TJ Pitre

Figma 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗼𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹. I used it to bring American Sign Language (ASL) learning and Duolingo-style play together in SignQuest, a camera-based learning experience built entirely through prompts. No dragging UI elements on a canvas. No manual code editing. I defined the learning progression and interaction model, incorporated accessibility considerations, and shaped the UI through multiple prompt-driven iterations. Figma Make brought that experience vision to life as a thoughtful, polished, and fully interactive prototype. Here’s how SignQuest works: Level 1️⃣ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 Practice four ASL letters, test your knowledge, and continue when you feel confident. Level 2️⃣ 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹 Use fingerspelling to complete entire words against the clock. Level 3️⃣ 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻 Practice common ASL signs and access supporting learning resources. The experience uses real-time hand and gesture recognition to provide immediate visual feedback. Accessibility was considered throughout the experience, including keyboard support, screen-reader status updates, reduced-motion settings, and a non-camera interaction option. The generated experience is impressive. While the code Figma Make creates isn’t production-ready, it is a powerful prototyping partner for rapidly testing ideas and building functional proofs of concept. What an exciting time to be creating in this rapidly evolving AI era. 🔗 Try SignQuest: https://lnkd.in/gnrsrdSp #FigmaMake #Claude #Prototyping #GenerativeAI #Accessibility

I’m absolutely thrilled to share that I’m starting a new position as Software Engineer at Figma! Very few products have become so integral to the modern development lifecycle in the way that Figma has, and I feel so lucky and excited to be able to help shape what's next.

A great resource for anyone working with design systems. 🎨🧩 DesignSystems.One brings together 119 real world design systems, practical guides, foundations, and free tools for designers and developers. 🔍✨ 🔗 https://lnkd.in/egakqarg Credit: DesignSystems.One by Kiryl Zhukouski #DesignSystems #UXDesign #UIDesign #ProductDesign #DesignOps #Figma #Accessibility #DesignTools #DesignSystem

Client enthusiasm isn't just in the words you use; it's conveyed through subtle communication cues. For example, how quickly you respond to a request for samples, like a service design blueprint, speaks volumes. Turning that around within hours, or by the end of the day, signals strong engagement and maintains momentum. There's an undeniable power in maintaining that forward motion. Promptness and responsiveness demonstrate genuine interest and keep the collaborative energy flowing. #ClientCommunication #Professionalism #BusinessGrowth #ClientEngagement #Momentum

🍼 Team Eagle's next generation is on the way! Yesterday, we celebrated three new parents on Team Eagle and four little ones, including one set of twins! We couldn’t be more excited for Benny, Ronnie, and Michael. Lots of love and congratulations to our growing Eagle family! ❤️ #TeamEagle #Culture #BabyBoom

Execution slop vs. thinking slop What I took away from this year's Hatch Conference. At the Hatch mixer at Fin, Domingo W. opened with: "Agents are biased to help you, and that is the problem". On Friday, Cassie Groos said something similar: "AI confidently fills gaps you didn't even know you had". I think these two one-liners quite clearly explain why designers are currently living through the best of times and worst of times simultaneously. After going through my notes, I slowly realised that designers are constantly confronted with two different kinds of slop. Execution slop and thinking slop. And once I split slop this way, a lot of things fell into place. Execution slop Execution slop is the one you can see. Kevin Cannon of Superhuman listed a whole host of them: the monospace eyebrow, the earth colours, endless help-text stating the obvious. Much of the conference was dedicated to fighting it. Linting, evals, structured markdown files. And the good news is, it feels like an eventually winnable fight. Thinking slop Thinking slop is a different beast though. In the past, shallow thinking went hand in hand with artefacts that looked rough, but now this handy shortcut has been lost. Shallow thinking can visually look fine. Thinking slop cannot be checked cheaply. You might spend 15 minutes writing feedback on a prototype that took one prompt and 5 minutes of Astra running at full speed. There is no linter for "this is devoid of thinking". And the harder part is that you cannot easily spot your own shallow thinking. Badly thought-out work used to feel unfinished. The friction was the feedback, and your gut was calibrated on effort, so when something came together suspiciously fast, you got suspicious of it. That calibration is gone. The work looks resolved straight away, so the feeling of being done arrives long before the thinking is done. Design is thinking made visible. We have arrived somewhere strange, where design is visible, but it's no longer proof of the thinking behind it. Why it's useful to tell one from the other Fighting execution slop is complicated, but the tooling to do so exists. It is a boatload of work, but satisfying; eval round after round, and markdown file after markdown file, you see the system improves itself. Which is exactly what makes it dangerous. A fight that feels winnable, measurable and visible will always pull attention from one that stays invisible. And the hidden fight is the one that decides whether any of it was worth building: thinking slop in your own head, in what your company believes it already knows. That one has no clear progress, and nobody thanks you for the afternoon you spent making sure an idea was right. To me, that was the insight Hatch gave. Fighting execution slop can drag us all into a temporary, crowded niche of design system builders and front-end engineers, and away from what design is actually for: desloppifying the thinking itself.