Design Systems Podcast

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Chris and Shawn explore how design tools shape final products, emphasizing the crucial role of managing elements like forms and tables. Shawn shares insights on uniting Adobe departments for greater cohesion and how Spectrum 2 reflects organizational change. They discuss AI integration in design interfaces, drawing parallels with Apple's iPhone design evolution, highlighting AI's potential to revolutionize user experiences. Hear about intricacies of translating visual designs into functional code and maintaining brand consistency across product suites. They reflect on the challenges and excitement of problem-solving iterations, the evolution of design systems, and aligning brand with user experience.

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Guest
As a Senior Director of Experience Design at Adobe, Shawn Cheris runs Spectrum—an organization responsible for the overall brand and experience of all Adobe products—with teams focused on design systems, brand, iconography, content strategy, engineering, prototyping, and more. Outside of work, Shawn is also a father and husband and enjoys building (physical) things, photography, making music, cooking, baking, and a million other hobbies he wishes he had more time for. 

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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In this episode of the Design Systems Podcast, we explore the intricate world of theme management in complex design systems at Intuit. Nate Baldwin, Principal Designer at Intuit, shares a revolutionary framework for design tokens, enhancing governance and accessibility. We learn about Figma's role in color swapping and Intuit's theming engine for granular adjustments. Discover the balance between brand integrity and user personalization, and how tools like Leonardo and Proportion support adaptive theming. Join us for insights into personalized internet design and the challenges of thematic flexibility with Intuit's Nate Baldwin.

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Guest
Nate Baldwin is a Principal Product Designer on the Intuit Design System team. Nate is experienced with multi-brand theming, adaptive color systems, and design tokens. He is the creator of Leonardocolor.io, Proportio.app, and the interactive color guide ColorAndContrast.com. Connect with Nate at https://natebaldw.in.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.


Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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In this episode of the Design Systems Podcast, we invite you to join us as we engage in a conversation with David Müller, a product designer and design systems lead at one of the world’s top financial institutions. Together, we dive deep into the intricate landscape of banking systems, exploring the complexities of equipping problem solvers with the necessary tools. Gain insights into the importance of flexibility over a rigid "super component" and the significance of considering diverse user contexts. Join Chris and David as they discuss how AI is reshaping empathetic design systems, deliberate breakpoints for personalization, David's innovative design system, and the concept of an anti-fragile system. They emphasize cultivating patterns for innovation and balancing creativity with structure. Explore the future of UX/UI in an AI-driven world as they challenge conventional design practices in this thought-provoking episode.

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Guest
David Müller is a product and systems design lead who believes that HOW we do things is as important as WHAT we do. He spends a big part of his day bringing architecture, development, and product teams closer together to build products that make a real difference in the lives of their users, and do so more predictably.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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PJ Onori, a design systems veteran since 2011 and a driving force behind Pinterest's Gestalt system, talks about the transformative impact of design systems on product development, potentially reshaping the job landscape in design and engineering. In this episode, PJ recounts a pivotal experience at Disney, highlighting the delicate balance between productivity gains and workforce dynamics.We explore the benefits and hurdles of design systems, emphasizing the need for systems thinking, criticality, and adaptability in today's job market. Discover how new hires are shaping future cultures by embracing these systems, and how design systems foster collaboration between design and engineering teams, beyond efficiency and ROI. PJ shares insights into overcoming resistance to design constraints and empowering designers within boundaries to unleash creativity. This episode is essential for understanding the interplay between creativity, structure, and the evolving landscape of product design and development.

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Guest
PJ has been working on design systems off and on since 2011 for companies such as General Electric, Disney and Pinterest. PJ is keynote speaker at the Design Systems Leadership Summit in San Francisco on April 18, 2024. If you're looking to connect with PJ and other leaders transforming the world of digital product development, submit your application to attend.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join us for a milestone episode of The Design Systems Podcast, featuring Brian Dorsey, a key contributor to Mastercard's groundbreaking design system MADE. Explore how integrating designers into infrastructure teams has revolutionized collaboration. Discover how Mastercard leverages its design system to drive business forward with insights on accessibility, performance, and themability. Learn about per-component versioning and system-level versioning and how they accelerate product development.

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Guest
Brian Dorsey is a Director of Platform Product Management at Mastercard Data & Services, with a focus on building a development platform that accelerates time to market for products and provides a great developer experience. He treats the design system as front end infrastructure and a key piece of the overall platform.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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On this episode of DSP, we welcome guest Jackie Lai, a lead UX designer at OPIS, a Dow Jones company, with a rich background in interactive and product design. Explore Jackie's diverse design journey from web to physical products and the transformation of design tools. Discover the importance of cross-functional collaboration and the perpetual evolution of design systems. Jackie shares insights on balancing uniformity and flexibility, creating adaptable systems for mass production, and seeking continuous learning in the field. 

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Guest
Jackie Lai is deeply committed to fostering team empowerment through collaboration, shared services, and infrastructure design that ultimately benefits our end users. With over two decades of experience, she has honed her interdisciplinary skill set working in a wide variety of settings from startups to established giants. When not working, you'll find her exploring the globe, connecting with nature, practicing yoga, and savoring the art of preparing and enjoying matcha.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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In this episode of The Design Systems Podcast, we’re joined by guest Kevin Muldoon, Lead Design Technologist/Design Systems at Dow Jones, to discuss the concepts of alexandrian patterns and their application in design systems. We explore the idea of themes as reusable objects to solve specific design problems, discussing the challenges and potential solutions in creating composable and scalable design systems. The conversation dives deep into the evolution of design methodologies and the democratization of the creative process.

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Guest
Kevin Muldoon is a designer, programmer, writer and speaker on Design Systems and a Lead Design Technologist at Dow Jones. He created the Genome Color Tool palette generator and advocates the study of Game Design to create Design Systems at scale.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Curt Schreiber, Chief Creative Officer at VSA Partners, joins us for a compelling conversation on the multifaceted nature of design systems. We explore how these intricate frameworks must cater to a diverse array of users and stakeholders, highlighting the need for design systems to personify the organization's character. Curt shares his insights on maintaining design systems that are not only comprehensive and scalable but also flexibly attuned to the global audiences they serve. Throughout the episode, we address the importance of co-creation, continuous learning, and governance in the ever-expanding world of design.

Tune in to witness Curt's balanced view on the role of AI in asset creation and system management, while he weighs in on the prospect of centralizing control versus nurturing a rich ecosystem of design assets. The discussion encapsulates the pivotal role of design systems in strategic business conversations, underscoring their ability to reshape customer engagement and drive organizational change.

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Guest
Curt Schreiber is the heart of VSA design. He currently guides VSA’s creative philosophy, and is responsible for establishing the office’s design standards and offerings. Throughout his 30-year tenure with the company, Curt has been essential in the agency’s transition from a boutique design firm to a brand-led customer experience agency. Curt has decades of experience working with internationally-recognized global brands, and his client list includes VSA’s most prominent clientele. He also serves as an influential thought leader within the creative industry. Most recently, Curt was named one of Chicago’s most influential designers and included in AIGA’s This is Chicago. Curt’s work has been recognized by more than 100 international design and communications organizations, publications and competitions including the AIGA, Cannes Lions, Cooper Hewitt, Communication Arts, Graphis and the Society of Typographic Arts. His work is also included in the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Jina Anne and Adekunle Oduye join host Chris Strahl in a candid conversation that explores career pathways within the evolving realm of design systems amidst the latest market conditions. They share valuable insights on how the key to thriving in uncertain times is through understanding the nuanced dance between business language and design practice. Jina, renowned for her pioneering efforts in design tokens at Salesforce, illustrates the importance of scalability and care for user experience. Adekunle, drawing from his experience as lead design engineer at Plaid, discusses the intricate balancing act of adopting new technologies while maintaining user trust and meeting business objectives.

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Speakers
Jina (they/she) is a design systems advocate. They founded Clarity, a design systems community conference, and they maintain the Design Systems Slack. Jina co-chairs the Design Tokens Community Group. And on the Sass core team, they lead the brand and website design and development. Jina is also recognized as a Google Developers Expert (in Web Technologies [UI and Tooling]). Jina has been making websites as a hobby for about 30 years. They’ve worked professionally in the industry for 22 years (19 of those years working with design systems). They have been said to be one of the most cheerful goths.

Adekunle Oduye (Add-eh-koon-lay Oh-due-yay) is an UX Engineer born / breed / based in Brooklyn, New York. Currently he's at Plaid, where he's helping to build Threads, Plaid's official design system. Outside of work he's a coach, speaker, and co-hosts the Code and Pixels podcast. He's very passionate about design systems, prototyping, and front-end development. When he's not building software, you can probably find him reading up on Stoicism or planning my next adventure.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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In this episode of the Design Systems Podcast, we discuss the evolution of design systems with special guest Matt Weinberg, Senior Product Designer at Angi. Matt has a passion for empathy-driven design solutions and shares his unconventional career path that led him to tackle the challenge of refining and improving the design systems at Angi. He reveals how he approached the initial state of the design system, identified user needs, and implemented incremental improvements. Matt also shares the importance of gathering user feedback, conducting usability tests, and embracing a collaborative approach between designers and engineers. His insights provide a valuable roadmap for anyone navigating the complex world of design systems.

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Guest
Matt Weinberg is a systems-specialized product designer from Brooklyn, NY, currently working on design systems for Angi. He is largely focused on design system ergonomics, designer-engineer collaboration, tooling + workflows, accessibility, and keeping systematic UI creative + fun.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Josh Clark and Chris Strahl dive into an in-depth discussion about navigating the digital landscape amidst economic unpredictability. They discuss the intricacies of building and maintaining design systems in large organizations, addressing the challenges of scaling, and emphasizing the strategic value of digital investments. Josh, an advocate for design systems as capital expenditure, shares his expertise on how these systems contribute to product development, impact revenue, and enhance customer retention, all while ensuring a balance between innovation and automation.

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Guest

Josh Clark is the founder and principal of Big Medium, a digital agency that specializes in big design, helping complex organizations design at scale. He‘s a UX design leader who guides projects to build design systems and transform digital organizations through emerging technology, process, and user experience. At Big Medium, Josh’s clients include Caterpillar, United Airlines, UPS, the Cigna Group, Dotdash Meredith, Pfizer, and many others.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.


Sponsor

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl sits with Nathan Curtis as he explores the delicate balance between reusing existing components and creating customized solutions in UI design. They unpack the complexities of design systems, touching on everything from color selection to ensuring functional and aesthetic harmony, providing insights on principled design choices in a world where reuse and customization are equally important.

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Guest

Nathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown near Washington, DC in 2006. He’s passionate about information architecture, user experience design, and front end development, and leads and consults with design systems teams to chart a strategic path and optimize operations. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs about design systems regularly, and speaks at events worldwide.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join Chris Strahl as he sits with Lisa Apers, a visionary in UI design, as she presents her innovative research on brainwave-responsive user interfaces. Explore how EEG sensors integrated into UIs can revolutionize our digital experiences, creating interfaces that dynamically adapt to individual cognitive states and daily activities. 

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Guest

I’m an independent designer and researcher. Partnering with change makers, I craft scalable digital experiences through various services across brand, web and product design.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join Chris Strahl and Tim Banker on an exciting dive into the world of innovative design systems. They explore the creation of tailored solutions for a diverse range of global markets, showcasing how a 'system of systems' approach can meet various needs, from marketing to transactional experiences. Get ready to transcend the one-size-fits-all model and redefine design flexibility.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Design System Roadmap & Strategy for the Enterprise’ on November 29th. 

Guest

Tim Banker serves as Senior Director of Global Experience Design at Slalom Consulting. He specializes in helping companies on their journey toward design at scale, with a focus on design systems, design & research operations, and enterprise accessibility strategy.

Resources:

https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/crosscultural-design/
https://www.w3.org/blog/international/
https://www.w3.org/TR/international-specs/
https://uxknowledgebase.com/internationalization-localization-d84795b7962c
https://rtlstyling.com/
https://systems-of-harm.fireside.fm/

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join Chris Strahl as he sits with Alex Wilson and Jon Reidy as they discuss their approach to evolving with community demands at T. Rowe Price. Dive into the dynamic process of identifying what drives your customers, crafting solutions that resonate, and ensuring widespread adoption of these innovations. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Design System Roadmap & Strategy for the Enterprise’ on November 29th. 

Guest

Alex is the Engineering Manager and Technical Lead of the Design System at T. Rowe Price. He specializes in leveraging web standards to craft performant, accessible, and interoperable components that enhance both user and developer experiences.

Jon is a Design System leader at T. Rowe Price. He previously led the Design System at HSBC and has been specializing in this space for around 8 years.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join Chris Strahl and Maya Hampton as they unpack the power of usage data and its pivotal role in driving adoption, efficiency, and quality. Dive deep, discover the real value of design systems, and see how every component counts!

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Design System Roadmap & Strategy for the Enterprise’ on November 29th. 

Guest

Maya is the Senior Digital Product Manager for Design Systems at REI, where she leads a cross-functional team on a mission to build a robust foundation for the co-op's digital ecosystem. You can follow her work on the Cedar Design System at https://cedar.rei.com/

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join Chris Strahl and JJ Rogers, as they explore the challenges and triumphs of harmonizing diverse products at Watermark, highlighting how a harmonized ecosystem elevates user experience and ensures consistent design across all platforms.

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Guest

JJ Rogers serves as Director of Product Design at Watermark, a software provider helping institutions engage educators and learners to improve institutional effectiveness, program quality, and student learning. He brings a wealth of experience from his work in design consultancies to the mergers and acquisitions space, creating a unified, holistic suite of products for 1700+ higher ed institutions.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Join Chris Strahl, Kevin Goldman, and Sierre Wolfkostin as they sit down to explore the Fido Alliance's mission of revolutionizing online authentication by eliminating traditional passwords and replacing them with secure and user-friendly passkeys. Discover how these principles, tested and proven, are set to transform user experiences and incentivize the widespread use of passkeys, offering a glimpse into the future of design systems.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘What Really Matters in Design Systems’ on October 25th. 

Guests

Kevin is the Chief Experience Officer at Trusona where he helped create the Trusona Authentication Cloud — a passkey-as-a-service platform, offering the simplest, quickest, and lowest cost way to increase website engagement with passkeys. Prior to Trusona, Kevin founded the user experience (UX) consulting firm, 29th Drive, which was acquired three years later. Kevin serves as a FIDO Alliance Board member. He chartered and is Chair of the FIDO Alliance UX Working Group comprised of UX professionals from 31 global brands. Outside of work, he likes quality time with his kids, motorcycle track riding, forging knives, and time away from the fragile glowing screen.

Sierre is a product designer based in Ann Arbor, MI. With a learning mindset and a focus on understanding people, she has helped make Duo Security’s authentication experience both easier and more secure for all. Most recently, she led design for the Universal Prompt: a ground up UX and technical redesign of Duo’s core 2FA product. She now works to help kill the password and further improve our industry’s standards for authentication in partnership with the FIDO Alliance. Sierre holds degrees in UX design and business from the University of Michigan. In her free time, she enjoys writing non-fiction, reading books, and greeting the neighborhood cats.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl sits with Jay Smith as they unravel the secrets of REI's design system consistency. Uncover how their groundbreaking approach to design, colors, and tokens is reshaping standards. With an eco-friendly twist: for every contribution to the system, trees are planted. As the system grows, so does a forest.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘What Really Matters in Design Systems’ on October 25th. 

Guest

Jay Smith is a systems thinker who loves building clever, durable solutions to root-cause problems. A Principal Product Designer at REI, he’s been creating and curating the decisions used by teams across the nation’s largest consumer cooperative for over a decade.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl sits with Jamie Totten from Klue and they unpack the unique challenges and benefits of implementing a design system in a fast-paced startup. Drawing inspiration from Spotify's "guild format", they emphasize the importance of voluntary commitment, maintaining positivity and on making the most with limited resources.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘What Really Matters in Design Systems’ on October 25th. 

Guest

Jamie Totten is a UX Engineer at Klue, where he facilitates and coordinates the Design System Guild efforts, and hopes to someday turn the guild into a real team. Embedded on the Design team, he supports product and engineering teams with their features. He loves systems thinking, design, and engineering. He also loves clean, well structured code, and thoughtful design that solves human problems.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris Strahl sits with Juli Sombat from Spotify and Jason Pamental from Chewy as they unravel the evolution of digital typography, emphasizing the shift from dictation to suggestion. They explore the dynamic between designers and users and the transformative power of user customization.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘What Really Matters in Design Systems’ on October 25th.

Guests

Juli Sombat is the design lead for Encore, Spotify’s family of design systems. Her passion for cross-functional collaboration and her deep understanding of the principles and practices that underpin successful design systems help her evangelize for systems thinking at all levels. Prior to Encore, she led the multi-brand design system at Conde Nast.

Jason Pamental is a Principal Designer at Chewy working on their design system, an Invited Expert on the W3C’s Web Fonts Working Group, and a deeply nerdy fan of variable fonts and web typography. Or just another hack with a camera phone, walking around at sunrise posting pictures of a really photogenic collie.

Link to the Monotype article Jason wrote: https://labs.monotype.com/caseco-a-case-for-variable-fonts-2d86960a0c19

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl sits with Tony Pantello and Chris Henke who tackle the age-old conflict between design and development. They discuss harnessing the power of design systems to streamline collaboration, conquer inefficiency, and unlock the true potential of their teams.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘What Really Matters in Design Systems’ on October 25th. 

Guest

Tony Pantello is a Senior UI/UX Designer and Product Design Team Lead at Accutech Systems based in Muncie, IN. He was the catalyst behind the creation of Accutech’s design system and is privileged to guide a small but mighty team building out Accutech’s product design discipline. He firmly believes that the waffle is the best sugary breakfast entree and can talk for days about his shark tank business ideas.

Chris Henke is a Senior UI/UX Developer on the Product Design team at Accutech Systems Inc. based in Muncie, IN. He helped build the design system at Accutech and is helping bring a focus to the front-end development and user experience of Accutech products.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl and Billea Breen explore the essential interaction between design and development to craft a flawless user experience, offering tactics to maintain consistency and enhance workflows.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘What Really Matters in Design Systems’ on October 25th. 

Guest

Meet Billea, the Senior UX Designer at Monster who weaves tech magic into seamless user experiences. With a knack for bridging design and development and a passion for strong foundations, she crafts digital solutions that resonate with all users.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl and Mark Reynolyds navigate the ever-changing world of design systems, exploring the idea that design and engineering roles will become more aligned in the near future.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Theming in Complex Ecosystems’ with Donnie D’Amato on August 30th. 

Guest

Mark Reynolds is a design systems expert who works with enterprise organisations to set up successful design system practices. He is a consultant, educator and mentor in this space and helps elevate the benefits of design systems across the industry.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Chris Strahl talks with Kevin Broich about his transition from backend developer to designer at Cisco. Kevin shares insights on creating a crucial CSS-based UI kit for Cisco's major rebranding phase and more.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Theming in Complex Ecosystems’ with Donnie D’Amato on August 30th. 

Guest

Kevin Broich, Design Systems advocate. Experienced front-end architect, developer, designer and UI evangelist.  I live at the intersection of design and engineering. Always looking for ways to increase efficiency, reduce friction, and innovate with new tools, automation and processes.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris Strahl chats with Kate and Cinita on Pinterest's design system, Gestalt. Learn how their team built a system prioritizing documentation, inclusivity and accessibility. A space designed to ensure global and remote activity, encouraging users to easily contribute and communicate effectively. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Theming in Complex Ecosystems’ with Donnie D’Amato on August 30th. 

Guests

Kate Halvorsen is a product designer based in Chicago, IL. She’s currently a staff product designer working on the mobile side of Pinterest’s Gestalt Design System. A big part of her day to day is advocating for experiences that are both accessible and equitable. She enjoys newstalgia design, slow travel and a good lavender matcha latte.

Cintia Romero is a product designer with over 12 years of experience building products and experiences for multiple platforms. Latina from Brazil, working at Pinterest as a Senior Product Designer on Gestalt, our Design System, and advocating for human-centered design while spreading good practices related to accessibility, diversity, and inclusion. 

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Join Chris Strahl as he sits down with Sriram Ramasubramanian from Meta to discuss the intricacies of designing at scale. Dive deep into the world of design systems, Figma plugins, design tokens, and the challenges of interoperability across multiple platforms.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Theming in Complex Ecosystems’ with Donnie D’Amato on August 30th. 

Guest

Sriram Ramasubramanian is a Senior Engineering Manager supporting Design Systems at Meta. Sriram has many years of experience building component libraries on several UI frameworks and shipping app-wide design updates. Sriram is currently focused on interoperable design systems at scale. 

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris and Robin discuss creating an environment and ecosystem where people are excited to use design systems; and the importance these systems have when encouraging trust and accountability to assist teams with their work.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Theming in Complex Ecosystems’ with Donnie D’Amato on August 30th.

Guest

Robin Cannon is Executive Director and Head of Design System at J.P. Morgan. He was previously Global Director of Design Systems for IBM iX, and Program Director for IBM's Carbon Design System.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Christophe and Chris discuss the art of building thriving design system communities. They share their profound insights and experiences, offering valuable perspectives on fostering vibrant and inclusive communities that flourish with creativity and collaboration.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Introducing Knapsack V4: A Powerful Update for a Future-Ready Experience,’ July 26th at 1 pm (ET) and 10 am (PT).

Guest

Christophe Coutzoukis, manages the Design System Social Club, he's an ADPList mentor, spends tons of time working in design systems and describes himself as a hybrid where he does a lot of design and engineering work. He has over 20 years of work experience, and an extensive network within the design system community. 

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Adam and Chris discuss the power of design systems and their ability to break down barriers between designers and developers.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘Introducing Knapsack V4: A Powerful Update for a Future-Ready Experience,’ July 26th at 1 pm (ET) and 10 am (PT).

Guest

Adam Sedwick is a senior product manager with a 10 year background in design and development focused on modular design and design systems.

His background provides the insight and ability to help teams work better together to close the gap between static designs and production experiences.

At Discovery Education he leads the Design Systems team, working with individual product teams to provide resilient and reusable solutions at scale.

Adam currently resides in Tennessee with his wife and son. When not at the computer he enjoys creative outlets in the physical space including painting, amateur woodworking, and building with LEGO.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Richard and Chris discuss iterative work and how integral thinking by doing is when progressing work forward. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘AI in Design Systems’ on June 28th, 1 pm (ET) and 10 am (PT).

Guest
Professionally, I express myself through creating new products and businesses, both for myself and others. My first business was designing and printing t-shirts in my parent's garage at 14-yrs old.

Since then I’ve been fortunate enough to play either a founding or leadership role in several companies. To share what I've learned, I speak at conferences, run workshops, write articles, books and am a regular guest on industry podcasts.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Sheryl and Chris discuss the complexities of the design system space as it involves human behaviours.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘AI in Design Systems’ on June 28th, 1 pm (ET) and 10 am (PT).

Guest
Sheryl Cababa is the author of Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers. She's a design researcher and strategist and is the Chief Strategy Officer at Substantial, an education-focused research, insights, and development studio based in Seattle. Her practice is focused on systems thinking and equity-centered design, and she's worked with a diverse base of clients including the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, IKEA, and Khan Academy. 

Her focus is on using design to help clients reimagine education.  She also teaches at the University of Washington's Human-Centered Design and Engineering program, helping to introduce systems thinking to the next generation of designers.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Danielle and Chris discuss the impact designing at scale will have on ROI.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register here for our upcoming webinar, ‘AI in Design Systems’ on June 28th, 1 pm (ET) and 10 am (PT).

Guest
Danielle MacDonald is a design leader and self-proclaimed design systems geek, with over 15 years of experience in managing digital design from concept to launch. She has a focus on creating digital experiences that strive to meet user needs. Danielle knows how to work within constraints to solve an experience challenge and how to push beyond them. Danielle currently resides in New England with her husband and three daughters. When she isn’t thinking about digital experiences you can find her at a hockey rink, soccer field, lacrosse field or enjoying the beach.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris Deluca and Chris discuss  the significance of prioritizing people in the process of developing design systems. They explore a central question that consistently arises: Whose lives are you striving to enrich and simplify?

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests
Chris DeLuca is a senior front end web developer from New Jersey with thirteen years of experience serving large organizations with complex needs, such as The Daily Beast, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and now Lullabot. He specializes in design systems and system architecture, focusing on producing maintainable solutions to difficult problems. He is currently nomadic.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Kendall and Chris discuss how design systems represent the strategic platform for how a company creates product.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Register for our upcoming ‘Design Systems Buying Guide’ webinar on May 24th, 2 pm (EST), hosted by Chris Strahl and Dan Mall.

Guest
Kendall Totten began as a graphic designer & frontend web dev and found Drupal early in her career. She contributed to the frontend for sites such as dallascowboys.com, weather.com & redhat.com. At Red Hat, she helped to champion the OS design system & web components project PatternFly Elements. She is now the Engineering Manager at Pinata and lives in Raleigh, NC.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

A round table discussion hosted by Chris and Andrew from Knapsack with the Meta Blueprint team, part two.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Christopher Clare - Director of Product Design

Chris Clare is the Head of Foundation Design for FB App responsible for unifying the app through the Blueprint Design System, driving efficiency for the rest of the design org and giving capacity back to our teams to focus on innovation. Prior to this role, he was the Head of Design for the Communities Product Group at Meta. His team was responsible for helping people build meaningful communities through products like Groups, Events, Profile and Messenger. After he joined the company 7.5 years ago to help rethink the strategy and experience for the Groups Product, it quickly became the top priority for the company who changed their mission to be community driven. In the previous 15 years before Meta, Chris has led Design System and Product teams as multiple Companies, including his time as Creative Director at Motorola (Google) and head of Skype Android and Desktop at Microsoft.

Mitch Johnson - Director, Product Design

Mitch Johnson leads the Blueprint Design System Team for Facebook responsible for building the underlying Design System and infrastructure to enable teams design efficiently on a unified infrastructure, consistently across surfaces, accessible for all users, and to a high bar of people-first quality.

Elizabeth Rifer - Director, Content Design Director

Elizabeth is responsible for developing Facebook’s content architecture. She spent years building Facebook Marketplace and believes in strengthening communities through local commerce. Her mission is to humanize technology so everyone (including her mother) can enjoy it.

Dan Lebowitz - Director, Product Design

Dan Lebowitz is a Product Design Director at Meta leading design system architecture across Facebook and partnering across the company on systems initiatives. Since 2015, Dan has helped lead the design of Meta’s web platform, numerous design systems, and 0-1 products.

Adelle Charles - Product Design Manager

Adelle Charles leads the Design Excellence team for Facebook responsible for our broader Excellence programs, design craft, design tooling and partnering on Blueprint to deliver on design tool efficiency and quality across Facebook.

Andrew Rohman - VP Sales & CS at Knapsack

Andrew leads Knapsack’s customer-facing teams and has experience with dozens of large enterprise Design System implementations. Andrew provides a practical approach to goal setting and fostering both organizational and cultural change when adopting a design system.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

A round table discussion hosted by Chris and Andrew from Knapsack with the Meta Blueprint team (part one).

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Christopher Clare - Director of Product Design

Chris Clare is the Head of Foundation Design for FB App responsible for unifying the app through the Blueprint Design System, driving efficiency for the rest of the design org and giving capacity back to our teams to focus on innovation. Prior to this role, he was the Head of Design for the Communities Product Group at Meta. His team was responsible for helping people build meaningful communities through products like Groups, Events, Profile and Messenger. After he joined the company 7.5 years ago to help rethink the strategy and experience for the Groups Product, it quickly became the top priority for the company who changed their mission to be community driven. In the previous 15 years before Meta, Chris has led Design System and Product teams as multiple Companies, including his time as Creative Director at Motorola (Google) and head of Skype Android and Desktop at Microsoft.

Mitch Johnson - Director, Product Design

Mitch Johnson leads the Blueprint Design System Team for Facebook responsible for building the underlying Design System and infrastructure to enable teams design efficiently on a unified infrastructure, consistently across surfaces, accessible for all users, and to a high bar of people-first quality.

Elizabeth Rifer - Director, Content Design Director

Elizabeth is responsible for developing Facebook’s content architecture. She spent years building Facebook Marketplace and believes in strengthening communities through local commerce. Her mission is to humanize technology so everyone (including her mother) can enjoy it. 

Dan Lebowitz - Director, Product Design

Dan Lebowitz is a Product Design Director at Meta leading design system architecture across Facebook and partnering across the company on systems initiatives. Since 2015, Dan has helped lead the design of Meta’s web platform, numerous design systems, and 0-1 products.

Adelle Charles - Product Design Manager

Adelle Charles leads the Design Excellence team for Facebook responsible for our broader Excellence programs, design craft, design tooling and partnering on Blueprint to deliver on design tool efficiency and quality across Facebook.

Andrew Rohman - VP Sales & CS at Knapsack

Andrew leads Knapsack’s customer-facing teams and has experience with dozens of large enterprise Design System implementations. Andrew provides a practical approach to goal setting and fostering both organizational and cultural change when adopting a design system.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Kaelig, Darren, and Chris talk tokens and code: “Using a whole different type of brain.”

View the transcript of this episode here.

Want to hear more? Register for Knapsack’s upcoming talking tokens webinar here.

Guests

Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent, Principal Software Engineer at Netlify

Founder of the Design Tokens W3C Community Group, providing open standards for products and design tools to share design system foundations at scale.

Darren Simons, Senior Product Designer, Design Systems at Mulesoft

Digital Product Designer who is able to untangle complicated requirements, build design systems from the ground up, and incorporate them into the design workflow. I bring design and technology together to craft elegant user interfaces with an emphasis on the end-user experience.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Amber, Taylor, and Chris talk tokens; the pros and cons.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Amber Stickel, Principal Design Technologist at Intuit

Front-end designer and developer with a passion for creating modular, reusable, and flexible interfaces and systems. With multidisciplinary knowledge and tools in hand, I’m hoping to improve the web one experience at a time.

Taylor Cashdan, Design Systems Lead at Mayo Clinic

Multidisciplinary creative and community builder that's passionate about people, design, and all the intersections in between. I bring to the table a burning desire to collaborate with teams tasked with creating exceptional work for people who give a shit.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Morgane and Chris discuss the idea that many design systems pitch themselves as a technical asset. However, design systems can extend past this notion to offer business value,  patterns, and ROI.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Morgane Peng is a Managing Director and Head of Design at Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking where she builds products for start-ups, corporates and financial institutions. Outside of work, she is a mentor, conference speaker and also contributes to an indie video game crowdfunded on Kickstarter. You can find Morgane on Twitter as @morganepeng and on Medium.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Evan and Chris discuss source of truth and how it is linked most importantly to overall user experience opposed to just design or code.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Evan Lovely is the co-founder and Head of Product & Engineering at Knapsack. Evan was previously the CTO at Basalt Inc and a software architect at Phase2. He has a passion for developing well-designed, scalable software solutions and extensive experience in leading technical teams and projects. 

Evan is certified as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and as a CompTIA A+ Certified Computer Technician.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Jennie and Chris discuss following the path of least resistance when building design systems. It must feel natural and easier for the people using the system, so much so, it doesn’t make sense to continue with old habits. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Jennie Yip is a hybrid design engineer with a heart for elegant user interfaces, simple user experiences, and beautifully crafted code. Loves building scalable design systems while helping designers and engineers work better together.  She’s currently Principal Design Architect at Atlassian, reimagining Atlassian Design System. You can find Jennie musing about design systems or her bebe component on Twitter @jenniesyip.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Avery Oldt and Chris discuss the importance of scaling ideas, systematic thinking, and cross-team integration for product delight and success.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest
Avery Oldt is Head of Design & Research at Amazon for Amazon Fashion. His past work includes leading design, product, and engineering teams at MTV, Restoration Hardware, Louis Vuitton, Booking.com, and BNP Paribas. Over the past 25 years and across various industries, he's found his sweet spot at the intersection of design and technology, creating space for great products to emerge from diverse teams and positive culture.

You can find Avery on LinkedIn or walking in the redwoods of Marin County, California. 

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Jack McCloy and Chris discuss the purpose of a design system and its ability to iterate faster, build better, more accessible, consistent products. Not only saving money but achieving outcomes you wouldn’t practically be able to do without a systems approach.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Jack McCloy is an Engineering Manager at Amplitude, where he leads the frontend infrastructure / design system team. He and his team develop architectural patterns, tooling, and systems that help engineers build and iterate more rapidly and designers scale their work. 

Jack also angel invests in companies working on dev/design tools, data tools, infrastructure, and b2b SasS products. You can follow / connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn. 

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Adekunle and Chris cover a number of topics spanning from the importance of flexibility, connection, communication, collaboration and designing systems to ultimately solve problems for its users. 

View the transcript of this episode, here.

Guest

Adekunle Oduye (Add-eh-koon-lay Oh-due-yay) is currently building design systems at Plaid. Outside of work, he is a coach/mentor, conference speaker and co-host of the Code and Pixels podcast. 

You can learn more about him on his website (https://www.adekunleoduye.com), linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adekunleoduye), or twitter (https://twitter.com/adekunleoduye).

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Jen, Donnie and Chris discuss how design systems reflect the people a part of it, who use it and who maintain it; and the importance of collaboration, that systems are built for and with people.

View the transcript of this episode, here. 

Guest

Jen is a product designer and educator from NYC. She’s currently a Senior Experience Designer at Signet Jewelers, exploring ways to expand and improve their Amor Design System. You can find Jen on LinkedIn and jennifer.damato.design.

Donnie is a design systems architect, adjunct faculty of UX curriculum, and armchair philosopher from New York. Author of Gridless Design. You can find Donnie on LinkedIn and donnie.damato.design.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Michael and Chris discuss how systems have always been prominent when solving problems within designs and the importance they have in connecting and enabling everyone to remain consistent along the user journey. 

Donald Judd - 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982–1986

View the transcript of this episode, here.

Guests

Michael Jeter is the Creative Director at Zapier, a no code automation tool that connects work apps you use daily. At Zapier, Jeter leads a brand team of twelve fantastic creatives. 

Jeter was previously a Creative Director at Dropbox, and has worked with brands like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. to help tell meaningful brand stories. 

Jeter is based in Austin, Texas where he eats entirely too much queso.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Francesco and Chris discuss the importance of foundational concepts like code, that help secure buy-in and  prove value within an organization. Thus, supporting Francesco's current thoughts that building on existing design systems proves to be more viable for his work at Klarna.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Francesco Cutolo is a Design Manager (currently leading the design system) at Klarna. Born in Pompeii,  he moved to Sweden after spending 10+ years building digital products for desktop and mobile systems across Europe.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Tyce and Smith discuss with Chris the concept of local systems and the focus on building areas within the business that extend past basics and build on core components that create variance. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Tyce Clee is an Engineering Manager working on Encore, the design system for Spotify. They’re a big fan of arcade games, travel, and emo karaoke nights.

Smith Schwartz is a Design Manager working on Ads Design System, an Encore local system for Spotify. Before tech, she designed and implemented IRL experiences for museums like The Art Institute of Chicago and Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Todd and Chris discuss shipping experiences, the experience being the product, and the math behind building a well-oiled design system. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Todd is the Chief Product Officer of Remote where he leads all things Product, including the Product Management and Design teams. Todd has led Product, Design, and P&L at several market-leading companies including Atlassian, Automattic, Auctane, and IBM. He is passionate about systematic approaches to increase the speed and quality of product development. He speaks and writes about product management, design, and remote work regularly. He has 6 kids, too many volunteering/service projects, and an obsession with Texas bbq and spicy Indian curries.

Host

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Nick and Chris discuss how 75% of production design jobs are going to go away, and what will replace this space. Ultimately, how do designers become proactive vs. reactive in an ever changing environment?

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest
Nick Hahn, is the founder of Creative Liberation, a coaching and design consultancy. He has spent 20 years riding the rise of the Design industry through agencies and inhouse at IBM, InVision, and Meta.

Nick now specializes in the human side of Design Systems – governance, contribution, and adoption models, all while guiding the deep cultural changes needed to ensure long term success of design systems.
You can find him on LinkedIn and at creativelib.us. 

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Dana Lawson and Chris discuss the future of design systems as it relates to the relationship between engineering leaders and design counterparts. 

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest
Dana Lawson is Senior Vice President of Engineering at Netlify overseeing Engineering and Support. Previously she has led and grown teams at GitHub, Heptio, InVision, and New Relic. She has over 20+ years of experience and has led many different teams and has worn many hats to compliment a product’s lifecycle. With a true passion for people, she brings this mix of technology and fun to her leadership style.  

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Kathryn Gonzalez and Chris discuss the evolution of design systems from centralized to localized and how DoorDash’s design system team is evolving as their system matures.

Guest:
Kathryn Gonzalez is the head of design infrastructure at DoorDash, where she leads design systems design, design systems engineering, accessibility, and prototyping. She was the first designer and front-end engineer at DoorDash and has been living at the intersection of design and engineering for her entire career. She loves startups, sports, and fashion and is a proud queer woman of color from the South.

Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Evan Lovely (Head of Product & Engineering), Chris Bloom (Principal Front-End Engineer), Jake Love (Senior Solutions Engineer), and Brittany Smart (Solutions Engineer) join Chris to discuss the state of design systems today. Listen as the Knapsack team shares hot takes on everything from the lesser known elements of successful design systems to the role vulnerability should play in your system. 

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

View the transcript for this episode here. 

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Stephen Gates and Chris discuss the realities of design system leadership, unconventional sources of inspiration, and the impact of design on society. 

Guest: With over 20 years of experience, Stephen is a global design leader who has built world-class teams at organizations that integrate research and data with human-centered design methods to drive business impact. He’s helped companies like Starwood Hotels, Citi, InVision, and WW scale their design practice and grow successful teams. Stephen is also the host of the award-winning podcast, The Crazy One, which features in-depth explorations of issues that matter to creatives, including leadership, creativity, and career development and innovation. You can find Stephen through his website, on Twitter or Instagram as @sdgates and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

View the transcript for this episode here. 

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Vojtech Miksu (Software Engineer at Uber) and Evan Lovely (Chief Architect at Knapsack) join Chris to discuss the gap between a frontend developer’s code base and what actually gets shipped, the next-gen tool (Ladle) Vojtech created to address this, and ultimately helping developers get closer to what end users experience.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Meghan Rosatelli and Saejin Choi join Chris to discuss transitioning multiple design systems into one, shifting system consumers’ mindset from working with a local system to working with a global system, and using play to drive excitement and adoption of a design system.

Guest: Meghan Rosatelli is the Director of Design for Capital One’s enterprise design system. She also teaches courses in digital arts at the University of Richmond. You can find Meghan on LinkedIn.

Guest: Saejin is currently the Experience Lead for Capital One's design system. His previous life at Capital One was leading the Digital Payments and Commerce design team. You can find Saejin on LinkedIn, or via his years-long dormant Twitter account @saejinchoi.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack unites your design, code, and content in a central source of truth for your entire product team. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Nick, Ellis, and Chris discuss how News UK’s design system, NewsKit, united multiple disparate brands in a central source of truth, and how infrastructure management has helped scale design and engineering practices.

Guest: Ellis Capon is a Senior Product Manager at News UK, who looks after the NewsKit design system amongst other products within the NewsKit ecosystem. You can find Ellis on Twitter as @ellis_capon and on LinkedIn.

Guest: Nick Dorman is Head of Design Systems at News UK, a design leader with over 15 years of experience in publishing. You can find Nick on Twitter as @Nickdorman1 and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.Sponsor: Knapsack unites your design, code, and content in a central source of truth for your entire product team. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Curious about the fun parts of design systems? Check out this episode of the Design Systems Podcast featuring Davy Fung, co-host of design systems podcast Design System Office Hours,  who joined Chris to talk about working creatively within design system constraints, common structures for design systems, and building a Jedi Council of Design System Advocates. 

Guest: Davy Fung formerly led design systems across Disney+, Hulu, and Star+, now at Meta working on design systems for Meta Business Suite. You can find Davy on Twitter as @cobradave, his podcast Design System Office Hours, and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack unites your design, code, and content in a central source of truth for your entire product team. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Una, Chris, and Chris talk about production-level code, the accessibility of Web3, and the new sliced bread of the web. Prepare for Una to blow your mind with how dynamic CSS can be.

Guest: Una Kravets is ​​a Brooklyn-based developer who's making the web more styleable as a Developer Advocate at Google Chrome. Previously, she was the Director of Product Design at Bustle Digital Group and worked on building maintainable design systems as a UI Engineer at both DigitalOcean and IBM Design. She co-hosts two web development podcasts: Toolsday and the CSS Podcast, as well as the web video series Designing in the Browser. She creates technical illustrations called Dev Doodles, does brush lettering and calligraphy, and has started technical meetup groups in Washington, DC and Austin, TX. You can check out her website for more about her work and projects, or learn a thing or two about code from her Twitter.

Guest: Chris Bloom is a full-stack developer passionate about design systems, component-driven development, and many, many JavaScript frameworks. You can find Chris on Twitter as @illepic and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack unites your design, code, and content in a central source of truth for your entire product team. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Corey and Chris discuss how design systems represent an organization’s lifeblood, the sisyphean parts of design system maintenance, and what stands out about design system culture at Compass.

Guest: Corey is the Head of Design Systems at Compass. He has made a career out of building and leading design teams through complicated enterprise challenges to create experiences that customers love. He has years of experience within agencies, consulting firms, and in-house organizations leading design teams, implementing enterprise-level design systems, and directing UX. He believes the best products are built by diverse teams and curious leaders. You can find Corey at his website, on Twitter as @BlankSky, and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack unites your design, code, and content in a central source of truth for your entire product team. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Last week Knapsack announced Patterns, the leadership-focused design systems retreat. Chris and Ryan Peterson, Knapsack's VP Marketing, and Chris talk about the what, why, and who behind Patterns, an invite-only retreat for 50 engineering, product, and design leaders. Curious about why it's focused on leader-level topics? Wondering if it will help you get more investment in your design system? List in to learn about what we're planning—and why you (or your manager) should go.

Ryan Peterson is VP of Marketing at Knapsack and producer of @TheDSPod. Ryan has spent the last seven years working with design systems and the teams that use them. You can find Ryan on Twitter as @ryanptrsn and on LinkedIn.

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack unites your design, code, and content in a central source of truth for your entire product team. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Matt, Veda, and Chris discuss how Matt and Veda have incorporated accessibility and inclusion into one of the world’s most well-known design systems, Spectrum. Matt shares his experience getting accessibility principles into Spectrum on the ground floor, and Veda discusses how inclusion fits into design systems.

Guests: Matt May is the Head of Inclusive Design at Adobe. His work includes integrating inclusive design practices across every aspect of the Adobe user experience, training and mentoring the Adobe Design team, and advocating principles of accessibility and inclusive design to the public at large. You can find Matt on Twitter as @mattmay and on LinkedIn.

Veda Rosier is the Principal Product Manager, Design Systems at Adobe. She ​​is an experienced product manager with a strong bias towards action, and a self-directed expert in defining business needs and feasible solutions to support strategic goals. Veda is committed to utilizing best practices to build excellent products while remaining flexible and sensitive to the maturity and resources of the organization. You can find Veda on Twitter as @VedaRosier and LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Wayfair, the ubiquitous online retailer, is more than just wayfair.com: the company owns Perigold, Joss & Main, and Birch Lane. Neva, Rogin, and Chris discuss how Wayfair united three disparate design systems into one; the gradual process of building a holistic design system team; achieving cross-functional design system adoption, and the merits of overthinking.

Guests: Neva Corbo-Hudak is the Product Design Lead at Wayfair. She’s a multidisciplinary designer passionate about crafting user-centered experiences. She is invigorated by the challenge of making complex information understandable, and particularly excited by multifaceted design projects that require a high level of problem solving. 

You can find Neva on Twitter as @nevach_tweets, and on LinkedIn.

Rogin Farrer is the Staff Engineer at Wayfair. He’s a pattern library maintainer of Wayfair's design systems with a focus on enterprise software. Builds scalable React UI components with accessibility in mind. 

You can find Rogin at his personal website, on Twitter as @roginfarrer, and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Mike and Chris discuss design systems at the enterprise level, the history of systems, and UX design at the beginning of the internet. 

Guest: Mike Bowser is the Design Director, Design Systems at Vista. He is a UX/UI designer, design team leader, and educator with expertise in design systems, UX research, and UI design. His recent focus is closing the gap between how we concept and design and how products are actually built. He’s also interested in the growing opportunities for automation in the future of UX design and design systems.

You can find Mike on Twitter as @mikebowser and on LinkedIn.

Huge thanks to Jeff Yaus, Emily Mills, and Sujeet Jaiswal from Vista, and Fabricio Teixeira and the team at Work&Co for their contributions to the Vista design language and design system.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Zach, Aaron, and Chris discuss the commonalities between design systems and products, as well as how a product-driven mindset can help your design systems achieve new levels of enterprise adoption and scale.

Guest: Zach Hendershot is a Managing Partner at Crux Digital. He is a leader with a diverse background of building and growing digital products within startups and large enterprises. He's passionate about scaling, reusability, and great customer experiences everywhere, and has worked to find new ways to bridge the gap between great customer experience and great digital products. He's led cross-functional digital teams at Charter Spectrum, Ogilvy, and others. You can find Zach on LinkedIn.

Guest:  Aaron Stone is the Founder of Crux Digital. He is an experienced technology leader, full-stack application developer, and UX evangelist with a focus on user-driven digital products, insightful interaction design, and scalable, high-quality code. He has been the technical architect for enterprise design systems for Transamerica, Charter Spectrum, and GE Renewable Energy as well as helping teams deliver the complex technology ecosystems that surround them. He built Crux Digital around an amazingly talented group of design-minded engineers who have collectively been responsible for world-class digital product delivery for the Fortune 1000 for the past four years. You can find him on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Sit tight—this is a long one! Stephen Gates and Chris discuss the real value of design systems, what designers and football players have in common, and how to apply design methodology to day-to-day work.

Guest: Stephen Gates is Senior Vice President of Omni-channel Product Design for WW. In this role, he is responsible for the design of WW’s end-to-end member experience across all digital, virtual, and physical touchpoints, to create a cohesive wellness experience and help unify members’ needs across channels.

With over 20 years of experience, Stephen is a global design leader who has built world-class teams at organizations that integrate research and data with human-centered design methods to drive business impact. Prior to joining WW in February 2021, Stephen was the Head Design Evangelist at InVision, where he developed award-winning global advertising campaigns and innovative digital experiences for clients such as American Airlines, W Hotels, Disney, ExxonMobil, Acura, Old Navy, Nationwide Insurance, Verizon, Subaru, and many more. He has also held key design leadership roles at Citi, Starwood Hotels, and McCann Erickson. Stephen’s work has received recognition at over 150 international award shows including honors for Cannes Cyber Lions, Webby Awards, and the Web Awards. His work has also been featured in 10 Apple keynotes.

Stephen is also the host of the award-winning podcast, The Crazy One, which features in-depth explorations of issues that matter to creatives, including leadership, creativity, and career development and innovation. He has also been named one of the most talented and influential creatives working today by HOW Magazine.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Check out Stephen’s first episode on the Design System Podcast.

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Gina and Chris discuss the importance of real-deal content in your designs, defining “good design” for your company, and how to set effective, meaningful KPIs for design work.

Guest: Gina is the Principal Analyst, Design and Accessibility, at Forrester Research. Her research focuses on experience design organizations, scaling design, accessibility, and inclusive design. You can find Gina on Forrester’s blog, on Twitter as @ginabhawalkar, and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Want to help the design systems community learn more about adoption?  Take our four-minute survey.

Microsoft’s Josh Cusick and Chris discuss how to convey intent when working with a design system, the importance of buy-in for a successful design system culture, and whether or not your design system will ever be finished.

Guest: Josh Cusick is a product designer at Microsoft, working on Microsoft’s Fluent Design System and mentor at ADPList. You can find Josh on Medium and LinkedIn, and you can check out his portfolio website here.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud

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Want to be part of the industry's first-ever report on design system adoption? Click here to take part in our 4-minute survey.

In this deep-dive episode, Danny, Robin, and Chris discuss the differences and similarities of design systems at different stages of maturity, including ROI measurement; who should manage your design system, and how to create a balance of power between designers and developers working on your design system.

Robin Cannon is the Global Director of Design Systems, IBM iX at IBM. Having spent several years leading the development of IBM’s design system, Carbon, he’s now working on IBM iX’s design systems offering—and design operations in general—with clients and partners. You can find Robin on Twitter as @shinytoyrobots, and LinkedIn.

Danny Phillips is a Staff Engineer at Procore, former Group Engineering Manager, Design Systems. Over the past several years, he helped build their design system from the ground up and is now focused on building new ventures at Procore. You can find Danny on Twitter as @_dannyjphillips or LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Leonardo De La Rocha and Chris discuss the “federated” design system model, how to connect design systems to business needs, designing friction-free cross-platform experiences, and C-suite awareness of design needs.

Guest: Lonardo De La Rocha is an engineer turned pixel-pusher turned creative executive and adviser. He currently serves as Director of Intuit Design System in Mountain View, CA, and was previously creative director leading Facebook's art department and business marketing surfaces  and Yahoo's Head of Design for ads and publishing products. You can find Leonardo at his portfolio site, on Twitter as @delarocha, as a mentor on ADPList, and on LinkedIn. 

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Audrey and Chris discuss the vision guiding Xero’s design system team, how co-ownership helps design system teams thrive, the processes she uses for managing a global team, and how the Xero design system team approaches modernization.

Guest: Audrey has been designing digital experiences at high-growth technology companies for over 12 years. She’s passionate about growing teams to be their best through shipping product with impact. You can find Audrey at her personal site and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Sponsor: Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Design once, build once, use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Jess Clark and Chris discuss the meaning of design systems and the potential of design systems as a service. What can design systems offer us beyond infrastructure? How can approaching design systems as products, rather than repositories, increase their capabilities?

Guest: Jess Clark is Director of Product Design, Design Systems at LinkedIn, where she is responsible for enabling quality design at scale through tools, collaboration, and LinkedIn’s Design System. Her team strives to empower and educate their peers to deliver amazing, inclusive, consistent experiences to members and customers. You can find Jess on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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This episode is a little bit longer—okay, a lot longer—than our usual. Chrome developer advocate Adam Argyle and Chris Strahl talk about tokens in all their glory without worrying about time limits. If you’ve ever wondered about the limits of tokens and what’s left to explore in the token stratosphere, check out this podcast.

Guest: Adam Argyle is a Chrome CSS Developer Advocate at Google, creator of VisBug, co-host of The CSS Podcast, developer, former designer, and RPG enthusiast. You can find Adam at nerdy.dev, on Twitter as @argyleink, and on LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Maya Hampton and Chris discuss why design systems need to be flexible, the role of a product manager in a design system, and viewing design systems as products.

Guest: Maya Hampton is the product manager of REI’s design system, where she leads a cross-functional team, including design and engineering, to help scale REI's branding and consistent UX across the co-op’s digital portfolio. You can find Maya on Medium, Twitter as @himaya, and LinkedIn.

Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor: Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Jehad Affoneh, Scott Mathis, and Chris discuss the advantages of open-source, the role of content in design systems, the pattern-based approach to building apps, and similarities between music and tokens.

Guests:

Jehad Affoneh is Chief Design Officer at Splunk (formerly Head of Design at VMware). He’s an experienced design and business leader who writes frequently about user experience, leadership, management, and business. You can find Jehad at mynameisjehad.com, on Twitter as @jaffoneh, and on LinkedIn.

Scott Mathis is the Technical Lead for Clarity Design System Web Components at VMware. He has 10+ years of specialization in user experience and front-end development and co-founded a design system that is being used by thousands of developers across a half-dozen Fortune 500 companies. You can find Scott at github.com/mathisscott, on Twitter as @mathis_scott, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Dave Calleja and Chris discuss getting clients to sign off on design systems, strategies for getting executive buy-in, and the role of designer as evangelist.

Guest:

Dave Calleja is Head of Design at Isobar. He’s been working in digital and UX for over 15 years, from tiny teams to federal government projects. At Isobar he’s pursuing a strong passion for developing insight-aware, hypothesis-led experimentation cultures to empower experience-led transformation. You can find Dave at davecalleja.net, on Twitter as @davecalleja, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Links:

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Matthew and Chris discuss what’s exciting about design tokens, how APIs streamline communication, the magic of standardized files, and how to spend less time copy-pasting.

Guest:

Matthew Ström is a Brooklyn-based design leader currently working as Director of Design at SimpleHealth. He’s previously led design teams at Dow Jones, SoundCloud, and Bitly, and he writes about design on his website, matthewstrom.com. You can find Matthew on Twitter as @ilikescience, on LinkedIn, and at matthewstrom.com.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack: design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Links:

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Jennie and Chris discuss the critical role of storytelling for your design system, using learning moments to drive adoption, what comes next after launching your system, qualitative and quantitative ways to measure system success, and content strategies for design systems.

Guest:

Jennie Yip is a hybrid design engineer with a heart for elegant user interfaces, simple user experiences, and beautifully crafted code. She is currently focused on evolving Atlassian Design System, and previously Udacity’s Veritas Design System. Jennie loves multiplying systems thinking, organizing chaos, community building, and... propagating plants! 🌱. You can find Jennie at jennieyip.design, on Twitter @jenniesyip, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code for shipping consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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View Atlassian’s design system at atlassian.design.

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Avery and Chris discuss lessons learned from design and development partnering up vs. making work an “us vs. them” thing, embracing intentionality and viewing all decisions through that lens, focusing on reuse and trust to help your design system gain traction across your organization.

Guest:

Avery Oldt is Founder & Chief Design Officer at Blermph, a creative studio that helps organizations build the great teams and great culture that produce great products. He has led design, product, and engineering teams at MTV, Restoration Hardware, LendingHome, LVMH, and Bank of the West BNP Paribas. You can find Avery at blermph.com, @designbeardo on Instagram, @designbeardo on Twitter, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Design once, build once, use everywhere. Knapsack is a design system platform rooted in code that enables teams to ship better, more consistent apps in half the time. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

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Eric and Chris discuss how and why Facebook’s design system has evolved over time, anticipating deviation and its positive impact on adoption and contribution, getting other teams to think like system designers and empowering them to create their own systems, what signals to consider when measuring the success of your system and advocacy work.

Guest:

Eric Lobdell is a Design Systems Team Lead at Facebook, managing a button that’s touched over 3 million times an hour. You can find Eric at lobdell.me, on Twitter as @lobdelI, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Design once. Build Once. Use everywhere. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team working in a better way.

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Nick and Chris discuss standing up a design system in 2016, serving development teams that didn’t have access to designers at the time, accelerating and amplifying the value of design, freeing up designers to focus on high-value problems, considerations and tactics for driving adoption, how design systems create internal communities that bring design and developers together, building on-brand and UX-compliant apps quickly in a diverse technology ecosystem.

Guest:

Nick Cochran is the Design Strategy Manager at ExxonMobil, aspiring photographer, baker of artisan breads, and purveyor of dad jokes. You can find Nick on Twitter as @internick, on Instagram as @internick.photography, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team to 80% design and code reusability.

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Vidya and Chris discuss pathways to becoming a design systems leader, having a content strategy within your design system, personalization considerations, measuring the success of your design system, linking your design system to a broader design strategy, and more.

Guest:

Vidya Nayak is Design Director Member & Design Systems at SoFi, former design lead at Moody’s, Disney, Fox Digital (News Corp), and Rodale. Coffee, books, and travel lover. Guitar and pixel adorer. You can find Vidya at nayakvx.com, on Twitter as @nayakvm, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team to 80% design and code reusability.

Links:

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Demian and Chris discuss what design tokens are and why they are a critical part of any design system, getting developers more involved in the design system discipline, an exciting new way to integrate design tokens between design tools and VS Code, and how surfing relates to design tokens.

Guest:

Demian Borba is a Product Manager on Adobe XD (working on XD since 2015!), UX & Design Thinking advocate, and speaker. You can find Demian on Twitter as @demianborba and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team to 80% design and code reusability.

Links:

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Learn more about Adobe’s Design System Package (DSP) and XD plugin for VS Code.

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Jina and Chris discuss the inception of design tokens and Theo during Jina’s time at Salesforce, the correlation between design systems and community building, shared ownership instead of governance, why “design systems are not a thing,” and more.

Guest:

Jina Anne is the Founder of Clarity, Creator of design.systems, and Co-Chair at Design Tokens W3C Community Group. You can find Jina at jina.design, on Twitter as @jina, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team to 80% design and code reusability.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

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Rick and Chris discuss deputizing evangelists to drive adoption and reduce fragmentation, contribution models and thinking about the areas to own vs. areas to share ownership vs. areas to give up ownership, using design systems to share innovation across teams, measuring design system efficacy, and more.

Guest:

Rick Rodriguez is Head of Design Systems at Walmart Labs, an avid runner, hand letterer and superfan of cappuccinos and donut breaks. You can find Rick on Twitter as @rickrodriguez, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team to 80% design and code reusability.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Check out the Amazing Design People List to discover amazing designers worldwide on this community-led talent base during COVID-19.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Morgane and Chris discuss threading design into the fabric of how business works, capturing a wide range of complexity needs within your design system, moving away from traditional design tools to providing a playground that enables anyone to design with code in the browser, lessons from game development and how they apply to design systems.

Guest:

Morgane Peng is Design Director at Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking, illustrator, speaker, and indie game developer at Koruldia. You can find Morgane at morganepeng.com, on Twitter as @morganepeng, on Medium, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about Knapsack and getting your team to 65%-80% design and code reusability.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

View the screenshots Morgane mentioned showing a simple view vs. one with lots of data.

Check out Societe Generale on Medium and a couple of new articles on governance at scale and contributing a new component.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Jason Lengstorf and Chris discuss failure, self-doubt, and ultimately finding your way before switching gears and getting into designs systems, communicating the things that make teams want to adopt design systems, and an approach for broadening and deepening your experience with the technologies your system may benefit from.

Guest:

Jason Lengstorf is a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, host of Learn With Jason, and writer. You can find Jason at jason.af, on Twitter as @jlengstorf, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — Build without rebuilding. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Varun Vachar and Chris discuss the “design graph,” creating choice in governance models, building a foundation of tools when setting up new systems, and using computational design and machine learning with design systems. Varun was at Rangle when this episode was recorded but is now at Chromatic.

Guest:

Varun Vachar is a Developer Experience Engineer at Chromatic, formerly Director of Technology at Rangle, and generative art enthusiast. You can find Varun at varun.ca, on Twitter as @winkerVSbecks and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Read more about the concept of The Design Graph by Brent Jackson.

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Adam Argyle and Chris venture into “spicy opinion” territory and discuss when design systems are freeing vs. constraining, creating appropriate “offramps” for venturing outside of your design system, why designers ought to be proposing changes to code (aka making pull requests!), and decentralizing the human side of design systems to break down silos and enable innovation and enhancements to spread freely throughout your product teams.

Guest:

Adam Argyle is a Chrome CSS Developer Advocate at Google, creator of VisBug, co-host of The CSS Podcast, developer, former designer, and RPG enthusiast. You can find Adam at nerdy.dev, on Twitter as @argyleink, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Stephen Gates (currently at InVision; formerly at Citi and Starwood) and Chris discuss advice for leaders needing to drive adoption and success of their design systems, how to assess and foster trust between design system creators and consumers, treating design systems as infrastructure, and the Amazing Design People List to help designers find work during COVID-19.

Guest:

Stephen Gates is Head Design Evangelist at InVision, host of The Crazy One podcast, designer, and international keynote speaker. You can find Stephen on Twitter or Instagram as @sdgates and LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Check out the Amazing Design People List to discover amazing designers worldwide on this community-led talent base during COVID-19.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Mina Markham (currently at Slack, formerly at Hillary For America and IBM) and Chris discuss getting executive buy-in, how to create space to continue advancing your design system, going beyond a shared language by building a shared culture, the story behind the Pantsuit Design System, and Beyoncé, of course.

 Guest:

Mina Markham is Staff Engineer at Slack, design systems advocate, and international speaker. You can find Mina at mina.codes, on Twitter as @MinaMarkham, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — the design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris and Micah discuss creating a singular design system that scales to support a massive app ecosystem, using tokens to align design across disparate products, and transitioning from individual teams working on many products to one company working on a library of products.

Guest:

Micah Godbolt is a design systems advocate, speaker, trainer, and writer. Micah is a software engineer for Fluent UI at Microsoft and author of Frontend Architecture for Design Systems published by O’Reilly Media. You can find Micah at micahgodbolt.com, on Twitter as @micahgodbolt, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

LinkedIn post via Jason Blackheart showing the time savings of just one component from Microsoft’s Coherence Design System.

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Chris and Ethan discuss the parallels between design systems and responsive web design in terms of the impact on how teams design/develop digital products, creating a shared language and research as a means to build successful design systems, and where design systems are headed in the years to come.

Guest:

Ethan Marcotte is an independent web designer, writer, and speaker, and the fellow who started that “responsive web design” thing. You can find Ethan at ethanmarcotte.com, on Twitter as @beep and as @RWD, and on LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

The tweet Ethan mentioned from @kimgoodwin: “I think the #1 architectural mistake I see on software teams is failure to articulate the conceptual data model before building things. What are the meaningful objects, how do they relate, and what can users do with them? It’s a small investment for huge dividends.”

The book Chris mentioned: “Design Systems” by Alla Kholmatova

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Chris talks with Brad Frost and Evan Lovely about why code is the real source of truth, how to bring designers and developers together around the code, and the opportunity design systems provide for designers to focus on creative contribution rather than producing more comps.

Guests:

Brad Frost is a web designer, speaker, writer, consultant, and musician in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. Author of Atomic Design. You can find Brad on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Evan Lovely is co-founder and CTO of Knapsack, crafter of design systems, outdoorsman, and all-round nice guy. You can find Evan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Sponsor:

Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.

Links:

View the transcript for this episode.

Check out Brad’s book, Atomic Design, which introduces a methodology for thinking of our UIs as thoughtful hierarchies, discusses the qualities of effective pattern libraries, and showcases techniques to transform your team's design and development workflow.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris and Jeremy Keith discuss imbuing teams with a shared sense of ownership of their design system, creating design systems able to address unforeseen scenarios, design ops as an essential part of an effective design system, and more.

Guest:

Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer working with @Clearleft, playing music with @SalterCane, creator of @Huffduffer. You can find Jeremy on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Links:

Episode transcript → Google Drive

Progressing The Web → Jeremy Keith via Medium

Progressive Enhancement: What It Is, And How To Use It? → Sam Dwyer via Smashing Magazine

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris and Charles Hall talk about the impact of accessibility, how to build more accessible products, and the role design systems play in creating accessible outcomes.

Guest:

Charles Hall is a Senior UX Architect at MRM and an Invited Expert of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. You can find Charles on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Host:

Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Links:

View the full transcript here

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris talks with Salem about what a front-end architect actually does, they breakdown of web components (what they are and who uses them), cover the tools Pega systems use and how their team works, and much more.

Download the episode transcript: http://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/008-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf 

Salem Ghoweri
Lead Front-End Architect for PegaSystem's Bold Design System
Salem is the lead front-end architect for the digital team at Pegasystems and the creator of the open-source Bolt Design System. He’s also worked on frontend architectural projects for Wayfair, Akamai, Panera, and Lysol, and is a core maintainer of the popular prototyping tool, Pattern Lab.

Find Salem on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris talks to the President and CEO of the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO), Skip Newberry. While Skip may not work in the DS community day-to-day, he has a unique view on design and development from working with so many Oregon tech companies. The two talk about focusing on the use of design when helping to reach communities outside of the standard spectrum. Additionally, they discuss the idea of how ubiquity matters, to reach the most people, leveraging technology as much as possible to augment in-person connectivity, how Oregon tech companies are going through digital transformations and much more.

Download episode transcript:
http://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/007-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf


Skip Newberry
President and CEO, Technology Association of Oregon
Skip is a frequent speaker on technology trends and topics, economic development, public-private partnerships, and civic innovation. Before joining the TAO, Skip served as an economic development policy advisor to Portland Mayor Sam Adams, where he helped create Portland’s first comprehensive economic development strategy in 16 years, recognizing software as a key industry cluster. While at the City of Portland, Skip’s projects included the adoption of the nation’s first open-source software procurement policy at the municipal level, an award-winning regional open data initiative and the development of resources to support entrepreneurship, like the Portland Seed Fund. Previously, Skip was a corporate and IP attorney and entrepreneur. Skip is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors of TECNA, Technology Councils of North America, which is a global network of technology and entrepreneurship associations, and he serves on the community advisory board for Wells Fargo and several community-based organizations in the Portland area. Skip is also a 2012 recipient of the Portland Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award. When he's not working on behalf of the region's tech industry, Skip enjoys exploring the Pacific Northwest with his family.

You can find Skip on LinkedIn.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris chats with Marco Suárez about his design experiences in the early days, before the term 'design systems' was official. The two walk through how to drive adoption of a design system within an organization, using branding and design in a physical space as well as digital, Marco's specific design experience and working with companies like MailChimp and Etsy on design systems, and more.

Download the episode transcript: https://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/006-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf

Marco Suárez
Product Designer, Design System Consultant, Co-Owner of Methodical Coffee
Marco Suárez has built design systems at InVision and Etsy. Now he guides companies through the process of designing and adopting their own design systems. He's also one of the owners of Methodical Coffee, a cafe and roasting company in Greenville, SC.

You can find Marco on Twitter.

Other Show Notes
In this episode, Chris and Marco discuss coffee, because sometimes it's too early in the morning for beer.

Methodical Coffee is located in Greenville, South Carolina, but you can order their beans online for an at-home experience. They serve single-origin coffees, pour overs, siphons, and cold brew.

https://methodicalcoffee.com/

Follow @Methodical_SC on Twitter.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris talks with Tatiana Mac about ensuring design systems, specifically components, are accessible. The two discuss accessibility testing tools, being sure to be inclusive in forms, considering inclusion and the "why" when asking for certain data, and more inclusion topics.

Download the episode transcript:
https://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/005-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf


Tatiana Mac
Independent American designer
Tatiana Mac (she/they) is an independent American designer who works directly with organizations to build clear and coherent products and design systems.

She believes the trifecta of accessibility, performance, and inclusion can work symbiotically to improve our social landscape digitally and physically. When ethically-minded, she thinks technologists can dismantle exclusionary systems in favor of community-focused, inclusive ones.

Tatiana is an open-source maintainer, currently focused on building a dictionary called Self-Defined. Self-Defined seeks to provide more inclusive, holistic, and fluid definitions to reflect the diverse perspectives of the modern world. The dictionary will eventually include integrated bots and an API to embed into enterprise software.

Never totally pleased with design tools, she designs in browser to bring performant, semantic, and accessible visual narratives into the web. Her current obsessions are optimizing variable fonts, converting raster images into SVGs, and recreating modernist paintings in CSS grid. When she can successfully :q vim, she finds new countries to explore (36 and counting) and designs tech merch at StyleDotCSS.

You can find Tatiana on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Other Show Notes
Want to learn more about Tatiana and her work? Here are some great reference links.

• YouTube Playlist / Recorded Talks
• Website
• Twitter
• CodePen
• GitHub

Other resources discussed:

• Axe-Core
• Lighthouse

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Dan Mall calls in from the East coast to chat with Chris about design systems and their role in enterprise organizations. How does this affect the teams that work on them? The guys also discuss what digital products actually are in relation to design systems. How to create a "one ring to rule them all" type of system and does that even exits? They continue to dive into agile, designers' roles, how teams are finding they're wasting time, and much more.

Dan Mall
Creative Director, Advisor, CEO and Founder of SuperFriendly
Dan Mall is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He’s the founder and CEO of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that helps in-house teams make better digital products with design systems. Dan is an enthralled husband & dad, author of Pricing Design, and co-founder of SuperBooked, a service that helps you find work with a little help from your friends. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and on his industry-recognized site, danmall.me.

You can find Dan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

Chris and Emily Campbell discuss the convergence of design and code, and what that actually looks like. They walk through what a designer role looks like in a modern digital product team and Emily explains her idea that design and development are the same. They just have different approaches to the same process or medium.

Other topics the duo touch on include questioning if designers should learn to code, intent around design and development, the importance of making intentional decisions, and more.


Emily Campbell
Senior Design Specialist, InVision
Emily is a veteran design and product practitioner. She is currently a Senior Designer on InVision's Design Transformation team, where she helps teams and leaders increase their impact by maturing their practices and developing a culture of learning and collaboration. She focuses on human-centered design, translating creative strategy into business value, building a culture of leadership, and sharing ownership across disciplines. On the side, Emily enjoys exploring the desert around her home in Moab, Utah with her husband and three kids.

You can find Emily on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Other Show Notes
Learn about Conway's Law and the Portland Swifts.

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In the pilot episode of the Design Systems Podcast, host Chris Strahl talks with Evan Lovely about design systems as a whole. What are they? Who are they meant for? What are the benefits? And more.


Evan Lovely
CTO and Co-Founder, Basalt and Knapsack
Evan is the CTO of Basalt. His pragmatism and craftsmanship are contagious within project teams. He believes that encouraging creativity, tinkering, and close collaboration leads to the most elegant solutions. A respected and trusted resource in the tech community, Evan is the Pattern Lab PHP Maintainer, an open-source platform for static site generation using atomic design.

You can find Evan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Other Show Notes
In this episode, the guys are drinking Migration Brewing's Straight Outta Portland IPA.