Sharing what I’ve learned
Successful design systems don’t happen by accident – they’re intentional, they have clear aims, and their team’s work is prioritised against shared goals. In short, they are underpinned by good strategies. Over the past decade, I’ve helped lots of teams to define and deliver their design systems. In this post, I’ll share what I’ve learned about how to define a practical strategy and a clear action…
I’ve noticed a trend recently amongst marketing copywriters and I am – and I cannot stress this enough – NOT into it. It goes like this: a brand posts a lengthy statement as an image on social media with an attention-grabbing title along the lines of “We’re sorry”, “An apology” or “Official apology statement”. The text underneath goes onto deliver a disingenuous apology for changing customers’…
Never in my life have I been so violently confronted by my brokenness than in the first year of separating from my husband in early 2023. My body and mind, both of which had historically existed as a kind of backdrop to my life thus far, suddenly took centre stage as grotesque, malfunctioning vessels of pain. I began looking for answers. I scrolled through hours of TikTok, desperately browsing the…
The law of conservation of energy says that, within a closed system, energy cannot be created or destroyed: only converted from one form of energy to another. In 2023 - a year filled with personal loss - I’ve come to find some comfort in this fact. If a relationship between 2 people is a closed system, then the law of conservation says that the energy that existed between them endures, even when…
“Where are we going?” I ask you. You don’t answer me. I see the muscle in your cheek move as you clench your jaw, thinking, but your hands stay on the wheel and your eyes stay on the road. Silence. You’re not OK and neither am I. No one in this car is OK. “Maybe we should pull over and get some rest” I say, and I already know you won’t. You’ll keep driving and I will sit quietly in my growing…
I am a perfectionist. Contrary to popular belief, perfectionism is not just about striving, against all odds, to achieve perfection. What it often is - and certainly the way it manifests for me - is an overwhelming urge to disengage from anything I don’t believe I’m going to excel at. I am also burnt out. Perfection feels unattainable to me at the moment, and this combination of burnout and…
Today I attended ffconf in Brighton for the second year running. Here’s a rundown of the talks, and my reflections from the day. Imposter syndrome, overworking and working environments by Amber Shand We kicked the day off with a talk on dealing with imposter syndrome by Frontend Engineer, Amber Shand . Amber discussed her own struggles with imposter syndrome when she moved into software…
“Pack your bags!” the email told me. I looked at the boxes around me with a lump in my throat. Boxes of my clothes, books, the cafetiere we bought together (I didn’t take much but I couldn’t do without fresh coffee in the morning). I looked at our wedding photos on the bookshelf: I wouldn’t be packing those. My cat walked in and wound herself around my legs, purring. “Do you know I’m leaving?” I…
_This post is based on a talk I gave at this year's Smashing Conf in Freiburg , I'll add a link to the talk once it's available. When we talk about the benefits of design systems, we tend to repeat 3 promises. efficiency: a design system will reduce waste in your design and development processes, and help you go faster consistency: a design system will help you standardise your digital experiences…
As an independent consultant, I find myself in the position of “new girl” more than most. As a result, I’ve learned a few things about how to hit the ground running. Managing information overload A universal feature of starting any new job is a tidal wave of information to absorb: names to learn; obscure project names to remember; tools to get familiar with; the list goes on. Even those of us…
I am burnt out. It’s 5:30pm and I’m just sitting down to write today’s NaBloPoMo post, and the only thing I can think to write about is that I am exhausted. I stopped working full-time in April and I’m just beginning again now. A foreplanned 2-month break turned into 6, and could easily stretch to the end of the year if not for my declining bank balance and a nagging sense that I ought to keep the…
For the third year running, I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo for short). I’ll be publishing a new blog post every weekday throughout November. What is NaBloPoMo? According to this post by Michelle Weber , NaBloPoMo was started by an American blogger called Eden Kennedy, in response to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Participants write a blog post every day…
This blog post is based on a talk I did at Converge Manchester 2023 - I will add a link to the talk when it's ready. In the meantime, you may want to check out Lauren Loprete's fantastic talk on design systems and burnout from Clarity , which is part of what inspired this one. A few weeks ago at Smashing Conf , I saw a designer called Christine Vallaure give a talk about responsive design. In the…
Every month I run a free Zoom session called Design Systems Open Space. It’s for people who work on design systems to come together, meet each other, and talk about anything we’re grappling with. Each month we focus on a different topic - and January’s open space covered my all-time favourite design systems subject: documentation. Here are my reflections from the session. Design systems…
For those of you who’ve been fortunate enough to miss my incessant social media posting on the matter, I run a monthly Zoom session called Design Systems Open Space. It’s aimed at people working on design systems, and provides a chance to get together, meet others in the space, and share our lessons and struggles. Each session focuses on a different topic - voted for by attendees - and this month…
National Blog Posting Month - affectionately known as NaBloPoMo - is a challenge in which participants write a blog post every day throughout November. The idea is to help bloggers develop a consistent writing habit, and break away from perfectionist ideals that might otherwise prevent them from sharing their work. I've just taken part for the second year running - here's a quick summary of what I…
I wrote down a quote recently from Hayley Hughes’ talk at Clarity 2022 . She said “when you work on design systems, there are people that think they know what you do, but they have no clue.” What’s struck me about this is that it highlights an important change in the design systems communications directive in the past few years. If we go back 5 to 10 years, an important task for those of us…
Working - as I do - at the intersection of content design and design systems, I’m often thinking about ways of improving design system documentation. And in this quest, I come up against one question time and time again: Why don’t we approach guidance and documentation as modular parts of our systems, the way we do with everything else? Let me explain. Design systems documentation as reusable…
I imagine a hierarchy of the painful scenarios around the issue of having children, and I consider where it’s fair to place myself, and I always conclude it’s somewhere near the bottom. I can’t compare the pain of not knowing if you want a baby to the pain of knowing you want a baby and not being able to have one. I can’t speak on behalf of the second group. I've been close to lots of people in…
Every now and then I run into the question of whether design systems should document and distribute components and patterns that we don’t really want system users to use. These are sometimes referred to as “anti-patterns”. A few years ago, I was involved in one such debate about whether to include a Select component in the GOV.UK Design System . (As spoilered by the link I just included, we…
As the design systems space has matured, our understanding of what they entail and how to approach the work has naturally converged. We now have a wealth of collective knowledge and experience that we can use to inform our practice - and that’s a very positive thing. But convergence can cross over into rigidity. And when contextual experience informs general recommendations, we can find ourselves…
Periodically and inconsistently - but roughly once a month - I run a free Zoom session called Design Systems Open Space. It’s a chance for folks who work on design systems to gather together, meet each other, and share challenges we’re facing. Each open space focuses on a different topic - and we used this month’s session to explore the question that just won’t die: What should be your design…
What does coffee mean to you? For me, coffee is a reliable benchmark against which I can measure my general happiness. Sometimes it’s the icing on the cake. Sometimes it’s the best part of my day. On really busy days, coffee is an act of defiance against the chaos that surrounds me: a moment carved out just for myself, to wrap my hands around a warm mug and take a deep breath, re-fuelling myself…
Dear male ego, It’s not you - it’s me, after dealing with you and all the yous that came before you. I’m writing to tell you that I’m breaking up with you. I’ve done my best to keep you happy, but it’s never done the trick, and I can’t do it anymore. “His heart’s in the right place”. That’s what they tell me. “He’s a good guy, he just really cares”, “He doesn’t know how he comes across”, “He…
One of the most common promises we make when making an investment case for design systems is that they’ll reduce or completely eradicate duplication of effort. “Look at all these different button instances we have! Once we have a design system, we can just create components once and use them anywhere” - goes the pitch. The problem is that it’s not a promise design systems can, or indeed should,…
Last week I headed to the coast for my first time at FF Conf - an annual web conference held in Brighton. While some conferences have clear themes, what struck me about this one was the stark variation in the content and tone of the talks. Joe Hart summed it up well on Twitter when he commented that it left him with a mixed energy of “Let’s go and build stuff!” and “We’re all going to die” And…
This post is based on my recent talk, Building conscious design systems, which I gave at WDC and GOV Design Systems Day. Here's the WDC version if you prefer to watch it. When we talk about the benefits of design systems, the 3 most common promises are: efficiency: a design system will reduce waste in your design and development processes, and help you go faster consistency: a design system will…
At the time of writing this, many people are setting up Mastodon accounts - an open source social media platform - in response to Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. I've seen a lot of debate about the inclusivity of Mastodon as a platform, with comments like: "Mastodon is way more inclusive than Twitter because it's built by a community" "But Mastodon has accessibility issues" "And most of the…
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Jargon is defined as “special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand”. Jargon has negative connotations, but it’s not unequivocally a bad thing. Now you might be surprised to find me - content designer, plain language proponent, and inclusion advocate - arguing the case for jargon, but hear me out. Jargon can support belonging and solidarity…
Over the past few years, there’s been a significant shift in the way I think about the work of creating design systems. Previously, I saw the task of establishing design systems as the act of making something new. And this is still how most organisations I consult with tend to approach the work. Nowadays, I think of the work more as the practice of changing existing cultures, processes and tools…
Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick on my Twitter timeline of people stating, with frustration, that a Figma library is not a design system. In my experience, the real meaning of this statement is usually one of these 2 things: “Some of the people I’m working with don’t understand design systems in the way that I do” “We’re spending too much time on our Figma library at the expense of things I think…
It’s OK to… know you want a to make a change but not what change to make take your time not know what you think not live every day like it’s your last not have an opinion hold back from sharing an opinion want to share an opinion, without knowing what your opinion is take a while to respond apologise too much decide to stop apologising reject the idea that there’s a right amount of apologising to…
On Wednesday and Thursday this week, I went to Leading Design conference at The Barbican in London. Rather than give a rundown of all of the talks, I thought I’d share some thoughts on a prevailing theme that emerged for me over the 2 days: the idea of tension between opposing forces. Ray Ho and Jane Austin ’s talks focused on the tension between design and other disciplines. Nicola Ryan talked…
Last year, I worked on a service designed to help children and young people find support for their mental health. To find relevant support options, the service asked users what kind of support they’re looking for. One of the original options we gave was “I want some ongoing help to get better”. The wording seems fairly innocuous, but when we tested it with a Transgender teen, they spotted a…
It’s becoming increasingly unfashionable to cite “consistency” as a goal for design systems. I’ve seen plenty of design system teams ditching the term in favour of words like “alignment”, “cohesion” or “unity”. The goal of swapping these terms around, as far as I can tell, is to combat the perception that those of us building design systems seek to make everything look the same and stifle creative…
For the second year in a row, I’ve decided to take part in National Blog Posting Month, or “NaBloPoMo”, for short. What is NaBloPoMo? According to this post by Michelle Weber , NaBloPoMo was founded by an American blogger called Eden Kennedy, in response to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Participants write a blog post every day throughout November, to break away from perfectionist…
This article is based on a talk I delivered at Converge London 2022 - here's the video in case you'd prefer to watch it . In 2020, Nathan Curtis wrote : “It’s foolish to think a [design system team] sees everything, let alone understands all the subtle forces at play across an experience. It’s product designers and developers on the front lines, working to solve customer problems on a daily basis,…
I co-authored this post with Caroline Jarrett and Ignacia Orellana In our last blog post collaboration, we talked about how to share research in design systems . We explained why it matters and what designers and developers need from it. In this blog post, we’ll describe 2 challenges that we’ve encountered when doing research on the individual components and patterns in design systems, and 4 ways…
One of the most common pieces of feedback I give to design system teams about their documentation is this: write using the active voice. In this post I’ll explain what the active voice is and why it matters. What is the active voice? Unless you write for a living, then trying to recall the difference between active and passive language from high school English class might be a bit like asking…
This post is based on my recent talk, Design Systems for Humans, from this year’s UX London. I’ll add a link to the recording once it’s available. Something I’ve noticed in the past couple of years is a narrowing of our definition of design systems. That definition tends to encompass the most visible parts of our design systems - the artefacts, tools and processes involved. You’ll see that most…
When we talk about how to incentivise design system contribution, something that comes up in almost every discussion is accreditation: Can we recognise design system contributors with a public acknowledgement of their work on a component or pattern? Or can we award individuals a contributor “status”, by naming them in design system documentation, putting their picture in a digital wall of fame, or…
Content warning: Racist language This post discusses a term that’s commonly used to describe design patterns that cause problems for users. For the sake of clarity, I have used the full term once, at the beginning of this article. There’s been an increasing number of conversations on my Twitter timeline, lately, about the term “dark patterns”. The term was originally coined by Harry Brignull . He…
I co-authored this post with Caroline Jarrett and Ignacia Orellana “Use this because we said so” is not a convincing strategy for building trust with designers and developers who want to, need to, or are told to, use a design system. “Use this because we’ve done research on why it works” is a more powerful argument. In this post, we’ll describe the needs we discovered in our meta-research: user…
I’m now working on my second multi-brand design system and am again facing the challenge of how to structure, write and present documentation for 3 different brands. Let’s assume that at least some of what we provide is going to be brand-specific. This is usually the case if our brands are intentionally different, and we’re not trying to consolidate them into one. 2 questions we always face with…
So here we are for the final installment of National Blog Posting Month 2021 (NaBloPoMo). (If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, here’s an introduction to NaBloPoMo .) Here I’ll share some reflections and a roundup of the posts I’ve written. Reflections 1. I did it! I’m really proud of myself for sticking to the challenge. I wasn’t sure if I would, but I’ve managed to write and publish a new…
In 1941, my grandmother—my Dad’s Mum—was at home celebrating her daughter Joanna’s 2nd birthday. In the middle of the festivities, a German fighter plane dropped a bomb on the house. Joanna was killed instantly and my grandmother was badly injured, narrowly missing a leg amputation. On 1 April 1950, my other grandmother—my Mum’s Mum—was waiting for a taxi to take her to the church to marry my…
I’ve been thinking lately about how a lot of anxiety-management advice can feel quite vague. When people say things like “learn to accept your feelings”, I can grasp that in theory but struggle to know what it means in practice. With that in mind, I thought I’d share a practical technique that I use when I’m feeling overwhelmed. It’s an actual thing I learned in therapy, not something I made up,…
A couple of years ago I was walking through London with 2 of my friends. We were talking about what we’d done over the weekend, and I told them I’d had a busy one and had been able to completely switch off from work for the first time in a while. I said, “Do you ever just have those moments that make you realise that work is just work, and it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things?”…
It’s just that: I’ve been totally swamped at work I’ve not been feeling well this week I was having a panic attack I’ve been thinking about how our society prioritises instant gratification too much and I’m busy writing you a letter My cat required my attention I like you an awful lot and I want to give your response the attention it deserves It takes more energy to respond to your email about my…