Jenny Wen
Designer; head of design for Claude at Anthropic, earlier director of design at Figma, where she led the FigJam and Slides teams, and a designer at Dropbox, Square and Shopify.
Jenny Wen did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsWe stopped doing the real thing that would be the most empathetic, useful, and that would actually serve business outcomes best: building stuff that worked well and that people would love.
↗Don't trust the (design) processjennywen.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Great design work skips, reorders and backtracks rather than following a fixed design process.
Their wordsThe way I’ve seen great work made isn’t using any sort of design process. It’s skipping steps when we deem them unnecessary. It’s doing them out of order just for the heck of it. It’s backtracking when we’re unsatisfied. It’s changing things after we’ve handed off the design. It’s starting from the solution first.
↗Don't trust the (design) processjennywen.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 6 months earlier
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Their wordsSo, quality adds value to things. Stunning visual design, incredibly smooth animations, precise and predictable interactions, pixel-perfection, snappy load times… they all contribute to the value of software. Like what fresh ingredients and presentation do for food, or what solid wood and a great finish do for furniture.
↗What we don't talk about when we talk about quality...jennywen.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBut it is to say that getting the details right is worth something. People spend so much of their time using software. In the long run, these are the bits that make it worth paying a higher price for, worth lingering longer in, worth keeping around.
↗What we don't talk about when we talk about quality...jennywen.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Software quality will not show up in a single success metric, but users feel it and evaluate it.
Their wordsSoftware quality is similar — you won’t see it in a single success metric, but your users will feel it, know it, and evaluate it.
↗What we don't talk about when we talk about quality...jennywen.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece