Patterns Podcast

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Last week Knapsack announced Patterns , the leadership-focused design systems retreat. Chris and Ryan Peterson, Knapsack's VP Marketing, and Chris talk about the what, why, and who behind Patterns, an invite-only retreat for 50 engineering, product, and design leaders. Curious about why it's focused on leader-level topics? Wondering if it will hel...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Matt, Veda, and Chris discuss how Matt and Veda have incorporated accessibility and inclusion into one of the world’s most well-known design systems, Spectrum. Matt shares his experience getting accessibility principles into Spectrum on the ground floor, and Veda discusses how inclusion fits into design systems. Guests: Matt May is the Head of Inclusive Des...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Wayfair, the ubiquitous online retailer, is more than just wayfair.com : the company owns Perigold, Joss & Main, and Birch Lane. Neva, Rogin, and Chris discuss how Wayfair united three disparate design systems into one; the gradual process of building a holistic design system team; achieving cross-functional design system adoption, and the merits of ove...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Mike and Chris discuss design systems at the enterprise level, the history of systems, and UX design at the beginning of the internet.  Guest: Mike Bowser is the Design Director, Design Systems at Vista. He is a UX/UI designer, design team leader, and educator with expertise in design systems, UX research, and UI design. His recent focus is closing the gap...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Zach, Aaron, and Chris discuss the commonalities between design systems and products, as well as how a product-driven mindset can help your design systems achieve new levels of enterprise adoption and scale. Guest : Zach Hendershot is a Managing Partner at Crux Digital . He is a leader with a diverse background of building and growing digital products withi...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Sit tight—this is a long one! Stephen Gates and Chris discuss the real value of design systems, what designers and football players have in common, and how to apply design methodology to day-to-day work. Guest: Stephen Gates is Senior Vice President of Omni-channel Product Design for WW. In this role, he is responsible for the design of WW’s end-to-end memb...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Gina and Chris discuss the importance of real-deal content in your designs, defining “good design” for your company, and how to set effective, meaningful KPIs for design work. Guest: Gina is the Principal Analyst, Design and Accessibility, at Forrester Research. Her research focuses on experience design organizations, scaling design, accessibility, and incl...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Want to help the design systems community learn more about adoption?  Take our four-minute survey . Microsoft’s Josh Cusick and Chris discuss how to convey intent when working with a design system, the importance of buy-in for a successful design system culture, and whether or not your design system will ever be finished. Guest: Josh Cusick is a product des...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Want to be part of the industry's first-ever report on design system adoption? Click here to take part in our 4-minute survey. In this deep-dive episode, Danny, Robin, and Chris discuss the differences and similarities of design systems at different stages of maturity, including ROI measurement; who should manage your design system, and how to create a...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Leonardo De La Rocha and Chris discuss the “federated” design system model, how to connect design systems to business needs, designing friction-free cross-platform experiences, and C-suite awareness of design needs. Guest: Lonardo De La Rocha is an engineer turned pixel-pusher turned creative executive and adviser. He currently serves as Director of Intuit...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Audrey and Chris discuss the vision guiding Xero’s design system team, how co-ownership helps design system teams thrive, the processes she uses for managing a global team, and how the Xero design system team approaches modernization. Guest: Audrey has been designing digital experiences at high-growth technology companies for over 12 years. She’s passionate...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Jess Clark and Chris discuss the meaning of design systems and the potential of design systems as a service. What can design systems offer us beyond infrastructure? How can approaching design systems as products, rather than repositories, increase their capabilities? Guest: Jess Clark is Director of Product Design, Design Systems at LinkedIn, where she is r...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. This episode is a little bit longer—okay, a lot longer—than our usual. Chrome developer advocate Adam Argyle and Chris Strahl talk about tokens in all their glory without worrying about time limits. If you’ve ever wondered about the limits of tokens and what’s left to explore in the token stratosphere, check out this podcast. Guest: Adam Argyle is a Chrome...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Maya Hampton and Chris discuss why design systems need to be flexible, the role of a product manager in a design system, and viewing design systems as products. Guest : Maya Hampton is the product manager of REI’s design system, where she leads a cross-functional team, including design and engineering, to help scale REI's branding and consistent UX acr...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Jehad Affoneh, Scott Mathis, and Chris discuss the advantages of open-source, the role of content in design systems, the pattern-based approach to building apps, and similarities between music and tokens. Guests: Jehad Affoneh is Chief Design Officer at Splunk (formerly Head of Design at VMware). He’s an experienced design and business leader who writes fre...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Dave Calleja and Chris discuss getting clients to sign off on design systems, strategies for getting executive buy-in, and the role of designer as evangelist. Guest: Dave Calleja is Head of Design at Isobar. He’s been working in digital and UX for over 15 years, from tiny teams to federal government projects. At Isobar he’s pursuing a strong passion for dev...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Matthew and Chris discuss what’s exciting about design tokens, how APIs streamline communication, the magic of standardized files, and how to spend less time copy-pasting. Guest: Matthew Ström is a Brooklyn-based design leader currently working as Director of Design at SimpleHealth. He’s previously led design teams at Dow Jones, SoundCloud, and Bitly, and h...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Jennie and Chris discuss the critical role of storytelling for your design system, using learning moments to drive adoption, what comes next after launching your system, qualitative and quantitative ways to measure system success, and content strategies for design systems. Guest: Jennie Yip is a hybrid design engineer with a heart for elegant user interface...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Avery and Chris discuss lessons learned from design and development partnering up vs. making work an “us vs. them” thing, embracing intentionality and viewing all decisions through that lens, focusing on reuse and trust to help your design system gain traction across your organization. Guest: Avery Oldt is Founder & Chief Design Officer at Blermph , a c...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Eric and Chris discuss how and why Facebook’s design system has evolved over time, anticipating deviation and its positive impact on adoption and contribution, getting other teams to think like system designers and empowering them to create their own systems, what signals to consider when measuring the success of your system and advocacy work. Guest: Eric L...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Nick and Chris discuss standing up a design system in 2016, serving development teams that didn’t have access to designers at the time, accelerating and amplifying the value of design, freeing up designers to focus on high-value problems, considerations and tactics for driving adoption, how design systems create internal communities that bring design and de...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Vidya and Chris discuss pathways to becoming a design systems leader, having a content strategy within your design system, personalization considerations, measuring the success of your design system, linking your design system to a broader design strategy, and more. Guest: Vidya Nayak is Design Director Member & Design Systems at SoFi, former design lea...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Demian and Chris discuss what design tokens are and why they are a critical part of any design system, getting developers more involved in the design system discipline, an exciting new way to integrate design tokens between design tools and VS Code, and how surfing relates to design tokens. Guest: Demian Borba is a Product Manager on Adobe XD (working on XD...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Jina and Chris discuss the inception of design tokens and Theo during Jina’s time at Salesforce, the correlation between design systems and community building, shared ownership instead of governance, why “design systems are not a thing,” and more. Guest: Jina Anne is the Founder of Clarity , Creator of design.systems , and Co-Chair at Design Tokens W3C Comm...

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Rick and Chris discuss deputizing evangelists to drive adoption and reduce fragmentation, contribution models and thinking about the areas to own vs. areas to share ownership vs. areas to give up ownership, using design systems to share innovation across teams, measuring design system efficacy, and more. Guest: Rick Rodriguez is Head of Design Systems at Wa...