Design Systems Podcast

A round table discussion hosted by Chris and Andrew from Knapsack with the Meta Blueprint team, part two.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Christopher Clare - Director of Product Design

Chris Clare is the Head of Foundation Design for FB App responsible for unifying the app through the Blueprint Design System, driving efficiency for the rest of the design org and giving capacity back to our teams to focus on innovation. Prior to this role, he was the Head of Design for the Communities Product Group at Meta. His team was responsible for helping people build meaningful communities through products like Groups, Events, Profile and Messenger. After he joined the company 7.5 years ago to help rethink the strategy and experience for the Groups Product, it quickly became the top priority for the company who changed their mission to be community driven. In the previous 15 years before Meta, Chris has led Design System and Product teams as multiple Companies, including his time as Creative Director at Motorola (Google) and head of Skype Android and Desktop at Microsoft.

Mitch Johnson - Director, Product Design

Mitch Johnson leads the Blueprint Design System Team for Facebook responsible for building the underlying Design System and infrastructure to enable teams design efficiently on a unified infrastructure, consistently across surfaces, accessible for all users, and to a high bar of people-first quality.

Elizabeth Rifer - Director, Content Design Director

Elizabeth is responsible for developing Facebook’s content architecture. She spent years building Facebook Marketplace and believes in strengthening communities through local commerce. Her mission is to humanize technology so everyone (including her mother) can enjoy it.

Dan Lebowitz - Director, Product Design

Dan Lebowitz is a Product Design Director at Meta leading design system architecture across Facebook and partnering across the company on systems initiatives. Since 2015, Dan has helped lead the design of Meta’s web platform, numerous design systems, and 0-1 products.

Adelle Charles - Product Design Manager

Adelle Charles leads the Design Excellence team for Facebook responsible for our broader Excellence programs, design craft, design tooling and partnering on Blueprint to deliver on design tool efficiency and quality across Facebook.

Andrew Rohman - VP Sales & CS at Knapsack

Andrew leads Knapsack’s customer-facing teams and has experience with dozens of large enterprise Design System implementations. Andrew provides a practical approach to goal setting and fostering both organizational and cultural change when adopting a design system.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

A round table discussion hosted by Chris and Andrew from Knapsack with the Meta Blueprint team (part one).

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Christopher Clare - Director of Product Design

Chris Clare is the Head of Foundation Design for FB App responsible for unifying the app through the Blueprint Design System, driving efficiency for the rest of the design org and giving capacity back to our teams to focus on innovation. Prior to this role, he was the Head of Design for the Communities Product Group at Meta. His team was responsible for helping people build meaningful communities through products like Groups, Events, Profile and Messenger. After he joined the company 7.5 years ago to help rethink the strategy and experience for the Groups Product, it quickly became the top priority for the company who changed their mission to be community driven. In the previous 15 years before Meta, Chris has led Design System and Product teams as multiple Companies, including his time as Creative Director at Motorola (Google) and head of Skype Android and Desktop at Microsoft.

Mitch Johnson - Director, Product Design

Mitch Johnson leads the Blueprint Design System Team for Facebook responsible for building the underlying Design System and infrastructure to enable teams design efficiently on a unified infrastructure, consistently across surfaces, accessible for all users, and to a high bar of people-first quality.

Elizabeth Rifer - Director, Content Design Director

Elizabeth is responsible for developing Facebook’s content architecture. She spent years building Facebook Marketplace and believes in strengthening communities through local commerce. Her mission is to humanize technology so everyone (including her mother) can enjoy it.

Dan Lebowitz - Director, Product Design

Dan Lebowitz is a Product Design Director at Meta leading design system architecture across Facebook and partnering across the company on systems initiatives. Since 2015, Dan has helped lead the design of Meta’s web platform, numerous design systems, and 0-1 products.

Adelle Charles - Product Design Manager

Adelle Charles leads the Design Excellence team for Facebook responsible for our broader Excellence programs, design craft, design tooling and partnering on Blueprint to deliver on design tool efficiency and quality across Facebook.

Andrew Rohman - VP Sales & CS at Knapsack

Andrew leads Knapsack’s customer-facing teams and has experience with dozens of large enterprise Design System implementations. Andrew provides a practical approach to goal setting and fostering both organizational and cultural change when adopting a design system.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Kaelig, Darren, and Chris talk tokens and code: “Using a whole different type of brain.”

View the transcript of this episode here.

Want to hear more? Register for Knapsack’s upcoming talking tokens webinar here.

Guests

Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent, Principal Software Engineer at Netlify

Founder of the Design Tokens W3C Community Group, providing open standards for products and design tools to share design system foundations at scale.

Darren Simons, Senior Product Designer, Design Systems at Mulesoft

Digital Product Designer who is able to untangle complicated requirements, build design systems from the ground up, and incorporate them into the design workflow. I bring design and technology together to craft elegant user interfaces with an emphasis on the end-user experience.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Amber, Taylor, and Chris talk tokens; the pros and cons.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guests

Amber Stickel, Principal Design Technologist at Intuit

Front-end designer and developer with a passion for creating modular, reusable, and flexible interfaces and systems. With multidisciplinary knowledge and tools in hand, I’m hoping to improve the web one experience at a time.

Taylor Cashdan, Design Systems Lead at Mayo Clinic

Multidisciplinary creative and community builder that's passionate about people, design, and all the intersections in between. I bring to the table a burning desire to collaborate with teams tasked with creating exceptional work for people who give a shit.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Morgane and Chris discuss the idea that many design systems pitch themselves as a technical asset. However, design systems can extend past this notion to offer business value, patterns, and ROI.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Morgane Peng is a Managing Director and Head of Design at Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking where she builds products for start-ups, corporates and financial institutions. Outside of work, she is a mentor, conference speaker and also contributes to an indie video game crowdfunded on Kickstarter. You can find Morgane on Twitter as @morganepeng and on Medium.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Evan and Chris discuss source of truth and how it is linked most importantly to overall user experience opposed to just design or code.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Evan Lovely is the co-founder and Head of Product & Engineering at Knapsack. Evan was previously the CTO at Basalt Inc and a software architect at Phase2. He has a passion for developing well-designed, scalable software solutions and extensive experience in leading technical teams and projects.

Evan is certified as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and as a CompTIA A+ Certified Computer Technician.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Jennie and Chris discuss following the path of least resistance when building design systems. It must feel natural and easier for the people using the system, so much so, it doesn’t make sense to continue with old habits.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Jennie Yip is a hybrid design engineer with a heart for elegant user interfaces, simple user experiences, and beautifully crafted code. Loves building scalable design systems while helping designers and engineers work better together. She’s currently Principal Design Architect at Atlassian, reimagining Atlassian Design System. You can find Jennie musing about design systems or her bebe component on Twitter @jenniesyip.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Avery Oldt and Chris discuss the importance of scaling ideas, systematic thinking, and cross-team integration for product delight and success.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest
Avery Oldt is Head of Design & Research at Amazon for Amazon Fashion. His past work includes leading design, product, and engineering teams at MTV, Restoration Hardware, Louis Vuitton, Booking.com, and BNP Paribas. Over the past 25 years and across various industries, he's found his sweet spot at the intersection of design and technology, creating space for great products to emerge from diverse teams and positive culture.

You can find Avery on LinkedIn or walking in the redwoods of Marin County, California.

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Jack McCloy and Chris discuss the purpose of a design system and its ability to iterate faster, build better, more accessible, consistent products. Not only saving money but achieving outcomes you wouldn’t practically be able to do without a systems approach.

View the transcript of this episode here.

Guest

Jack McCloy is an Engineering Manager at Amplitude, where he leads the frontend infrastructure / design system team. He and his team develop architectural patterns, tooling, and systems that help engineers build and iterate more rapidly and designers scale their work.

Jack also angel invests in companies working on dev/design tools, data tools, infrastructure, and b2b SasS products. You can follow / connect with him on Twitter or 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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Adekunle and Chris cover a number of topics spanning from the importance of flexibility, connection, communication, collaboration and designing systems to ultimately solve problems for its users.

View the transcript of this episode, here.

Guest

Adekunle Oduye (Add-eh-koon-lay Oh-due-yay) is currently building design systems at Plaid. Outside of work, he is a coach/mentor, conference speaker and co-host of the Code and Pixels podcast.

You can learn more about him on his website (https://www.adekunleoduye.com), linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adekunleoduye), or twitter (https://twitter.com/adekunleoduye).

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 on LinkedIn.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.