Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products

Gold
Thursday, June 9, 2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Share the love for this talk
Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products
Speakers: Nathan Curtis
Link:

Summary

Drawing from over a decade of consulting with major companies like IBM, Cisco, Marriott, and Salesforce, the speaker explores the complexities and best practices of design systems in large organizations. He recounts initial engagements, such as with IBM's VP of Design, who emphasized the need for a system encompassing multiple products rather than isolated component libraries. Using Google's Material Design and Salesforce as examples, he highlights the importance of holistic design language covering typography, color, motion, and voice, and the need to break down design into atomic parts for consistency. He illustrates exercises like component cutouts and prioritization worksheets to organize efforts. The speaker stresses that a design system is not just a static artifact but a living product requiring strategic alignment, leadership support (citing John Wiley from Google), dedicated teams (highlighting Gina from Salesforce), and federated contributions. He shares insights on engaging flagship products, avoiding contentious areas like homepages, and radiating influence through navigation and core flows, as demonstrated in Marriott and Cisco projects. He also underscores the challenges of scaling teams, decision-making methods (notably Cap Watkins' care-level chart), and the value of prototypes, such as the one developed with Livia Lavatte, to align stakeholders and demonstrate progress. Ultimately, the talk paints design systems as dynamic ecosystems that connect people, processes, and products to improve efficiency, quality, and customer experiences.

Key Insights

  • Design systems succeed when treated as living products with dedicated roadmaps, backlogs, and support teams.

  • A design system must address multiple flagship products initially (3-5) to maintain manageable scope and influence.

  • Visual style alone is insufficient; cohesion requires alignment of typography, color, iconography, motion, and voice.

  • Centralized design system teams can balance cohesion across products but risk losing product-context influence.

  • Federating design system contributions across teams encourages diverse inputs and scalability.

  • Strong leadership endorsement, including executive support, is critical for design system success.

  • Prototypes stitching multiple product teams' work help communicate design system value to stakeholders.

  • Avoid focusing design system efforts on contentious areas like homepages where organizational conflicts run high.

  • Implementing decision frameworks based on stakeholders' care level improves resolution and autonomy.

  • Including content strategy and voice/tone leadership enriches design systems beyond UI components.

Notable Quotes

"I don't want a component library for the account home. I want a system for all of that."

"Google’s Material Design has echoes of design decisions flowing through many of their applications."

"Visual style isn’t just enough to make something feel cohesive."

"A design system is done not when the style guide is launched, but when it positively impacts customer experience."

"You have to treat the design system like a product that everyone in your organization will use."

"Getting exact endorsement from the top helps your cause immensely."

"You need to be the connector between people trying to drive decisions and others influencing them."

"Sometimes alignment work isn’t enjoyable, but it’s part of the job for design system success."

"Don’t just think about design systems as an artifact but as a living ecosystem connecting people, tools, and products."

"Short-term pairings with different design people help bring back contributions into the central system."

Ask the Rosenbot
Maria Skaaden
Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Lisa Gironda
Opener: Chief of Staff–An unexpected journey
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Dave Hora
Research in the Face of Complexity: New Sensibility for New Situations
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Erin Weigel
Real-world lessons to improve your conversion rates
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Panel Discussion: Communicating the Value of DesignOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Aditi Ruiz
A PM State of Mind: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 1
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Michele Marut
Research Repositories Reconsidered
2019 • DesignOps Community
Dantley Davis
Leadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
2020 • Enterprise Community
Billy Carlson
Ideation tips for Product Managers
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Continuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Jaime Creixems
Best Practices when Creating and Maintaining a Design System
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Jodi Forlizzi
Design and AI innovation
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Craig Brookes
"Just Make it Look Good" and Other Ways We're Misunderstood
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Meaghan Waters
Lack of Product Thinking will Doom Your Legacy Modernization
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Peter Levin
Solve a Problem Here, Transform a Strategy There: Research as an Occasion for Expanding Organizational Possibility
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Verónica Urzúa
The B-side of the Research Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Kelly Goto

"Unless your products yield exceptional emotional value, they’re not going to succeed."

Kelly Goto

Emotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy

May 13, 2015

Lija Hogan

"We can no longer think of users as flat personas; we have to enrich those concepts with intersectional identities."

Lija Hogan

Contexts of Use: A Framework for Connection

December 9, 2021

Etienne Fang

"Caring personally isn't about memorizing birthdays or throwing big team offsites; it’s about real conversations and learning what’s important to people."

Etienne Fang

The Power of Care: From Human-Centered Research to Humanity-Centered Leadership

March 10, 2021

Stephen Pollard

"This client project is very deliberate and explicit in focusing on culture and values."

Stephen Pollard

Closing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?

November 7, 2017

Theresa Neil

"We were doing all the things until we got the advice to specialize; that moment changed everything."

Theresa Neil

Designing for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare

May 22, 2024

Amy Evans

"Would you feel confident leaving your project success to the flip of a coin based on the fact that almost half of all change fails?"

Amy Evans

How to Create Change

September 25, 2024

John Cutler

"If you need to cross a dangerous river, you don’t paddle straight into it; you use the opposing force of the river to move forward."

John Cutler

Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)

December 3, 2024

Llewyn Paine

"Where in your design process is your biggest opportunity for AI adoption?"

Llewyn Paine

Day 1 Using AI in UX with Impact

June 10, 2025

Briana Thomas

"We unapologetically move forward when high-level stakeholders miss deadlines, but also collect feedback via surveys."

Briana Thomas Christina Rodriguez

When Design Ops Comes in H.O.T. : A Tale of a Transformed Design Org

September 30, 2021