How we redesigned the Linear UI (part Ⅱ) In six weeks, we redesigned Linear’s UI. Discover the new UI and story behind it: http://linear.app/blog/how-we-redesigned-the-linear-ui… Show more

Today, we are revealing the result of many weeks of work redesigning Linear’s interface. We’ve adjusted the sidebar, tabs, headers, and panels to reduce visual noise, maintain visual alignment, and increase the hierarchy and density of navigation elements. These changes make space for Linear to evolve from a simple issue tracker into a purpose-buil... See more

Each afternoon, we divided the coding portions into groups of two engineers while designers iterated on other parts of the project, building a pipeline for us to work from. This daily back-and-forth between designers and engineers helped us get the first working version of the new UI by the end of the week. The result of that week’s work was added ... See more

Part of this, I believe, is about bringing back an opinionated approach to software design, where the tool asserts itself. For instance, Linear’s sleek, luminous feel and decisive approach to how work should be done shows how an unwavering commitment to a specific measure of pixel-perfect quality can be incredibly compelling. Similarly, a product l... See more

But Linear is a rebuttal to Jira. It is notably fast and only minimally customizable, defined by its meticulous design—in the fonts and colors, but also in the logic of how the product functions. Built for Agile workflows, Jira is exhaustively customizable in a way that some engineers find onerous. In contrast, the first version of Linear was desi

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Been designing the last few weeks and realized how simple but effective the @linear design system is. There is no design system team, no councils, no meetings about what we should call it or if it’s “atomic" or not. We have a system which has colors, type, icons and components https://t.co/Hu4ikyQoMi... See more

I also spent time aligning labels, icons, and buttons, both vertically and horizontally in the sidebar and tabs. It was definitely a challenge given the amount of UI elements we have on this tiny surface. This part of the redesign isn’t something you’ll immediately see but rather something that you’ll feel after a few minutes of using the app.