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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.

Links:

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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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.