to business results 3️. Help others grow, not just themselves The real goal? Be useful. Be thoughtful. Be a leader. Tag someone who has these qualities. Or drop a ❤️ if you're working on building them. Repost to help more designers see what really matters.

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I have spent hundreds of hours analyzing design systems. One of the things that confused me for many years is how to structure color scales and tokens. I have experimented with multiple structures at different sizes of design systems, and at a high-level recommend the following approach: 1. Primitive Colors Your design system foundations should always start with a full color scale that is based on your brand identity. We call these colors Primitives, and your variable/token collection should look like this: - purple-600 - purple-500 - purple-400 - And so on.. To create a Primitives palette you will want to start from your main brand colors and use a tool like UIColors, Supapalette, Colorbox to expand to the full scale. (links in comments) This is a great foundation to have, as it gives you a set of shades that can be used in different ways, and ensures all of them have consistent hues, saturation and brightness. However, Primitive colors are simply not effective when used directly in your designs: - They create ambiguity - Their names have no contextual meaning - They are often misused due to similarity If you have had the “why are there 20 different shades of gray?” conversation with an engineer, you know what I mean. So let’s see how we can improve that. 2. Semantic Colors This is my default recommendation to all product design teams that don’t have a highly complex design system. What you will want to do here is create a new variable collection named Semantic, which is what’s visible in your design files, and comprises of: - Brand / Action - Text - Link - Border - Icon - Surface / Background - Bias - Data / Charts Each color should point to a primitive value, e.g. - text-primary → gray-800 - text-secondary → gray-600 - text-tertiary → gray-400 This takes a bit of setting up, but creates immense long-term value. A great example of a simple, theme-level Semantic structure is Shopify’s Polaris (link in comments) 3. Component-level Semantic Lastly, if you are working on a design system with a lot of complexity and, ideally, a dedicated design systems team, you might want to add another level of hierarchy and specify colors at a component-level. In this structure, you would want to create color tokens based on how they are used in each component. - input-text-filled → text-primary - input-text-placeholder → text-secondary - input-text-disabled → text-tertiary This eliminates all guesswork, but also increases the complexity exponentially. It does serve a purpose though. As design systems scale, you may find that: - A theme-level semantic structure is too restrictive - There is still some guesswork - Decisions need to be documented. An example of this is Uber’s Base and Adobe’s Spectrum design system, linked in the comments. I’m curious to know, what structure are you using for your design system and what has worked well for you? — If you found this useful, consider reposting ♻️

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What early-stage startups really need from a UX designer When a startup is just getting off the ground, design isn’t just about “making it look nice and mad ass animations in framer.” At this stage, a UX designer’s role is about clarity, speed, and alignment. Here’s what founders should really expect from a UX designer in the early days: 1️⃣ Turning ideas into visuals fast Startups move quickly. Founders need someone who can translate messy brainstorms into clear user flows, wireframes, and prototypes that bring the vision to life. 2️⃣ Prioritizing what matters most Early-stage products can’t do everything at once. A UX designer helps identify the core features that deliver real value to users and guides teams to focus there. 3️⃣ Designing for learning, not perfection The first version doesn’t need to be perfect it needs to help the team learn. Good UX design enables user testing and feedback loops so the product evolves in the right direction. 4️⃣ Creating consistency early Even at MVP stage, having a simple design system saves so much time later. Colors, typography, and basic components help keep the product looking and feeling cohesive. At the early stage, UX design is less about polish and more about clarity, speed, and helping founders make smarter decisions. If you’re a startup founder, don’t just look for a designer who can “make things pretty” look for one who can think, prioritize, and simplify.

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The hardest part of my job is not design. It is remembering what was said. Every idea, every piece of feedback, every decision starts as a conversation. But most of it disappears. → Notes scattered across apps. → Half-remembered threads in Slack. → Critical details buried in old docs. Instead of designing, I was chasing context. Ishan Kumar felt the same on the PM side. Hours of meetings. Decisions lost in notes. Action items forgotten. Different roles. Same frustration. That is when we saw the real problem. Conversations drive everything we do. But they are the hardest thing to capture, search, and act on. So we decided to fix it. We are building the Superhuman for conversations. Something that works wherever conversations happen offline, online, meetings, calls, and makes you 100x more productive. We are starting small. We are building in public. And we will keep it “free” as long as we can. The mission is ambitious. But we are aligned on chasing it together. #conversations #buildinpublic #passionproject

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