Contained in the Making of Sixelf

Design is extra than simply an act of creation, it’s a journey of iteration, progress, and influence. We acknowledged the necessity for designers to trace, showcase, and rejoice their contributions, so we created Sixelf. Impressed by platforms like GitHub’s contribution tracker, Sixelf interprets that idea into the design world, creating a singular house the place creativity meets performance. 

By connecting your Figma account, Sixelf offers an progressive manner for designers to visualise their day by day design efforts by means of intuitive heatmaps whereas providing a number of different options to amplify their digital presence.

Problem

Earlier than Sixelf, designers lacked a platform to doc and mirror on their work. Most initiatives/design work are misplaced or restricted both attributable to NDAs or deletion. 

From our analysis, designers would duplicate initiatives earlier than handoff however they struggled to consolidate their contributions throughout these initiatives particularly when different designers had been on these initiatives, leaving their efforts scattered and underrepresented. 

Whereas builders benefited from instruments like GitHub’s exercise tracker, designers had no equal tailor-made to their wants. Present instruments primarily catered to groups, with restricted concentrate on particular person achievements. We got down to fill this hole by creating an answer that permits designers to:

1. Observe their day by day design contributions.
2. Maintain on to a chunk of your work even when entry is revoked by the consumer
3. Showcase featured initiatives in a visually compelling manner.
4. Combine seamlessly with their present instruments and workflows.
5. Have the ability to have first hand insights on their design journey

Answer

We constructed Sixelf to empower particular person designers by giving them a platform to showcase their work in a structured but inventive format. Right here’s how:

1. Visible Contribution Heatmaps: Impressed by GitHub’s contribution graphs, Sixelf generates heatmaps that visualize design exercise over time. By connecting their Figma accounts, designers can see a transparent illustration of their productiveness, enabling them to establish patterns and mirror on their workflow.
2. Customizable Profiles: Customers can create free profiles to share their skilled id. Profiles embody social media hyperlinks, bios, and featured initiatives, making it straightforward to showcase their abilities and persona.
3. Embedding and Exporting: Designers can embed their Sixelf heatmaps straight on their portfolio web sites or export them as photos to incorporate in displays and resumes, extending the utility of their tracked contributions.
4. Seamless Figma Integration: With the power to attach a number of Figma accounts, Sixelf ensures that designers can seize all their contributions throughout totally different organizations and private initiatives.

5. Figma Wrapped: Sixelf’s year-in-review function, Figma Wrapped, offers designers with a personalised abstract of their annual achievements. This report highlights key milestones, most lively months, day they had been most efficient, their designer archetype primarily based on their stats and providing a possibility to rejoice progress and share insights with friends. We simply made the primary wrapped for designers this 12 months (2024)
6. Challenge Highlights: Customers can highlight their most impactful initiatives, including a private contact to their profiles and making their work simply discoverable.

Design Method

Sixelf’s design philosophy revolves round simplicity, magnificence, and usefulness. We aimed to create a visually participating platform with out overwhelming customers with pointless complexity. Key components of the design strategy embody:

1. Visible Storytelling: Heatmaps and featured initiatives present a visually wealthy narrative of a designer’s contributions and progress, making certain their work is engagingly introduced.
2. Person-Centric Simplicity: Targeted on lowering litter, Sixelf balances performance with an intuitive, visually clear expertise that encourages exploration and usefulness.
3. Responsive Design: The platform’s interface adapts seamlessly throughout gadgets, making certain a constant expertise whether or not accessed on desktop or cell.

Technical Method

Sixelf was constructed with scalability, reliability, and consumer comfort in thoughts. Key technical concerns embody:

1. Hearth and Neglect: The Sixelf service is designed to be synchronous. This implies that you would be able to provoke the method of importing your recordsdata and groups, and we’ll deal with it within the background with out disrupting your circulate as you discover the remainder of the appliance. We additionally routinely import new contributions day-after-day so that you don’t need to do it your self.
2. Scalable Structure: We designed Sixelf to scale to deal with tens of millions of contributions with out compromising on velocity, and we’re continually enhancing the efficiency of our utility because the group expands.
3. Fault Tolerant: Within the uncommon occasion of a system failure, now we have a number of measures put in place to safeguard your data from corruption and we create redundant backups periodically, hoping that we by no means have to make use of them, in fact.
4. Privateness-First Method: We prioritized consumer privateness, making certain that delicate venture knowledge stays safe and solely public-facing data is shared on profiles. We additionally provide you with full management over your knowledge by permitting you to delete your recordsdata, groups, and even your Figma accounts.

Affect

Since its launch on Might 18th 2024, Sixelf has change into a necessary instrument for designers looking for to quantify and current their inventive efforts. The platform has:

1. Enabled 870+ designers observe over 470k contributions gaining deeper insights into their productiveness patterns.
2. Supplied a visually interesting solution to showcase their achievements.
3. Enhanced the skilled presence of numerous customers by providing an embeddable, shareable, and customizable profile answer.

Future Outlook

The journey doesn’t finish right here. We’re repeatedly exploring methods to develop Sixelf’s capabilities. Deliberate updates embody:

• Introducing superior analytics to supply deeper insights into design tendencies and workflow effectivity.
• Increasing integrations to incorporate different fashionable design instruments.
• Enhancing collaboration options to permit groups to rejoice their collective influence.

Conclusion & Credit

Thrilled to formally launch Sixelf! This wouldn’t have been attainable with out the unbelievable effort of everybody who helped carry this imaginative and prescient to life. An enormous thanks to:

Sixelf is greater than a platform, it’s a celebration of creativity and energy. By giving designers the instruments to trace, showcase, and mirror on their work, Sixelf is shaping the way forward for design documentation and recognition. Whether or not you’re a person designer or half of a bigger workforce, Sixelf is your companion in visualizing and sharing the story of your creativity.