Summary
In her talk, Dawn Russell, an experienced design leader at Intuit, explores the transformation of design systems from basic pattern libraries to advanced widgets that integrate both front-end and back-end functionalities. She shares personal anecdotes to highlight cultural differences in design perspectives and shares insights into how widgets enable better design practices, efficiency, and user experience across Intuit’s products. Russell explains that true design systems must function as a single source of truth and evolve through real-time updates. By embedding human-centered design and collaboration among cross-disciplinary teams, Intuit has harnessed the potential of widgets to foster innovation, automate processes, and improve user interactions. The talk concludes with strategic advice for other organizations on successful design systems and the importance of engaging in meaningful partnerships between designers and engineers.
Key Insights
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Design systems have evolved from pattern libraries to component libraries, and now to widgets that integrate user tasks and back-end services.
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A true design system must serve as a single source of truth in code to ensure sustainability and adaptability.
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Widgets allow for reuse across different contexts, increasing efficiency and improving user experience.
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The introduction of a unified identity system in Intuit products increased interconnectivity and customer engagement.
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Collaboration between designers and engineers is crucial; engaging engineers in the design process leads to better outcomes.
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Successful widgets should be reusable and encapsulate complex functionalities without losing specificity.
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Experiments like A/B testing can validate design changes and help teams adapt more effectively.
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Widgets can enhance productivity, resulting in significant cost reductions for support and operational functions.
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Cross-disciplinary teamwork fosters comprehensive solutions that benefit the entire organization.
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Understanding team motivations helps in creating a culture of collaboration between product designers and engineers.
Notable Quotes
"The user experience field really started out with design systems introducing pattern libraries."
"I actually don't think that a pattern library is a design system, not a true design system."
"In the enterprise, how quickly and easily your design system can scale is directly proportionate to the amount of impact it can have."
"The way I define a widget is it encapsulates a user task with associated user interface and back end service functionality."
"Widgets are built once, and they're used in many places, in various applications and different contexts."
"What we learned from our users validated our design hypothesis."
"It allows you to propagate best practices across the enterprise in terms of user experience and technology."
"Our goal is to get a minimum of three adoptions of everything we create because then we know we're definitely a good investment for the company."
"You have to get the business leaders and the technology leaders involved to make this truly successful."
"As designers, our medium is code, not just our design tools."
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