Hi designers!
Welcome to the 30th 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 - Integrating AI
Every week, we’ll explore a topic in design. This week, we’re diving into Dev 101 – a practical introduction to how websites and apps actually work.
You don’t need to become an engineer, but understanding the basics helps you design more realistically, collaborate better, and bring your ideas to life!
Design → Code: what actually happens?
Designers know that if they prepare handoff to a developer is really important as it ensure their designs are implemented as closely to their vision as possible. But what actually happens to your Figma file?
As a designer, you imagine the layouts, components, and interactions of the product.
Then, developers translate those into code (for example: HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
The browser then renders that code into what users see
Think of it like a brainstorming partner, not just a solo designer that does it for you.
Design to development to website
The 3 building blocks of the web
Almost every website is built on three core technologiesYou can use Figma’s “Generate text” feature as seen below:
HTML → structure and markup (text, buttons, images)
CSS → styling (colors, spacing, fonts)
JavaScript or JS → behavior (interactions, state, logic)
As a designer, this helps explain what’s easy vs what’s complex to build.
Source - How HTML, CSS, and JS work together
How developers actually work
We know that designers iterate on Figma, which allows multiple people to make frames and layouts at the same time. But developers also collaborate together, using something called version control. The most common version control system is called “Git” (different than GitHub.com, which is a website that simply stores code for you).
A good way to explain Git is to compare it to a tree:
The main branch is the trunk — it’s the stable version of the project.
When developers start working on something new, they create a branch, like a limb growing off the trunk.
Each commit is like a small leaf on that branch, marking progress over time (ie: chapters or milestones of the code)
Once the work is ready, the branch gets merged back into the trunk.
This way, multiple branches can grow at the same time without interfering with each other. And if something goes wrong, you can always trace back to a previous point in the tree.
A visualization of version control, using trunks, branches, and leaf metaphors
So then what is GitHub?
If Git is the system that tracks changes, GitHub is where those projects live and get shared. It’s a website where developers store and collaborate on Git projects. Think of it as Google Drive, but for code.
Teams use it to review changes – for example when you’re about to merch a branch into the main version of your code, you can publish it on GitHub for your teammates to dissect and review the code.
Source - An example of a code review (where the Copilot AI tool detects a bug)
Internships
NY, $25 / hr
NY
NY, $30 / hr
NJ, $21 / hr
NY, $22 / hr
Advice from a fellow designer
About
Hi! My name is Ashley Paik 🙂 I'm currently a junior majoring in Information Science with concentrations in UX and Data Science. I served as CUxD president from SP'25-FA'25! I'm originally from Fairfax, Virginia.
Fav Figma shortcut
This is a pretty popular one, but Shift + A! I’m a big fan of auto layout—it makes designing so much faster.
Previous work experience
Product Design Intern @ RxPost
Product Designer @ Cornell Digital Tech & Innovation
Proudest design project
The project I’m most proud of is working on CornellGo at DTI during my sophomore year. It was what I consider my “first real” design project, where I collaborated with other designers, developers, and PMs. It was really exciting to take ownership, build features from 0 to 1, and actually see them shipped in a real app!
Advice
Everyone’s path into design looks different, so don’t feel like you’re falling behind! There are so many opportunities out there if you’re trying to get into design (like CUxD of course). Last summer, I volunteered with Develop for Good, a program that works with nonprofit clients, and that was my first step into getting real-world design experience. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out to other designers for advice or support!! You don’t need to have everything figured out to start.
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