Patterns Podcast

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14. Mina Markham: Building shared culture and better collaboration between designers and developers Jun 11, 2020

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Mina Markham (currently at Slack, formerly at Hillary For America and IBM) and Chris discuss getting executive buy-in, how to create space to continue advancing your design system, going beyond a shared language by building a shared culture, the story behind the Pantsuit Design System, and Beyoncé, of course.
Guest:
Mina Markham is Staff Engineer at Slack, design systems advocate, and international speaker. You can find Mina at mina.codes, on Twitter as @MinaMarkham, and on LinkedIn.
Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and LinkedIn.
Sponsor:
Knapsack — the design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.
Links:
View the transcript for this episode.

13. Micah Godbolt: Design and code meeting in the middle with Fluent UI at Microsoft May 20, 2020

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Chris and Micah discuss creating a singular design system that scales to support a massive app ecosystem, using tokens to align design across disparate products, and transitioning from individual teams working on many products to one company working on a library of products.
Guest:
Micah Godbolt is a design systems advocate, speaker, trainer, and writer. Micah is a software engineer for Fluent UI at Microsoft and author of Frontend Architecture for Design Systems published by O’Reilly Media. You can find Micah at micahgodbolt.com, on Twitter as @micahgodbolt, and on LinkedIn.
Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and LinkedIn.
Sponsor:
Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.
Links:
View the transcript for this episode.
LinkedIn post via Jason Blackheart showing the time savings of just one component from Microsoft’s Coherence Design System.

12. Ethan Marcotte: Design systems and the evolution of how we work May 11, 2020

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Chris and Ethan discuss the parallels between design systems and responsive web design in terms of the impact on how teams design/develop digital products, creating a shared language and research as a means to build successful design systems, and where design systems are headed in the years to come.
Guest:
Ethan Marcotte is an independent web designer, writer, and speaker, and the fellow who started that “responsive web design” thing. You can find Ethan at ethanmarcotte.com, on Twitter as @beep and as @RWD, and on LinkedIn.
Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Sponsor:
Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.
Links:
View the transcript for this episode.
The tweet Ethan mentioned from @kimgoodwin: “I think the #1 architectural mistake I see on software teams is failure to articulate the conceptual data model before building things. What are the meaningful objects, how do they relate, and what can users do with them? It’s a small investment for huge dividends.”
The book Chris mentioned: “Design Systems” by Alla Kholmatova

11. Brad Frost and Evan Lovely: Code is the source of truth Apr 20, 2020

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Chris talks with Brad Frost and Evan Lovely about why code is the real source of truth, how to bring designers and developers together around the code, and the opportunity design systems provide for designers to focus on creative contribution rather than producing more comps.
Guests:
Brad Frost is a web designer, speaker, writer, consultant, and musician in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. Author of Atomic Design. You can find Brad on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Evan Lovely is co-founder and CTO of Knapsack, crafter of design systems, outdoorsman, and all-round nice guy. You can find Evan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Sponsor:
Knapsack — The design system platform for ambitious product teams. Learn more at knapsack.cloud about getting Knapsack for your team.
Links:
View the transcript for this episode.
Check out Brad’s book, Atomic Design, which introduces a methodology for thinking of our UIs as thoughtful hierarchies, discusses the qualities of effective pattern libraries, and showcases techniques to transform your team's design and development workflow.

10. Jeremy Keith: Overcoming entropy and turning chaos into order Apr 02, 2020

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Chris and Jeremy Keith discuss imbuing teams with a shared sense of ownership of their design system, creating design systems able to address unforeseen scenarios, design ops as an essential part of an effective design system, and more.
Guest:
Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer working with @Clearleft, playing music with @SalterCane, creator of @Huffduffer. You can find Jeremy on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Links:
Episode transcript → Google Drive
Progressing The Web → Jeremy Keith via Medium
Progressive Enhancement: What It Is, And How To Use It? → Sam Dwyer via Smashing Magazine

9. Charles Hall: Accessibility is good for your products and great for your business Mar 25, 2020

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Chris and Charles Hall talk about the impact of accessibility, how to build more accessible products, and the role design systems play in creating accessible outcomes.
Guest:
Charles Hall is a Senior UX Architect at MRM and an Invited Expert of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. You can find Charles on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Host:
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Links:
View the full transcript here

8. Salem Ghoweri: Bolt Design System and front-end architects Mar 05, 2020

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Chris talks with Salem about what a front-end architect actually does, they breakdown of web components (what they are and who uses them), cover the tools Pega systems use and how their team works, and much more.
Download the episode transcript: http://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/008-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf

Salem Ghoweri
Lead Front-End Architect for PegaSystem's Bold Design System
Salem is the lead front-end architect for the digital team at Pegasystems and the creator of the open-source Bolt Design System. He’s also worked on frontend architectural projects for Wayfair, Akamai, Panera, and Lysol, and is a core maintainer of the popular prototyping tool, Pattern Lab.
Find Salem on Twitter or LinkedIn.

7. Skip Newberry: Technology and design in government Feb 20, 2020

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Chris talks to the President and CEO of the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO), Skip Newberry. While Skip may not work in the DS community day-to-day, he has a unique view on design and development from working with so many Oregon tech companies. The two talk about focusing on the use of design when helping to reach communities outside of the standard spectrum. Additionally, they discuss the idea of how ubiquity matters, to reach the most people, leveraging technology as much as possible to augment in-person connectivity, how Oregon tech companies are going through digital transformations and much more.
Download episode transcript:
http://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/007-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf
Skip Newberry
President and CEO, Technology Association of Oregon
Skip is a frequent speaker on technology trends and topics, economic development, public-private partnerships, and civic innovation. Before joining the TAO, Skip served as an economic development policy advisor to Portland Mayor Sam Adams, where he helped create Portland’s first comprehensive economic development strategy in 16 years, recognizing software as a key industry cluster. While at the City of Portland, Skip’s projects included the adoption of the nation’s first open-source software procurement policy at the municipal level, an award-winning regional open data initiative and the development of resources to support entrepreneurship, like the Portland Seed Fund. Previously, Skip was a corporate and IP attorney and entrepreneur. Skip is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors of TECNA, Technology Councils of North America, which is a global network of technology and entrepreneurship associations, and he serves on the community advisory board for Wells Fargo and several community-based organizations in the Portland area. Skip is also a 2012 recipient of the Portland Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award. When he's not working on behalf of the region's tech industry, Skip enjoys exploring the Pacific Northwest with his family.
You can find Skip on LinkedIn.

6. Marco Suárez: Buying into design systems Feb 06, 2020

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Chris chats with Marco Suárez about his design experiences in the early days, before the term 'design systems' was official. The two walk through how to drive adoption of a design system within an organization, using branding and design in a physical space as well as digital, Marco's specific design experience and working with companies like MailChimp and Etsy on design systems, and more.
Download the episode transcript: https://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/006-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf
Marco Suárez
Product Designer, Design System Consultant, Co-Owner of Methodical Coffee
Marco Suárez has built design systems at InVision and Etsy. Now he guides companies through the process of designing and adopting their own design systems. He's also one of the owners of Methodical Coffee, a cafe and roasting company in Greenville, SC.
You can find Marco on Twitter.
Other Show Notes
In this episode, Chris and Marco discuss coffee, because sometimes it's too early in the morning for beer.

Methodical Coffee is located in Greenville, South Carolina, but you can order their beans online for an at-home experience. They serve single-origin coffees, pour overs, siphons, and cold brew.

https://methodicalcoffee.com/

Follow @Methodical_SC on Twitter.

5. Tatiana Mac: Design and inclusivity Jan 16, 2020

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Chris talks with Tatiana Mac about ensuring design systems, specifically components, are accessible. The two discuss accessibility testing tools, being sure to be inclusive in forms, considering inclusion and the "why" when asking for certain data, and more inclusion topics.
Download the episode transcript:
https://files.basalt.io.s3.amazonaws.com/podcast_transcripts/005-Design-Systems-Podcast-Transcript.pdf
Tatiana Mac
Independent American designer
Tatiana Mac (she/they) is an independent American designer who works directly with organizations to build clear and coherent products and design systems.

She believes the trifecta of accessibility, performance, and inclusion can work symbiotically to improve our social landscape digitally and physically. When ethically-minded, she thinks technologists can dismantle exclusionary systems in favor of community-focused, inclusive ones.

Tatiana is an open-source maintainer, currently focused on building a dictionary called Self-Defined. Self-Defined seeks to provide more inclusive, holistic, and fluid definitions to reflect the diverse perspectives of the modern world. The dictionary will eventually include integrated bots and an API to embed into enterprise software.

Never totally pleased with design tools, she designs in browser to bring performant, semantic, and accessible visual narratives into the web. Her current obsessions are optimizing variable fonts, converting raster images into SVGs, and recreating modernist paintings in CSS grid. When she can successfully :q vim, she finds new countries to explore (36 and counting) and designs tech merch at StyleDotCSS.
You can find Tatiana on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Other Show Notes
Want to learn more about Tatiana and her work? Here are some great reference links.

Other resources discussed:

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