I work as designer, designin UI/UX solutions, illustrations, graphic design stuff and things like that. In my everyday life I do use pen and paper a lot, but different kinds of digital tools are my main tools. I need to share my designs and ideas very quickly across teams, and store the projects digitally. Besides these i also do some presentations every once in a while to introduce my design ideas to others.

We need to be aware that different kinds of AI tools might be a huge burden on the environment, and for example the water consumption of Chat GPT is significantly large compared to basic Google search.

FIGMA

Adobe’s digital tools and Figma are the ones that i rely on. Especially Figma is one very handy tool when designin UIs in a design team. It also allows you to share your design with the whole development team in real time easily, letting everyone know where we’re at, leave comments etc. It is a tool that I can use to create wireframes, prototypes, design systems, presentations or use it as a whiteboard when ideating or facilitating workshops. I an even do some animations and design eg. icons with it. It´s my favorite design tool! Figma lets everyone create a free account in a browser, so everyone can start to learn how to use it. It totally recommend that! I could actually go on and on about this topic, but at this point I’ll just say, that if you are interested in design tools, I recommend this one!

TIKTOK

I have an account in TikTok, and I also have published there a few times, but for me it is a little bit hectic media. I understand the possibilities of the platform, especially when trying to reach a lot of people around the world, but me being a designer, I usually want to share my designs so that you have a little bit more time to watch it. In TikTok the videos tend to be quite short and the audience doesn’t seem to like veruy long videos at all. However, I am still going to continue using it, to get to know it better and also reach the younger audience a bit more efficiently. I have actually taken a TikTok content creator -course alredy, so I do know the basics of it.

WHATSAPP

Whatsapp is a service that I use very very much. I use it in my studies to communicate with other students, with my family to communicate about family stuff, and also with my friends. So that’s actually the main messaging service I use. It’s very easy to use, you can write text, send pictures and videos and even voice messages. I like the thing that it allows people to gather in different kinds of groups, so the communication is very quick and effective. It’s even that easy, that my mom sends me GIF’s and stickers all the time, now that she found them 😀

LINKEDIN

I have used LinkedIn for about five years or so. At first it felt a bit odd and too official, but but over the years I have sort of started to like it. It’s still a platform where I share much more thoughtfully than anywhere else, but nowadays the significance of its existence is huge. More and more, for example, recruiters are looking for people through LinkedIn, so it’s quite relevant platform in job hunting these days. Sometimes LinkedIn feels still a little bit stiff platform, when people are only sharing their work life goals and stuff like that. i would be interested to hear a little bit more abut the people behind their professions.

INSTAGRAM

I have a several accounts in Instagram, for several occasions. Being a designer, an illustrator and a visual artist, for me it’s very crucial to have a platform which is based on pictures mostly. I can share my design in Instagram very effectively, find other designers and artist and also keep up with my friends. It has evolved into a platform that kind of combines the professional me and the personal me, and I use it very much for both work life and personal life. I like that I can share my photos and thoughts, an also videos as a little glimpses of events happening in my life. Sometimes Instagram also play an important role of knowing if some of my friend is struggling with some issues, as it seems that for some people things might be easier to tell in social media, that in person. PS. If you’re reading this, feel free to follow @hetalinnea_art 🙂

FACEBOOK

I remember when I first joined Facbook something around 2011. Most of my friends were there already but I didn’t know wether to register or not, as I didn’t see the benefits of it that time. Eventually i created my account and it was just a fun way to chat with your friends basically. Nowadays I have my personal account there, mostly to get information of relevant events and other topics that I’m interested, and a professional site account to share my designs with others. It has become one of the most important marketing platforms among Instagram. But I don’t like that there is a lot of advertisements nowadays in Facebook. It makes me sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed. At the moment a lot of my people in Facebook are wondering should they start to use some other platform or not, due to the America’s situation with Meta’s services. It’s a good topic to discuss, although I have still decided to keep my accounts alive.

BLUESKY

As people started to stop using Meta’s services, a lot of my friend has started to use BlueSky instead. So I created an account there a while ago. For me it’s a bit too much like Twitter/X, so I’m not a huge fan. But I feel that I need to be there, as my contacts have mostly gone there too. It can turn into a nice platform for discussion, I hope, but for me it would be more important to find a platform to share photos more than text.

Oops, I accidentally wrote about 7 platforms instead of 5, but I’m gonna leave them there 🙂

Anyway, my favorite tools are Figma, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. I like them because they are all easy to use and they help my everyday life both in work and in person. Of course we all need to be aware of the threats they might have, and remember not to share anything sensitive data. And the advertising especially in Facebook is something that I’m not a huge fan of.

I’m trying to keep myself open-minded when new social media platforms are developed. I have tried Threads, SnapChat, Slack, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Asana, Miro, Figma, Wix, Bluesky, BeReal just to mention few, because I am very curious to learn new digital services. But maybe I should remember to delete my accounts when I decide not to use the anymore..

Ps. This course was super nice for me, even though I’m used to work in digitalised working environments. It was important to read other student’s opinions and thoughts, and I found it very important to be reminded of the cyber security issues too. And i hadn’t used WP for about five years, and couldn’t remember much of it, so it was nice to learn this platform better!