Makimo – Consultancy & Software Development Services

Design & Engineering

Mateusz Papiernik On Design & Engineering

7 things I learned from botching conference recordings

12 Mins Read

Once upon a time, there was a tech conference and a grand plan to have it properly recorded and published for others to enjoy. And then it all went haywire.

Every year in Makimo, we hold a company tech conference called CodeBetter. It’s an open space for everyone to share their experiences and ideas in front of an audience. It’s also a great way to get together and discuss what we’ve all achieved over the past year — contrary to the original name, all topics and areas are welcome, not just programming-related.

We did our first impromptu recordings of all the talks in 2021, and this year I thought: hey, let’s do it Better™ this time. As you can imagine from the title and the opening paragraph, it didn’t go according to plan. Let’s salvage some worthwhile takeaways from this, shall we?

Justyna Papiernik On Design & Engineering

10 inspiring insights I got from my first marathon

6 Mins Read

Pursuing a career, following your dreams, or taking a step outside your comfort zone is difficult. But it’s not meant to be easy, just like running a marathon. Apart from being physically taxing – even for the fittest – it’s mostly a journey into the gray matter of the mental and emotional game, where the rules keep changing and  your talents blend with grit. Here are some life and career lessons I’ve learned from running my first marathon. 

35+ Color Tools to Help Your Design Work
Justyna Papiernik On UX & Design

35+ tools to boost your color confidence

16 Mins Read

I have a lot of helpful tools stored in many different collections, among others an abysmal Pinterest catalog with a very generic label: “Design.“ While saving pins is fairly straightforward, searching for the exact item might be quite challenging. All tools from the same category have similar names and keywords; color tools’ names are usually variations of “color“ or “palette.“

I used to identify my favorite color system tool by appearance, but ColorBox changed the interface, leaving me helpless for a while. I decided to convert my frustration into a side project — a flat list of color tools with screenshots and a list of features as several of them have some unique ones. Feel free to search this list and use the tools to color the world!

10 commandments for better designer-developer collaboration
Justyna Papiernik, Olek Krawiel and Elżbieta Hofman On Design & Engineering

10 commandments for better designer-developer collaboration

8 Mins Read

The whole product experience is a cumulative effort of diverse project roles and talents, not a ’rockstar soloist.’ Even though some of them might represent two opposite ends of a spectrum – like designers and developers – they have more in common than one might expect.

Furthermore, they can benefit from both opening up to each other’s perspectives even more and following the same common principles for better teamwork. With that in mind, here are some insights to help improve designer-developer relationships, and hence better product design.