Dan Mall
The basics of building a design system are fairly simple. Ensconcing a system in an organization's culture so that it's actually adopted and used is a more complex undertaking.
Dan Mall takes a content-first approach as he helps organizations evolve their design systems from projects to products and ultimately to firmly embedded practices that let teams deliver the efficiency and consistency benefits that such systems offer.
We talked about:
his Design System University
an overview of the professional challenges that come with building and running a design system
his new book Design That Scales: Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice
his addition to the conventional list of design-system benefits - in addition to efficiency and consistency - relief
the tragically common story of how design systems can end up becoming "ghost towns and graveyards"
how to ensconce good design-system ideas and practices in company culture
how you can benefit by adopting a humble attitude toward design-system work
how good design systems evolve from a project to a product and ultimately to a practice focus
the importance of repetition in design system messaging strategy
the crucial role of content in design systems
how, when he teaches design-system process, he always starts with plain, unadorned text
how design systems make it possible to quickly iterate on possible ways to present content to users
how new technologies and practices like headless CMSs and microservices-based architectures work with design systems
his thoughts on content orchestration and experience orchestration
how AI fits into the design-system world
the importance of having a vision for your design system, but to also appreciate and embrace detours and serendipity along with way
Dan's bio
Dan Mall is a husband, dad, teacher, creative director, designer, founder, and entrepreneur from Philly. He runs Design System University, where he creates, collects, and curates curriculum, content, and community to help enterprise teams design at scale. Previously, Dan ran design system consultancy SuperFriendly for over a decade. Dan writes about design systems, process, and leadership and other issues on his site danmall.com and in his weekly newsletter.
Connect with Dan online
Twitter
Instagram
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
https://youtu.be/fxyQV8zKF4Q
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 169. The basic idea of a design system is simple enough to grasp and easy enough to prototype, but turning a collection of components and design guidance into a coherent system that people actually use - that's a whole other story. Dan Mall helps organizations embed design systems in their organizational culture so that designers, engineers, and product folks can efficiently and consistently deliver excellent experiences, always starting with content concerns at the forefront.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 169 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really excited today to have with us Dan Mall. Dan is like, if you google design systems, his name pretty much comes up, I think, and part of it, and what he does nowadays is he, he's the founder and runs the Design System University. So welcome, Dan. Tell the folks a little bit more about what's cooking there at Design System U.
Dan:
Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Larry. Thank you for having me. Design System U is a place where people can get support and content and community around designing at scale. That's something that I think a lot of us as designers and engineers and content folks and all those things, we just don't get training in that kind of stuff.
Dan:
And so I wanted to create something that allowed people to have some support and community and content and training to really work at scale when we make digital tools and we make digital things for people... Now for millions and millions and billions of people, people like us are making for and who has that training coming out of school or learning how to do this from our parents' basements.
Larry:
That's right. And as you say that, I'm reminded there's that, well-known trope now that you go from practicing to managing, but then from going from managing to building a whole system around a thing. That's like an even bigger leap. Is that a challenge for both... it's like senior level ICs and managers that are working with design systems?
Dan:
Oh, one hundred percent. I mean, you talk about the Peter Principle, right? It's like you go from, if you're in design school as a designer, you go from making posters or books or a website or an app or things like that to now you've got to support all these different types of people and you use cases and needs and abilities and all that kind of stuff. I mean, almost all of it is trial by fire and some people decide, "Not for me." And that's okay. And then some people go, "I really want to do that, but I don't know how to do that." And a lot of times we learn at user's expense and I think that there's probably a better way to do it. Maybe we can learn from each other's mistakes, maybe we can learn from each other's stories and successes in addition to our own failures.
Larry:
Yeah. And you've been doing this a while, so this is ensconced in your curriculum at Design System U, but you also, and that's how we ended up connecting. You also wrote a book. Tell me a little bit about your new book.
Dan:
Yeah, cool. So it's published by Rosenfeld Media, my friends at Rosenfeld Media. It's called "Design That Scales" and the subtitle, it's "Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice."
Dan:
So it took a while for us to land on that title. We had a bunch of different variations, but that's one that once we got there I was like, "Yeah, that's it. That's what this book is about and is about how to create design that's not just one website at a time, one app at a time, one digital experience at a time. But how do we do things that impact lots of people? How do we do..."
Dan:
And part of that impact is how do we do design and engineering and content in a way that impacts our coworkers and our colleagues at scale? Not just our end customers, but even the people making the stuff. How do we do that in a smarter way? How do we do that in a more efficient way? And also how do we do that in a more innovative way? And then the last piece that I like to add to that, because I think those are the typical stories around design systems. The one that I like to add to that is how do we do that in a way that relieves us, in a way that gives us more rest, in a way that gives us more energy? I think that one gets talked about least and perhaps is maybe the most important, or at least my favorite of the bunch. So I think that's an important piece.
Larry:
Yeah, I was totally intrigued by that because everybody talks about, well, and actually you almost always just hear efficiency and consistency. Those are the two main benefits. And the innovation is sort of like, I always pictured it, not to diss you guys, but as a way to say, "Oh, no, no, no, no, we're not constraining you with this system. It gives you more room to innovate." But there is a genuine opportunity to innovate in there, of course.
Dan:
There is. And also you're right, it's like a lot of times it's like, "Oh, by the way, oh yeah, we do get innovation. How, we're not sure." But it is a way to say, "This is not going to make you less creative. This is actually going to help you be more creative too." So sometimes it does feel like a little bit of a gimme.
Larry:
Yeah. But at the same time, having worked in and around design systems, it's true. You free up designers through other stuff. But also I love the fourth thing, the relief, because one of the things that I think we're increasingly concerned about with as designers is reducing the cognitive load and emotional burden on our users, but also internal users. Is that where that relief idea comes from?
Dan:
That's definitely one piece of it, which is something that used to take us six months to do. If we have smart systems that are helpful to us that we've made that we know how to use, maybe instead of taking six months, it takes three months. And so we've got three months of savings there.
Dan:
So what do we normally do with that three months? We've tried to pack more work into it. So this typical story is double the amount of work in one amount of time, and it's like, well, what if we just get it done in three months and then give ourselves a break? It's still doing one thing in six months, but we have better mental health because of it.
Dan:
And I think that that story just, that's less attractive, it's less appealing, especially in a very business-centric culture that we live in, especially where design systems tend to live, which is at enterprise, things that are reaching lots and lots of people. And so we try to pack in as much as we can. "We got to be more productive. We got to ship to more users." Everything is more more more. And you see the toll that that's having on people in society. We're burning out faster, people are leaving their jobs, people are quiet quitting. I think those things are not a coincidence how tied together they are.
Larry:
Yeah, and now I'm jumping ahead towards the end of the book. When you talk about Dan Pink's work around what actually motivates workers in the modern cognitive economy and a lot of that like, "Oh, we got to do more because we finished early." It's like, "No, that's a 20th century thing. We're in the 21st century now. It's all about autonomy, mastery and purpose." Is that, yeah...
Dan:
One hundred percent. We do knowledge work now. It's when we were doing industrial work centuries ago that made sense,
