Abby Muir

📣 Designers, you might be surprised at how easy it is to EARN MORE with a few smart moves! In today’s episode (112) of Design Business Freedom podcast, I’m sharing 10 powerful steps to help you reclaim your PROFITS and PEACE. Here’s a hint: one simple step (with just a little commitment) could make a huge difference in your design business. Sometimes, it’s those unnoticed expenses that add up over time, quietly draining your profits🗑️. When you commit to these 10 steps, you’ll see an uptick in your bottom line and be ready to welcome bigger projects and better clients. And the best part is you can do them ALL in ONE DAY! You’ve got this, and I’ve got you. Always. Catch this episode wherever you find podcasts, and start making these quick, impactful changes today. Your business deserves it! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gYEXnxW2 . . . #designerentrepreneur #interiordesignerlife #interiordesignfirm #boostyourprofits

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How a small freelance ID project ended up winning ‘Design of the Decade’! Today’s guest on The Design Journeys Podcast is Emily Moyer, an independent industrial design strategy and innovation consultant. Her experience includes working with big brands like L'Oréal and Nestlé, as well as startups like Aura Home, Inc. and BARK. Here’s what you can expect on Episode 10: 📝 Emily’s career journey to date 🤖 How to leverage AI design and mood board tools ✏ Sketching is still an important super power for designers 🤝 How relationship building and networking can unlock opportunities 🤔 Lessons from success and failed design projects 💸 Advice on business development for freelancers If you’re a small design consultancy leader, a freelancer, or thinking of going solo – you’re going to want to listen to this one! Go and check out Episode 10 of The Design Journeys Podcast on Spotify now! PS – who should I interview next? Tag them in the comments and let’s make it happen!

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Clearing Up the Confusion: UX vs. Usability Yesterday, I shared an article about the common mistake of equating User Experience (UX) with Usability. Today, I’m diving deeper into why this distinction is so important. As a UX designer, I’m passionate about making the UX design approach more accessible, especially to business leaders who can leverage this powerful method to elevate their product development. But here’s the challenge: many professionals still focus solely on improving usability, overlooking the broader brand experience. It’s time to shift our mindset. Let’s stop confusing User Experience with Usability and start unlocking the full potential of UX design together. 👉 Read my latest article to learn more: https://lnkd.in/e2iPRt-u Let’s enhance the quality of product development and create experiences that truly resonate with users. #UXDesign #UserExperience #ProductDevelopment #DesignThinking #BusinessStrategy

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Here are 4 reasons why anyone struggling with communicating their vision should start collaborating with designers: 1. Clear expectations lead to better results. 2. Visual aids help convey ideas. 3. Regular feedback ensures alignment. 4. Trust fosters creativity. I firmly believe this. Join our Ultimate Design Team! 🤝✨ #DesignTips #Collaborate #creativity #scenicdesign #scenicartists #fabricators #wildimagination # Made with mymarky.ai

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There’s still time for folks to sign up for my Fundamentals of User Experience Design class at SVA which runs three weeks, meeting twice a week, starting next Tuesday. That's six weeks of UX goodness packed into three. More information below if you're interested or want to pass this on to someone else who may be. #UX #UXdesign #IA

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2 years with Nectar! 🤘🔥 My favorite highlights: → Our team’s growth from 23 employees to 90 employees. Product alone grew from 6 of us to 21 strong now 🙌🏼, and we’re a sleek, efficient, resilient team under Brian Cressall and Nate Tingey. → Established Nectar’s Design System and built our component library, significantly improving speed, consistency, and quality of design and implementation. → Completed a massive UI design refresh for the existing product (bless the devs still building it 🫡 ). → Launched Nominations, the largest and most impactful new feature we’ve built at Nectar yet. → Completely scrapped a project, because it was the right thing to do. Grateful to work on a team that’s hyper-focused on our ultimate goals, and is sincerely willing to let sunk costs be irrelevant. → Ideated, designed, and launched our new product Internal Communications in 8 weeks with a small, mighty team 🤯 I’m still amazed we managed it. → $40M Series B funding in April 2024 with PeakSpan Capital. → Saw our efforts, motivation, and passion pay off when Nectar was recognized as the 2nd Fastest Growing Company in Utah County, 1st fastest growing software company in Utah, 8th fastest growing software company in the U.S., and 87th fastest growing company in the U.S. (across all industries). → 300% increase in revenue in Q3 2023 vs Q3 2024 (Q3 was also 50% above our revenue Q2 2024). → Saw every department at Nectar grow in excellence. I’m in awe of the caliber of Engineering, CS, Marketing, Sales, and what they accomplish. → Relished the challenge and variety of asks in the beginning as Nectar’s sole designer, including working on print design (looking at you, 28’ tradebooth) and animations for the first time. That animation announcing Nectar’s new logo a year ago? That was my first animation, and I’m still proud of myself for figuring it out enough to make that 😂. → Spent way too much on Holiday gas station runs (RIP old office). This is a long list, but for the record I cut it in half from what it was 😅. I’m grateful Nate reached out on LinkedIn right at the perfect time when I was looking to switch things up, and that we’ve made a great team ever since. Getting to work closely with our little product design team—Nate, Mason, Tyler, and Maya—and many, many others keeps me growing and keeps me motivated on the daily. Nectar’s mission and way of working resonated with me from the beginning. It’s rewarding to see our company continue to gain momentum and maturity, all while seeing how much room we still have to grow. Very, very grateful to be part of the journey. As we say, it’s still Day 1 at Nectar. 🚀

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My colleague Anthony Sanchez and I had a conversation about good design vs. beautiful design on the latest episode of Currents on the Funsize Show Podcast by Funsize. I'm interested to hear your personal thoughts on the topic. #design

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So many designers are calling out Pentagram. What are you getting wrong about the PayPal rebrand finally? Many designers are quick to criticize the new logo, calling it "bad" or "unnecessary." Various platform, same things, bad design, wasn't needed, and all that bullship! The idea behind a rebrand can be multifold people! What could have exactly been the reason for the rebrand? + reducing bland visual elements  + more upbeat messaging  + higher contrast, brand touch points What does all these mean? A strategy of the PayPal to generate 'top of mind share'. This is the best way to do this, by killing two birds with one stone -- Both rebranding, and newer brand communication. At PayPal's level, everything else is not a risk worth taking. Also lends to a new vision for the brand approach more -- + physical brand touch points  + increased brand marketing  + competitive newer products Did you remotely think any of these before? This is where core designers are missing the business insight. It often doesn't come naturally, but ask yourself, WHY THE REBRAND? . . . We've spoken more fun stuff in the full episode. Check it out, link in comments. SUBSCRIBE #youtube #content #rebrand #branding #branddesign #brandstrategy #designcommunity

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10 sources I follow to stay on top of things in health, part 2 ⭐ Product design in health: 💎 Alex Bilstein and his useful resources: Design with care portal (product design roles), newsletter, and a community. Must follow if you are a designer and work in health. Bonus point: you may find a job in the health domain faster 😉 💎 Gary Monk with frequent interesting updates about health tech innovation 💎 Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD about exciting new products in healthcare Behavior design: 💎 Samuel Salzer, the first behavior design specialist whom I met live (almost!), and Aline Holzwarth: both posts and a podcast 💎 The Big Behavioral Bias Miro Board, by Robert Meza: https://lnkd.in/ei-Xs-tD Must read for everybody designing for humans 💎 Posts and Behavioural Insights Cookbook, by Jerome Ribot. Guide: https://lnkd.in/epGNUd9j and Figma kit: https://lnkd.in/eruxMGWT Can be used when presenting design! Useful for explaining your design rationale 💎 Kristen Berman with useful simple and entertaining materials about behavior design including video teardowns 💎 Eden Brownell 👩🏼‍🏫: fun and lightweight read about behavior science in healthcare 💎 Sophie Attwood PhD about behavior design in health, materials often supported by quant data and nice infographics 💎 Elina Halonen for those who prefer deep materials about behavior design 💎 And my newsletter from Tech Matters Studio: https://lnkd.in/eU49Qbsc Useful? Share with your colleagues!

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A reflection on the growing challenges this industry faces: this article serves as a crucial reminder that a designer's work must go beyond aesthetics. A must-read for anyone navigating the complexities of modern design.

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🌿 I'm never going back to a complicated design process again. ✨ Simplifying my design process has been one of the biggest upgrades in my career. Here are some of the reasons why you should simplify your design process: ☑ Save time ☑ Reduce frustration ☑ Enable true efficiency ☑ Build stronger client relationships ☑ Save money (and your sanity) ☑ Double your productivity ☑ Deliver projects on time ☑ Attract and retain more clients ☑ Enable a better work-life balance ☑ Give your clients the best quality of service 🌼 This is what the majority of successful designers want today. 🐚 Simplicity and effectiveness. ✨ I wouldn't trade it for anything.

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Overview of a conversation on how designers can create value in early-stage startups.

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Five tips for starting a new design job! Starting a work journal is a valuable habit to document your accomplishments, track key insights, and build a resource for future reflections. I've actually employed this method and can attest to its effectiveness. This list contains some great tips for establishing relationships and setting up tools to streamline your workflow. All helpful for anyone starting a new position in the design field. Stay strong, stay curious! #designjob, #graphicdesign, #designers

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Why is it cool to hate on design systems? 🤔 I'm starting to think the pendulum has swung too far and we're missing the point... some thoughts 👇 I’ll admit… I never use the phrase “design system” anymore. Somehow the term has become synonymous with scale And one reason is b/c we're constantly referencing the biggest systems (Polaris, Spectrum, Material, etc.) But our tools are also to blame 👇 Many of Figma’s new features cater to enterprise customers (and it makes sense why 🤷‍♂️) But what about YOUR product? Do you reeeeally need to define typography primitives as variables? So let's take a step back... b/c design systems don't have to be so "enterprise-y" 👇 We often fixate on standardization as the main value prop of design systems. Through that lens, it’s easy to view it as the thing to invest in once you’ve “figured out” the UI and are ready to codify it. But don’t forget about speed! I'll suggest design systems are most valuable when you DON'T know what the product will be… Investing in a set of core components minimizes the number of knobs you need to turn in order to iterate. You’re laying a nimble foundation… not a rigid one. The key is laser-focusing on the atomic level 👀 That way you’re never over-architecting the system. You’re simply giving yourself an open-ended box of legos that you can use to assemble UIs more quickly. And it's quite easy to nail down these core components because so much of a design system is consistent from product to product. You don’t need product-market-fit to confirm that you’ll probably have 2-3 button sizes and they’ll almost certainly include 40 and 48px for web 😆 My last few systems have shared a LOT in common... So don't overthink it 🤷‍♂️ IMO there's no reason to delay building out these core components. I'd just ignore more complex elements that make use of multiple components. Once you graduate to defining "organisms" you're building a connected system > a box of legos If you're interested in this topic I explored this idea a lot deeper here 👇 https://lnkd.in/g4prJcq7 I believe every product can benefit from a set of simple components and that investing in that toolkit up front is high ROI. "Design system" is just a semantic issue that we need to get over (and quickly)

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Hello fellow designers and creatives. I’ve decided to jump back into writing. Find me on Substack where my musings will focus on industrial design, design, strategy, sustainability, and systems thinking. Thanks for the sub. :) https://lnkd.in/e4Wpfbrp #industrialdesign #designstrategy #systemsthinking #sustainability

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I love the attention we're giving to design leaders. Still, please don't forget that design is more than just aesthetic. To elaborate on one of the most important points here -- a functional org is one where departments are grouped by specialization to foster and up-level craft (design is its own department, as is marketing, eng, etc.) this makes sense when you have a very obvious decision maker (ie. Brian Chesky, steve jobs, etc.), but it doesn't work for everyone. #orgdesign #businessdesign #innovation #design

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For young designers dreaming of launching their own studio: The best prep work is hands-on experience. Spend time learning the ropes in a well-rounded team—not just from fellow designers, but from product managers, developers, marketers, and business strategists. Understanding how each of these areas connects and supports design will give you a toolkit to build something sustainable. Absorb everything you can. By learning how the pieces fit together, you’ll be better equipped to lead with confidence and make decisions that drive real impact. ✨

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A portfolio is a window into a designer's growth and an artifact to attract interest in their work. I've recently updated my website and want to share some of the things I've learned after building dozens of versions over the past 12 years. 1. Be open and curious. 2. Document everything about your process. 3. Define the Problem. 4. Be original about your methodology to find solutions. 5. Share your key learnings and how you will apply them in the next project. Read more about it here: https://lnkd.in/dJ6u5u6E Feel free to take a look at my latest portfolio update on this link: https://lnkd.in/d8kW-gxp #DesignPortfolio #CareerAdvice #DesignTips #Design #DesignProcess #Designers

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