In my experience, designers work in Figma. Then they play with and give feedback on what the mobile engineers actually built, same as the rest of us. Their critiques become backlog items and it is ultimately up to the PM which of them to prioritize and whether they are launch blockers. They may very well be fanatical about feel, but at the end of the day there is a long line of people who want mobile engineers to change things and they will not always be able to skip to the front. With visuals, on the other hand, they provide the engineers with detailed layouts and assets, so their intentions are almost always carried out precisely.
This sounds right on in my experience, though I would say a truly good UX designer should know the usability of what they're designing in Figma and understand those limitations enough to work with a developer during the design process if needed to refine a non-standard action/animation.
I agree with this. I think design has a serious principle-agent problem.
A beautiful design will live forever on your personal portfolio, but no one can directly experience usability there. So designers are fighting competing incentives to do what’s right for this product, and what’s right for their professional image. I think this is partly the cause for trend toward stylish-but-less-useable.
Furthermore, many designers--at least those developing mobile apps etc.--are young people with good eyesight. There's also a general fashion element but I suspect this is one factor in the popularity of thin, small fonts today. (TBF, there's also a general trend towards simpler logos and the like which render well on mobile.)
Don’t get me started on font sizes. I’m older now and theee designs hurt my eyes.
And on iOS if you use the system font and standard styles, text automatically adjusts to accessibility settings. So I always suggest that but every designer wants to “make their mark” with custom fonts that either font work with accessibility or require a bunch of extra coding that the product owner never gives time for.
That's the sad thing! If the developer would just stop coding for a minute, and use standard controls and fonts, you get a lot for free. Including proper resizing, accessibility, all the niceties that iOS provides built-in. The more you try to customize, write your own controls, and fight the standard tools; the more clever you try to be, the fewer and fewer things "just work".