Managing an effective design system requires that it fit smoothly into how an organization makes and delivers digital experiences. Yet, it must also embrace unique and usually more robust processes to deliver high-quality foundations, components, and other features that other teams trust to reuse.
A design system can be seen as both a product consumed by other teams as well as a platform for organizations to make and share decisions and features. As such, system leaders and contributors must know how to approach making, maintaining, and promoting the system across an enterprise for it to be successful.
This workshop exposes you to scope, plan and run processes to make features, deliver releases, tackle complex initiatives, and guide an organization through a major new generation of an entire library. These processes create the foundation by which a system can pursue its vision, realize its strategy, evolve teams and practices, and create lasting value for an organization.
Over the course of four days, we’ll cover techniques and nuances of these processes across different shapes and sizes of systems so that designers and developers can make a robust, high-quality system together.
Sessions will engage participants in hands-on activities, spark new ideas, and moderate challenging conversations so your team can deliver:
Through these concepts, we’ll dig into considerations of a system’s:
This workshop lays a foundation and challenges you to consider if your system program is robust, flexible, and inclusive enough. We’ll explore the processes that matter most – processes to start a system, define big bets, develop each feature, and release and communicate changes – and when to invest in each to build a successful program. Participants will explore many models, imagine new processes, share their own experiences, and inspire each other.
Nathan has contributed to or consulted with over 60 design systems over his career, including leading teams through major releases at Morningstar, Verizon, Capital One, Target, Fidelity, Marriott and many more. He’ll combine deep knowledge with a nuanced understanding of how systems work in companies of varying scale, business types, and organization models.
Design systems are best as a multidisciplinary pursuit. Therefore, the workshop is aimed at designers, engineers, product owners, managers, and leaders setting up or optimizing how to operate a design system at scale.
The workshop assumes participants are familiar with design systems fundamentals: what they are, what they offer, who makes and uses them, and why they matter. Materials are relevant to anyone planning to engage a community, decide what to build, and grow a system over time.
To get the most out of the workshop, you’ll need access to Zoom (for audio, video and screensharing), Figjam (for hands-on activities), and Slack (using a SmashingConf private channel for workshop communications). You will not use design tools (such as in Figma or Sketch) or code in a code editor. Instead, activities will be collaborative in a team or full classroom setting using Figjam.
Nathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown in 2006. He’s passionate about information architecture, UX, front-end dev, and leads design systems consulting at EightShapes. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs frequently on Medium.com today, and speaks regularly at events worldwide.
This workshop is split over four days. The workshop sessions will run on the following days and times:
9:00am – 11:30 am PST / 12:00pm – 2:30 pm EST / 5:00pm – 7:30 pm GMT
9:00am – 11:30 am PST / 12:00pm – 2:30 pm EST / 5:00pm – 7:30 pm GMT
9:00am – 11:30 am PST / 12:00pm – 2:30 pm EST / 5:00pm – 7:30 pm GMT
9:00am – 11:30 am PST / 12:00pm – 2:30 pm EST / 5:00pm – 7:30 pm GMT
