Mariusz Cieśla • Product Designer • Berlin, Germany

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Design Process: Expectations vs Reality

Design Process: Expectations vs Reality

If you're a designer, you likely heard about Design Thinking, Design Sprints, Double Diamonds, maybe even Design Odysseys and other processes that people use to get things done. In my practice over the years, I noticed three very distinct phases in my design process, and I found it extremely important

Designing for absence of the interface

Designing for absence of the interface

When designing a new product or feature, the most obvious things you'd think about are user experience - how things flow together, transition between states, and so on - and the user interface. The second part is why we spend time building elaborate design systems, create complicated prototypes and user

Four (non-obvious) books you should read as a Product Designer

Four (non-obvious) books you should read as a Product Designer

I've been now mentoring, leading, and managing designers for a couple of years and one of the questions that come up often is "what are the non-obvious books that you should read to improve your design thinking?" I was thinking about this question for a while and I believe those

Design Systems as a Shared Product Language

Design Systems as a Shared Product Language

Creating a good design system is making sure you’re building a language that creates shared understanding and shared language for product teams.

Minimum Viable Design Process: How I Approach Design Projects in 2019

Minimum Viable Design Process: How I Approach Design Projects in 2019

A quick look into why my process in 2019 is going to be as little process as possible.

Lessons in Leadership: Observing Bosses, Managers & Client Over A Decade

Lessons in Leadership: Observing Bosses, Managers & Client Over A Decade

A couple of lessons that I learned by observing good and bad managers, bosses & clients for just over a decade.

A Short Guide to Estabilishing Meaningful Metrics

A Short Guide to Estabilishing Meaningful Metrics

It’s been almost fifteen years since I started doing design. I’ve been through all of it: from the job title being Webmaster and the job being basically “do everything from design, through development, to managing our server” all the way down to managing a design team at a

How Small Teams Can Benefit From Having A Design System

How Small Teams Can Benefit From Having A Design System

A couple of reasons why lean startups and small to medium product teams can benefit from building their design system from the very beginning.

How to Achieve Anything: My Method of Setting Goals

How to Achieve Anything: My Method of Setting Goals

A short look at how I define my goals and create the environment that helps me achieve them.

Why I Stopped Buying eBooks And Turned to Printed Books Instead

Why I Stopped Buying eBooks And Turned to Printed Books Instead

A while ago I stopped buying eBooks and turned to printed books. Here's why.

Personal OKRs: Your New Year's Resolutions Are Now Numbers

Personal OKRs: Your New Year's Resolutions Are Now Numbers

Why I replaced my traditional new year's resolutions with a method that tech companies use to measure success.

Why Do You Work?

Why Do You Work?

A simple question: “Why do you do what you do?” can lead you to a whole lot of self-reflection and change in your life.

It's Okay to Take It Easy

It's Okay to Take It Easy

A short personal story about productivity, passion, burnout, and how I learned the hard way that it's okay to take breaks.

Why I Keep A “Done” List

Why I Keep A “Done” List

Using a “done” list outside your “to-do” list, any why it's good for your mental health.

Full-Stack Dystopia: What the Future of Work Should Not Be

Full-Stack Dystopia: What the Future of Work Should Not Be

Work is like gas — it will expand until it fills all the available space. Do not the new shiny tools convince you that you should let that happen.

Being Useful: A Short Story of Proactive User Experience

Being Useful: A Short Story of Proactive User Experience

Proactive user experience and how to surprise your users by answering their questions before they even asked.

The Obsession With Coding

The Obsession With Coding

Coding is learning a lot of things that you don’t care about as a non-developer — like software design patterns or operating a database with and without an ORM. Nobody who's not an engineer should be required to do it if they don't want to.