Shows
Design System Office HoursEp 83: Design Systems EducationDavy and PJ discuss the challenges and strategies for design system training, especially when it comes to Figma. We explore the line between providing direct tool training and focusing on how the design system integrates with those tools.2025-07-2836 minDesign System Office HoursEp 82: Local Product SystemsDavy talks about what he's seen with the popularity around (local) product systems and how you can may want to adoption via providing just some design system team support. PJ ends the convo with the lighter weight approach of supporting templates in code and design.2025-07-1036 minDesign System Office HoursEp 81: Disagreements and AlignmentAnother takeaway from our cross-functional discussions, how do design system team members handle disagreements with consumers, or even our own teammates?2025-06-1930 minDesign System Office HoursEp 80: Building Single Use Figma PluginsDavy and PJ talk dive into designers building helpers and plugins to support more specialized design system maintainer workflows, and the beauty of unblocking ourselves.2025-06-0433 minDesign System Office HoursEp 79: Cross-Functional PartnershipsDavy and PJ talk about how to plan to best support inbound product design work, in addition to the differences between product-led work vs design system team-led initiatives.2025-05-2235 minDesign System Office HoursEp 78: Davy and PJ go to Figma's ConfigBecause it was PJ's first Config, we decided to record a live, IRL episode, recap our first thoughts about the new product releases and a thread that we started about who Figma is designing for, dating back from last year's event.2025-05-0939 minDesign System Office HoursEp 77: Component FlexibilityWe're back with an episode an episode about component and design system flexibility. How opinionated should your design system be, vs a large set of reusable pieces that can be put in any which way together. Davy and PJ weigh in on both methods and where you may want to dive into a framework that allows you to build starting from anywhere.2025-04-2329 minDesign System Office HoursEp 76: Guy Segal and Design System Management and OpsOur friend Guy Segal, Director of Design Systems at Thomson Reuters comes and talks with us about consistency in operations and how to scale out systems thinking.2025-04-1149 minDesign System Office HoursEp 75: Davy and PJ's DS OriginsWe learn about PJ's start in design systems, dating back to 2011, and Davy's first introduction to it in 2015. They discuss while tech has evolved, aspects such as theming still remain a struggle to figure out. Also discussed is how we evolved our roles, and what might be suitable traits and tactics used by design system people in 2025.2025-03-2726 minDesign System Office HoursEp 74: Maintaining Large Component LibrariesDavy and PJ talk about design and code parity, how we keep our artifacts aligned with live product, and other nuances to maintaining large scale component libraries.2025-03-0830 minDesign System Office HoursEp 73: Component MigrationsDavy and PJ talk about the challenges of updating legacy components from yesteryear, and what it takes to migrate legacy code to new design system components. When is the suitable time to do this work?2025-02-2433 minDesign System Office HoursEp 72: Atomic DesignDavy and PJ talk about the concepts presented in Brad Frost's 2013 book, Atomic Design, and how a simpler format in present day with components, patterns, and screens may be common representation for design teams. 2025-02-0731 minDesign System Office HoursEp 71: Reviewing Work from Product DesignersIn our second recent episode about reviewing work, Davy and PJ talk about how we review output from product designers on our teams and the need to stay plugged in so we can help designers earlier in the process.2025-01-2436 minDesign System Office HoursEp 70: CommsWhile the podcast is one form of communication, on our teams we heavily utilize async written communication methods to best spread the good work of design systems. We talk about the different methods we communicate to stakeholders and consumers of our design system artifacts, specifically, documentation.2025-01-0830 minDesign System Office HoursEp 69: Design System CritsDavy and PJ dive into the various ways we've utilized crits on our teams to both do design ops related work, but also reviewing code, in addition to design.2024-12-1936 minDesign System Office HoursEp 68: IC PerformanceTopical for the time of year, Davy gets PJ to spill some beans on how to best set up designers to best prove the value of their day-to-day work in design systems.2024-12-0637 minDesign System Office HoursEp 67: Medium-ish Sized TeamsWhile we touched on teams of one, which is quite common in our community, how do we function in medium size teams of 3+ designers, and how can we effectively, and intentionally scale.2024-11-1533 minDesign System Office HoursEp 66: a11y AgainIn our second episode dedicated to accessibility in design systems, Davy and PJ talk about the surface level explorations of color contrast, then learning more about how to better design for screen readers, for a better web experience.2024-10-3031 minDesign System Office HoursEp 65: DS POV from Engineering w/ Matt PetittWe start our series with learning about how design systems interact and help our other team members from different disciplines. We start with Matt Petitt, Engineering Manager at Dayforce.2024-10-1544 minDesign System Office HoursEp 64: Efficiency x VelocityDavy and PJ talk in depth about the perils of chasing efficiency, and how we approach measuring effort and time-saved. And does this tie into velocity at all?2024-10-0329 minDesign System Office HoursEp 63: Shifts in PrioritiesIn the tough market of design team contractions, Davy and PJ talk about how to maintain focus and stability as a horizontal design practice. 2024-09-1742 minDesign System Office HoursEp 62: Diving Into Figma's REST APIOn this episode, PJ talks about his time using Figma's REST API and how with so much data collected, we just need it to do a little more for us.2024-09-0633 minDesign System Office HoursEp 61: Where Design Systems Sit, w/ Nico from ZeplinThese have become some of our favorites, and tend to cover more ground than a typical ep. Nico, community manager for Zeplin joins as a co-host for this special ep.2024-08-2748 minDesign System Office HoursEp 60: Federated HelpHappy episode 60! Davy and PJ talk about a popular design system topic when we start out, Contributions and Federated Help. While this all sounds good, what are some of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on contributions and help from external design resources.2024-08-1431 minDesign System Office HoursEp 59: Adoption AgainIs system adoption the only measure of success? Davy and PJ talk about adoption metrics we tend to tie ourselves to, and how it may not always paint the most complete picture.2024-07-3038 minDesign System Office HoursEp 58: World of ColourOr aptly named, Color Complexity in Design by our GPT pal, Davy and PJ discuss the use or rather overuse of color in product design. When thinking about color in design systems, once again, less is most appropriate.2024-07-1727 minDesign System Office HoursEp 57: Config 24 RecapFresh off 2 days of Config in-person conference, Davy talks with PJ about his time IRL, and talk about what they thought about feature releases, and what we might have expected.2024-07-0137 minDesign System Office HoursEp 56: Design System FatiguePre-Config episode, Davy and PJ follow up our last "Just Say No" episode with an ep about design system fatigue. As a service team, how do we maintain the good graces, and continue to help designers produce the best work. It all starts and ends with a design culture that promotes early communication with the your design system frens.2024-06-2532 minDesign System Office HoursEp 55: Just Say NoWhen you're on a team of one, or fully staffed team with design and engineers, you'll soon have to shift some of your yes responses, to no. Davy and PJ talk how this at times trickles in through contributions, something that was an exciting concept in early days, but can get harder to manage as demand scales.2024-06-0433 minDesign System Office HoursEp 54: Davy and PJismsDavy and PJ go over their favorite Davy and PJisms, their versions of design principles that they have been following them around through several design roles over the years. 2024-05-0631 minDesign System Office HoursEp 53: Design Technologists, AgainWe had such good traction on one of our first episodes, we decided to bring on another friend of the program, Donnie D'Amato to talk about design technologists, where they should sit in the org, and how we can use them as designers to be our best helping hand.2024-04-1642 minDesign System Office HoursEp 52: Library Updates Available?It's a design system emergency! Our updates are no longer behind a somewhat blocking dialog in Figma. Davy and PJ had to jump on to talk about how this may help or not receive and adopt new system changes.2024-03-2829 minDesign System Office HoursEp 51: RitualsDavy and PJ talk about the importance of standing up rituals, much like our product design partners, including, how might design system teams handle crits and office hours. How might a designer working at a Facebook leverage a feed, or a internal Facebook group, to share updates. 2024-03-0633 minDesign System Office HoursEp 50: IC vs PDMWe made it to our 2 year birthday and 50 episodes! We reflect in Davy's shift into back into IC at Meta, and PJ's shift from IC to Manager most recently at Pinterest, and how the roles differed for us in design systems.2024-02-1631 minDesign System Office HoursEp 49: Finding Your First DS JobDavy and PJ talk about how to get into your first DS job, the answer being things to know OTHER than building components. On the second half of the pod, we flip to how to get into DS as a discipline as a product designer.2024-01-3030 minDesign System Office HoursEp 48: 2023 Year in ReviewAs we approach 2 years, and 50 episodes, we recap this year and dive back into how AI changed some of our thinking this year, as well as what we would like to see out of the design systems practice in 2024.
Episode Transcripts2024-01-0823 minDesign System Office HoursEp 47: Evaluating Outside Design PerspectivesOne theme that has been our mind working in large mega design teams, is how our product design teams handle outside, external POV, vs historical cannon. Davy and PJ discuss this, weaved in with how we like to evaluate potential solutions for our systems.
Episode Transcripts2023-12-1929 minDesign System Office HoursEp 46: ToolingWith convos of relying on external services such as design system docs sites, Figma plugins, or analytics, we talk about our experience working in large teams with funding to build our own, vs utilizing third party services that can simply get you up and running immediately.
Episode Transcript2023-11-2828 minDesign System Office HoursEp 45: Reactive vs Proactive SupportDavy and PJ talk a little more in depth about support and the dangers of being a purely reactive design system team. How do you handle requests, and how to operate the program during times of duress.
Episode Transcripts2023-11-0827 minDesign System Office HoursEp 44: Design Systems Team of OneListener question: DS team of one, and how to keep afloat and keep the program going. We touch on what you might want to focus on, and getting help as soon as you can so you can scale.
Episode Transcripts2023-10-1624 minDesign System Office HoursEp 43: ComplexityWe are back in your lives with a normal 1:1 with Davy and PJ about design system complexities, and how you might want to consider a system with less tokens, variants, and what it's like for Davy to manage 149 components on web alone.
Episode Transcripts2023-09-2835 minDesign System Office HoursEp 42: Accessibility x Design Systems w/ Cintia RomeroWe have a friend of the program, Cintia Romero from Pinterest to talk about her work leading the accessibility design and education programs that has been now consumed by hundreds of designers.
You can view the Pinterest docs site at:https://gestalt.pinterest.systems/2023-09-1540 minDesign System Office HoursEp 41: @cobradave + @disco_lu Twitter SpaceRecorded with @disco_lu a few months ago, Davy and Luis go rapid-fire on various design system hiring, component-building philosophies, and training. See below for timestamps.
(1:25): How Davy got started in DS
(6:00): Package my narrative as DS designer
(7:00): How to posture yourself to obtain your ideal position
(8:34): How to utilize existing job postings internally mentioning DS to get into your ideal position
(11:43): Davy’s way to cope with current layoffs
(13:05): Shift to more community in DS in the last few years
(14:05): How do we open th...2023-09-0552 minDesign System Office HoursEp 40: Move FastHappy 40th episode birthday. We talk about moving fast vs designing and building with intentionality, and naturally the convo led morphed into a half episode about ways of partnering with product designers, and how we work on our systems at Meta and Pinterest.
Episode Transcripts2023-08-1732 minDesign System Office HoursEp 39: Do You Need a DS?With DS being table stakes on lots of product design teams, and even job postings, we talk about whether you need one, or whether your efforts should be scaled elsewhere. What are you really getting yourself into when you start this journey..
Episode Transcripts2023-07-3133 minDesign System Office HoursEp 38: Career Convos for Design Systems People w/ Romina KavcicThis was a special LIVE RECORDING at The Future of Design Systems conference hosted by @IntoDSConf. Friend of the program @rominadesigner takes over as host. We talk about what hard skills are important to have (building components), and the novel idea of interviewing specifically for systems thinking.2023-07-1349 minDesign System Office HoursEp 37: Config 23 & IntoDS QADavy comes back from Config 2023, pondering life in and outside of the file, and some rapid fire QA with Davy and PJ. (01:25) Config 2023 IRL recap. (22:10) IntoDS, Future of Design Systems talk QA.
Episode Transcripts
Bonus link: Leading through Uncertainty @halli2023-06-2735 minDesign System Office HoursEp 36: Building ComponentsOne of Davy's favorite parts of being an IC is being able to still build components, and chase Figma's quest for excellence. Davy and PJ talk about the approach their teams take for building and maintaining design components, alignment with code source of truth, and staying away from uber components.
Episode Transcripts2023-06-1535 minDesign System Office HoursEp 35: Design System Interviewing w/ Masato MiuraWe’ve been following Masato’s project, designsystem.careers for a while now, and given the nature of the design job economy, wanted to pick his brain on how we can better interview design system designers and engineers.
Episode Transcripts2023-05-3137 minDesign System Office HoursEp 34: RoadmapsAs design system maintainers, we have the unique role of being deeply entrenched in our own product roadmaps. How can we find opportunity areas and advocate for what we think is best for our consumers? Can we even achieve this within a given time frame. Davy PM and PJ talk about how this has worked at Meta and Pinterest.
Episode Transcripts2023-05-1831 minDesign System Office HoursEp 33: GovernanceGovernance doesn't have to be a bad work, but can define how you convey intent through your system. We love governing so much, there's some bits and pieces that we covered in Ep 15: Support.
Episode Transcripts2023-05-0428 minDesign System Office HoursEp 32: Product Management x Design Systems w/ Angelina AllenSpecial episode with a friend of the program, Angelina Allen, Senior Product Manager of Native Design Systems at US Bank. Infinitely curious without having product management dedicated support on our teams, Davy and PJ talk to her about her role and how important it is on larger design systems team to have a product manager/owner help guide the work through and be impartial to designer or engineer decisions.2023-04-2037 minDesign System Office HoursEp 31: Staff Presentation DesignersWhat happens when we get lost on our own sauce, our presentations, decks, vision work, and forget about the tactical and operational work we need to do so we can keep the design systems train moving along.
Episode Transcripts2023-04-0734 minDesign System Office HoursEp 30: Design DeliveryWe made it to episode 30! It's about time we talked about Design Delivery and why design system maintainers are so passionate about it. Can we as a design and product team agree to deliver artifacts, in one single format? I bet the design systems team can help with a framework for that.
Episode Transcript2023-03-2731 min
Design System Office HoursEp 29: Early Career Designers w/ Val PoonLooking to learn more about design systems with some friends of the program, we talk to Val Poon, an early career designer at Info-Tech Research Group.2023-03-1325 minDesign System Office HoursEp 28: AI, Allen IversonWith all this chat (pun included) about ChatGPT, how else can we utilize some programmable help with AI and automation. Plus, the differences between a sweet potato and a yam.
Episode Transcripts2023-02-2734 minDesign System Office HoursEp 27: Listener QuestionsDavy and PJ answer listener questions that came in from some friends of the program. We touch on fun component library design only components, governance, office hours issue tracking, documentation, interviewing, and much more.
Episode Transcripts2023-02-1339 minDesign System Office HoursEp 26: Design System RolesWith the rise of design system teams in orgs, Davy and PJ talk about how their roles have progressed through product design, and design ops. How have things changed while we have come in and out of IC management? Today in our roles, what does IC leadership in Design Systems look like for us?
Episode Transcripts2023-01-3038 minDesign System Office HoursEp 25: Happy Birthday, Best of '22Happy 2023 and 1st birthday to the podcast! We got a treat for those new the program, our greatest hits from the first 20 episodes. Timestamps: Ep 9: ROI (02:08), Ep 10: Hindsight (07:00), Ep 13: Feedback (11:42), Ep 18: Contributions (15:38), Ep 20: Education and Onboarding (19:59), Ep 2: Design Technologists (25:00), Ep 3: Releases (28:33), Ep 5: Figma is NOT a DS (30:54), Ep 6: Mandates (38:55), Ep 7: JIRA MORMONT (43:33).2023-01-1749 minDesign System Office HoursEp 24: Lets Scale This Thing, Year 2 and So OnWelcome to the show 2023, even tho this was recorded in 2022. This is the last of our trilogy series, about how to get started in Design Systems. What happens after you get to year 2 and so on? Is your job done because everyone is bought in and good actors and advocates supporting the system?
Episode Transcripts2023-01-0532 minDesign System Office HoursEp 23: Lets Keep it Goin, Year 1-22nd in our series of the first years of design systems, Davy and PJ talk about how to grow the team, and where we have decided on our teams to focus on; which of the design system knobs, library, education, documentation, we decided to turn.
Episode Transcript2022-12-1333 minDesign System Office HoursEp 22: Let's Get Started, Year 0-1Originally episode 21, if not for our last special episode on layoffs, we talk about how to get a design system up and running, and things we looked to achieve in years 0-1. This ep is the first in a series of 3 episodes about getting started in design systems.
Episode Transcripts2022-11-3033 minDesign System Office HoursEp 21: ROI During LayoffsDuring this rough week at Meta and Twitter, Davy and PJ discuss how to continuously prove ROI for yourself and your team in the light of operating on leaner teams.
Episode Transcripts2022-11-1032 minDesign System Office HoursEp 20: Education and OnboardingHappy Halloween and 20th episode to us! Davy and PJ talk about how their teams support educating designers and the continuous task of training product designers, whether they are new to the org, or just new to the design system.
Episode Transcripts2022-10-3136 minDesign System Office HoursEp 19: Team ModelsDavy and PJ talk about different design system team make ups at Disney Streaming, Meta, and Pinterest. How federated vs centralized have worked for them; and how big does your team need to be?
Episode Transcripts2022-10-2132 minDesign System Office HoursEp 18: ContributionsDavy and PJ talk about how they're thinking about contribution models on their teams and mechanisms to get better XFN collaboration between design and engineering.
Episode Transcripts2022-10-0533 minDesign System Office HoursEp 17.5: Long Live Figma (BONUS)Davy and PJ react to the earth-shattering news that Adobe is “teaming up" with Figma, and what that may or may not mean to us.
Episode Transcripts2022-09-1935 minDesign System Office HoursEp 17: Copy Cats and MimicryDavy and PJ discuss issues with copy cat design patterns and frameworks. What might work for your company may not work for the next. Design systems is not one size fits all, but fits most.
Episode Transcripts2022-09-1533 minDesign System Office HoursEp 16: AutomationDavy talks with PJ about various ways of automating design system and design ops tasks to help our day-to-day lives as worker-bees easier.
Episode Transcripts2022-08-3134 minDesign System Office HoursEp 15: SupportDavy and PJ talk about their methods of design systems support, ranging from Davy's fave, Office Hours, to async support on Slack. A good episode candidate to do design systems bingo/drinking game.
Episode Transcripts2022-08-1827 minDesign System Office HoursEp 14: File HygienePJ grills Davy about his super organized and sometimes outrageous file hygiene mandates he lead while working at Disney Streaming. How can you use organization and naming to drive better alignment across design and engineering partners?
Episode Transcripts2022-08-0629 minDesign System Office HoursEp 13: FeedbackDavy and PJ talk about how we've incorporated design and engineering user feedback on our design system work. Leaning into surveys, PJ has had great success half-over-half by employing a new product framework.. listening.
Episode Transcripts2022-07-1833 min
Design System Office HoursEp 12: SpeakingDavy talks about speaking at his first design conference last month, UXDX. We talk about how to find your voice and how to get started for those whom want to engage more with the product design community.
Episode Transcripts2022-06-2931 minDesign System Office HoursEp 11: AdoptionWe took a long Memorial Day vacay and back to talk about adoption methods and get how to get designers excited to use your design system. Chatter about how different strategies apply for differing scale of teams.
Episode Transcripts2022-06-0830 minDesign System Office HoursEp 10: Hindsight, What We Wish We've Known...Happy 10th episode birthday! We wanted to take a look at and see, knowing what we've known about working on design systems at our companies, what we wish we would have known had we started today.
Episode Transcripts2022-05-2327 minDesign System Office HoursEp 9: ROIWe're almost at episode 10, and we're here to talk about ROI, driving impact. It has to do with learning what leadership's LOVE LANGUAGE is.
Episode Transcripts2022-05-1333 minDesign System Office HoursEp 8: Multi-brand Design SystemsWe talk about a fun topic of scale, how to support multiple brands under 1 design system. Davy talks a bit about considerations when designing across Disney+ and Star+ and the usage of theming to design for one system in whole.
Episode Transcripts2022-04-2733 minDesign System Office HoursEp 7: JIRA MORMONTWe've polled our listeners and heard that JIRA was their favorite design tool, over Figma. So we decided to talk about how we've utilized JIRA as Design System product owners and how it's impacted the way we plan our work.
Episode Transcriptions2022-04-1435 minDesign System Office HoursEp 6: MandatesMandates, governance, we discuss how our orgs approach the mandates for usage of the Design Systems.
Episode Transcripts2022-03-2927 minDesign System Office HoursEp 5: Figma is NOT a Design SystemIs your work in Figma a Design System? We chat about how design artifacts and tools are just one portion of what a system represents.
Episode Transcripts2022-03-1632 minDesign System Office HoursEp 4: DocumentationOne of the favorite talking points of all Design System folx, Documentation. What does documentation mean to you?
Episode Transcripts2022-03-0132 minDesign System Office HoursEp 3: Releases and VersioningAn meta-pilot on releasing the podcast on a Wednesday vs a Friday. We talk about how we manage Design System releases as well as the differences between versioning and version control.
Episode Transcripts2022-02-1633 minDesign System Office HoursEp 2: Design TechnologistsWelcome to our second episode! We have Ayesha Mazrana (@AyeshaKMaz) a Design Technologist at Pinterest, talking about her role, how she works with design and engineering, and how she's found success working on a Design Systems team with PJ.
Episode Transcripts2022-02-0330 minDesign System Office HoursEp 1: Design Management for Design SystemsWelcome to our first episode. Davy and PJ talk about who they are, and dive into their roles as Design Managers, managing Design Systems for 2 different organizations.
Episode Transcripts2022-01-2134 minDesign System Office HoursEp 0: Design System Office Hours IntroDesign System Office Hours trailer. No spoilers!2022-01-1700 min