An honest conversation about the life of design systems and design ops specialists in the current economic environment. Challenges, hopes and nuggets of advice from the past 8 years in this field.

I shared how new challenges forced me to become more flexible and pragmatic whilst abandoning some of the old mental models acquired at VK.com & Intercom. This was a story of navigating the whirlwinds of a scale-up environment to stay effective at pace.

I describe our step-by-step process for adding new components to the design system at Beamery. This process gives clear guidance to contributors and ultimately helps us to evolve the system.

Long-lasting design systems need solid foundations. Sometimes this requires taking a step back.

It’s increasingly clear that the tools we use shape the work we do in all sorts of ways, so picking the right tool for your task is absolutely critical. And even more so when you’re trying to pick a tool to be used by a diverse team spread around the world.

The design industry speaks English. The articles we read, the tools we use, the conferences we attend: we all speak the same language when it comes to design.