Tools for Thinking and Tools for Systems

We published Tools for Thinking and Tools for Systems the other day and I reckon it’s the beginning of a much larger rant that’ll get round to writing one day. The gist of my argument is this: I think we’ve spent an awful amount of time building systems-based design tools (such as styleguides and pattern libraries) but we haven’t spent anywhere near enough time considering how to design tools that help designers think:

...our current tools encourage me to design the finished product first. They beg me to mess with rounded corners, colors, typefaces and stroke styles.

Tools such as Figma and Sketch are great for those sorts of hi-fidelity mocks but they’re not as good keeping designers focused on UX. And I worry that this distinction between these two separate tools hasn’t been made particularly clear in the past.