Tools and resources our designers are using right now

The landscape of tools we use and what sources of inspiration we find are always changing, but here’s a non-exhaustive list of what our design team is using and looking at right now.

Tools

  • Figma - For interface design, prototyping, outputting and adjusting SVGs, creating presentations
  • FigJam - For workshop facilitation, brain storming, digital whiteboarding, planning, creating project timelines
  • MyMind - Used as a visual digital brain to save inspiration and ideas
  • User Interviews - For sourcing candidates and conducting user interviews, good for finding candidates in a specific niche
  • Notion - Personal documents, note taking, calendar feature, to do tracking
  • Things - To do list management
  • Hyper - An alternative to the default terminal
  • Cursor - Code editor with AI superpowers
  • Adobe suite - Photoshop for photo editing/cropping and visual design, Media Encoder for converting files, Illustrator for custom SVG work
  • Tuple - For pairing with remote coworkers
  • Feather Icons or Hero Icons - A free set of icons to use in UI design
  • The Noun Project - More elaborate or unique icons
  • Github Desktop - For git visualization and management
  • ChatGPT - For content and idea generation
  • SVGOMG - Optimizing SVGs
  • Loom - For screen recording and demo-ing with narration
  • Canva - For use as a “CMS” for creative stuff that the marketing team needs (ads, social posts, etc)
  • CodePen - For tinkering on code ideas and playing with CSS
  • Google Workspace - For documentation, thoughts, planning, creating presentations, tracking data, taking notes

Sources of inspiration and references

Happy designing!

About thoughtbot

We've been helping engineering teams deliver exceptional products for over 20 years. Our designers, developers, and product managers work closely with teams to solve your toughest software challenges through collaborative design and development. Learn more about us.