Design Craft & Shipping the Details

Craft & quality in design, or any work you do, is important.

Yet most companies are really bad at following through with the details.

Companies doing it well

I’m impressed with companies like Linear, Lattice, Railway, Attio, Folk, Pitch

You can tell they care a lot about design & ensure the polish makes it out of their design artifacts & into the hands of the user.

I found this post by @radilson inspiring:

In digital product design, ‘craft’ refers to technical skill, strategic creativity, care, attention to detail, and commitment to producing a high-quality product for users

Reasons craft gets left behind

1/ Move fast & break things, speed & experimentation

2/ Team scale, as teams grow more energy needed to be consistent & maintain quality

3/ Conflicting visions, needs leadership sponsorship for design craft to be fundamental

4/ Undervaluation of visual design, sites like Dribbble make it seem design is all about making things pretty

The examples I mentioned, you can tell there was a decision at the top that it was essential to care about the details so users feel those emotions when experiencing the product.

This approach to product development is an excellent example of caring about craft at every level

Pushing for craft and details on our design team

At OneSignal we recently shipped an update to our navigation. The icons subtly animate on hover.

This was a design team initiative that visual design and design engineering executed on.

This update won’t directly map to dollars, but it shows that we care deeply about design.

We believe that this, along with the many other tiny details that we bake into the experience, will show our users that we care, and they experience delight when using the product.

p.s. we’re hiring

Who else does this well?

Who else is doing it well? What companies and products manage to stay true to their craft and ship the details?

Share more examples for inspiration.