Hi designers!
Welcome to the 24th edition of the CUxD newsletter – a curated set of learnings, inspiration, resources, and tips. I’m Clément, Internal Community Lead, and I’ll be writing to you on behalf of CUxD every week.
If you’re not familiar with CUxD (Cornell User Experience Design), we’re a centralized community for UI, UX, and product designers at Cornell. We learn and grow together both professionally and socially!
Want to be more learn more about UX design?
Table of Contents
Learning time - Figma Plugins
Every week, we’ll explore a topic in design. This week, I’m sharing my favorite Figma plugins with you!
1. AutoFlow
This first plugin is essential for clean Figma files and for developed/client handoff! It allows you to draw arrows between various screens, mockups, or frames. You can edit the arrows to change their location, color, thickness, style, etc.
I find it useful to show the different steps of a particular user flow.
Use AutoFlow to draw arrows between screens
2. Contrast
This next plugin is pretty self-explanatory: it allows you to check the contrast ratio levels between foreground text and backgrounds. It works not only for solid colors but also for gradients, images, and blends. Super important for creating accessible designs!
Use Contrast for accessible designs
3. Unsplash
You can use this plugin on insert beautiful images and other media into your designs. The best part? All these images are copyright free and can be used for any type of project!
Use Unsplash to find media
4. Lucide Icons
You might be familiar with going on websites like Font Awesome or Google Icons to download icons and open them in Figma, but what if you could just do it directly from the canvas? That’s what the Lucide Icons plugin does (although, to be fair, Font Awesome and Google Icons each have their own Figma plugin too).
Use Lucide to insert icons
Internships
NYC, $6,160 stipend
Remote, $25 - $28 / hr
NYC, $19 - $25 / hr
NY, $20 / hr
Connecticut, $28 / hr
Advice from a fellow designer
About
Yoobin Lee, junior in Information Science with concentrations in UX and Interactive Technologies (fun fact: ex-urban planning major). From Korea & Virginia.
Fav Figma shortcut
K (the scale tool). Super basic, but it was actually the first Figma shortcut I learned from my mentor designer when I first joined AppDev!
Previous work experience
AppDev Design Lead & Product Designer
UX Researcher, Human-AI Interaction Design @ Cornell Research Group
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Fabrication Lab (Prof. Guimbretière)
UX Intern @ Soar (B2C AI travel companion startup)
Proudest design project
Not exactly a “design project,” but this past winter I worked as an undergraduate UX researcher with the DesignAI Research Group at Cornell, led by Prof. Yang (she also teaches the AI Services and Design course—super cool class).
My main responsibility was running user interviews for a human-AI interaction study. I had to recruit and interview at least 15 participants in two weeks, which was pretty intense. Each session was about two hours long and, while following a strict protocol, required full cognitive focus such as observing how users interacted with the tool, taking fast notes, and asking follow-up questions to understand the thinking behind their actions. A lot of the time, users would unconsciously “lie” about why they did something, so I had to frame questions carefully without leading them while still uncovering real insights (the hard part).
It was stressful, but I learned a ton. I picked up strong interview techniques, became more confident talking to participants (since you wouldn’t fully trust a researcher who sounds unsure or apologetic), and got much more intentional and curious about the real “why” behind users’ intentions and actions. I also received close feedback from the professor, gained exposure to academic HCI research, and developed a deeper understanding of human behavior.
Plus, one of the research prompts had participants write about their identity and life experiences, so I ended up hearing really personal stories from complete strangers I had met just 10 minutes earlier (the cool part). Those conversations were genuinely moving and reminded me how much I just love learning about people and human diversity, which I think is at the core of user-centered design.
The paper has now been submitted to a conference, and I’m listed as the first co-author (the even cooler part)!
Advice
If you think digital product design is your thing, that’s great. If you’re not sure, that’s totally fine too! Don’t be afraid to try things outside of digital product design like HCI research/academia, physical product design, or physical computing. If you’re interested, take my favorite INFO class: INFO 4320: Intro to Rapid Prototyping and Physical Computing.
Honestly, it was one of the hardest classes I’ve taken at Cornell—I even cried at the professor’s office hours once—and now I’m doing research for him too, haha. But it also made me realize how much I love the hardware side of tech. I’m still exploring how to combine that with my interest in UI/UX design.
So, never think you’re behind. I’d like to share my favorite quote:
New York is three hours ahead of LA, but that doesn’t mean LA is behind. Everyone’s in their own time zone, and you’re just right on time in yours!
Trust, everyone’s living a wildly different life, and that’s what makes the world more colorful. (Source: I user-interviewed 15 people over winter break.)
Design inspiration
Some cool designs for your dopamine hit!
Outro
That’s all for this week!
Have any feedback or want to see something on the newsletter next week? Email us at [email protected] or reply directly to this email.
See you soon,
Clément @ CUxD