390: Building Design Infrastructure ft. Kathryn Gonzalez

This week, we catch up with Kathryn Gonzalez, the Head of Design Infrastructure at DoorDash. We talk about building DoorDash’s first design system, how to scale a design systems team, balancing technical and design skills, how to become a better systems designer by learning outside of work, and much more.Golden Ratio Supporters:MailbrewA huge shoutout to Mailbrew for supporting the show this week! Mailbrew is a personal daily digest for all the stuff you care about on the internet. We love it for delivering the top links and top tweets shared by the people we follow on Twitter, reducing FOMO and cutting down on social media time.Get started with a free trial, no credit card required, at https://mailbrew.com/dd. If you subscribe after the trial, you’ll save 30% on your first year’s subscription.AroundThank you to Around, a better way to video call. The product is designed specifically to make it easier to gather small groups to collaborate in real time, without all the distracting and frustrating interfaces that comes with most video chat software. We love the small floating heads and emphasis on making it easy to work alongside the video call, rather than constantly having to app switch.You can get started for free by signing up at Around.co!Latest VIP Patrons:Nacho AllendesalazarMichelle BajurnyMonica ConradEugene DobrovolskyJosh RamiresPem Zhipeng XieChris AalidRyan MagalhaesPaige WoodNicoleBalázs BartaThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to the bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.Main Topic:This week, we have an interview! We caught up with Kathryn Gonzalez, the Head of Design Infrastructure at DoorDash. We talk about her experience building DoorDash’s design system from scratch, working as a technical designer, hiring for design systems roles, and much more.@ryngonzalezKathryn’s websiteCool Things:Kathryn shared March Madness, which is actually happening this year!Brian shared The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the newest Disney+ series for the MCU. We’re only one episode in, but it’s off to a good start.Marshall shared Formula 1: Drive to Survive on Netflix. Even if you’re not into cars or racing, it’s a show that ramps you up and gets you invested in the players and teams.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesByeee!