I enjoyed this post by Yuhki Yamashita (CPO at Figma) about how design is always “Work in Progress,” and how to deal with that:

Our work never feels done because it isn’t. Our collaborators jump in and out of files, leaving feedback and iterating on designs while we’re creating them. Many of us can ship whenever, so it’s hard to know when new designs are actually ready. It’s the chaotic reality of modern product design and development.

He gives some really good recommendations for how to work in this type of world where nothing is ever quite “done”. The post also introduced me to the concept of flashtags, which I quite like. It comes from Hubspot (See FlashTags: A Simple Hack For Conveying Context Without Confusion), and it’s a way for leaders to indicate how strongly they feel about the feedback they’re giving:

• #fyi means there’s no hill to die on.
• #suggestion means they’ve seen the hill but don’t feel strongly enough to commit the energy to climb it. Take it or leave it.
• #recommendation means the hill was climbed. They thought about dying on it, but walked back down.
• And finally, #plea means that they do, in fact, want to die on the hill. So if you see this flashtag, you better make sure it’s prioritized!

And finally, speaking of Yuhki… I am not really a podcast person, but I really enjoyed his recent interview on Lenny’s Podcast: An inside look at how Figma builds product.