The Ugly Truth about Design Systems

The video of a talk in which Mark discusses pace layers, dogs, and design systems. He concludes:

  1. Current design systems thinking limits free, playful expression.
  2. Design systems uncover organisational disfunction.
  3. Continual design improvement and delivery is a lie.
  4. Component-focussed design is siloed thinking.

It’s true many design systems are the blueprints for manufacturing and large scale application. But in almost every instance I can think of, once you move from design to manufacturing the horse has bolted. It’s very difficult to move back into design because the results of the system are in the wild. The more strict the system, the less able you are to change it. That’s why broad principles, just enough governance, and directional examples are far superior to locked-down cookie cutters.

Tagged with

Responses

Related links

39C3 - Persist, resist, stitch - YouTube

A fascinating talk looking at the history of the intersection of knitting and stitching with wartime cryptography and resistance.

Tagged with

The 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good - YouTube

I wasn’t able to tune into this live (“tune in?” what century is this?) but I’ve enjoyed catching up with the great talks like:

Tagged with

Tagged with

Jeremy Keith – Declarative Design – SOTR - YouTube

Here’s the video of the talk I gave at Monday’s meet-up here in Brighton—it’s a very condensed version of my longer conference talk on declarative design.

Tagged with

as days pass by — Don’t Read Off The Screen

Excellent advice from Stuart.

Watch—and more importantly, listen—to this five minute video to get the full effect.

Tagged with

Related posts

Talking about style

The transcript of a talk.

Research By The Sea

A one-day conference in Brighton on Thursday, February 27th that isn’t just for researchers.

UX London 2024, day three

A veritable feast of outstanding talks and workshops on design systems and design ops.

Five questions

I gave five answers to Oliver, who’s organising the Pixel Pioneers event in Bristol.

More UX London speaker updates

Aleks Melnikova, Stephanie Marsh, Kat Zhou, Sarah Winters, and Adekunle Oduye.