Nathan Curtis — Deep Foundations of Design Systems

Nathan Curtis co-founded EightShapes in 2006 and is passionate about interaction design, information architecture, and front-end development. He specializes in design systems consulting for teams large and small, regularly writing about and speaking at events worldwide. Co-hosting this week is Micah Godbolt, Senior Design Developer at Microsoft. This episode of Non Breaking Space Show is sponsored by: CSS Dev Conf — Conference dedicated to CSS and its super friend technologies like JavaScript, Sass, npm, and more. A limited supply of Early Bird Tickets now on sale. Register now! UX Design Newsletter — A weekly free newsletter containing a collection of tutorials, articles, and videos about front-end design and development, plus tips on how to bring better engagement to the multi-device world curated by Christopher Schmitt. Sign up now! Time Jumps 2:44 An introduction to Nathan’s background on the web. 3:50 Design systems are just catching. 4:50 What kind of deliverables would you give to clients back in the 2000’s? 7:20 What’s the next step in design systems? 9:40 It seems like we’re going to start quantifying everything we do inside a design system. 10:30 Automation helping generate code from design systems. 13:20 Working with the various javascript frameworks has changed design systems. 14:40 In the future we won’t have design system, we’ll have a system of systems. 19:30 Sharing design systems across large organizations with common components vs niche apps or websites. 21:30 Designers don’t have as much experience working collaboratively in a community environment. 25:00 Designers tend to be silod - what has been your experience? 29:50 In professional settings, designers with seasoning struggle when they aren’t made aware of the design systems. 31:34 Designers are looking to do the right thing. 33:00 Defending the designers. 36:10 Who’s actually controlling the knobs and dials? 38:30 It works but have you tested it on users yet? 45:50 Adding a research tab to the design system that’s available to everyone. 47:20 Sometimes you have to realize one team might have a completely different user base. 50:00 What goes into a system or not? 53:20 What are your tips for people who want to get a design system going? 56:40 How can people find you on the internet and get in design system conversations? Links: Christopher Schmitt Christopher Schmitt on Twitter Nathan Curtis on Twitter Nathan Curtis on Medium Eight Shapes Micah Godbolt on Twitter Micah Godbolt React NBSP 128 Peter Nowell — SVG Sketch Workflows Red Hat Design Systems Slack Non Breaking Space Show on TuneIn Non Breaking Space Show for Android Non Breaking Space Show on Google Play Non Breaking Space Show on iTunes Non Breaking Space Show on Facebook 📺 Non Breaking Space Show on YouTube Non Breaking Space Show Newsletter