While we touched on teams of one, which is quite common in our community, how do we function in medium size teams of 3+ designers, and how can we effectively, and intentionally scale.

In our second episode dedicated to accessibility in design systems, Davy and PJ talk about the surface level explorations of color contrast, then learning more about how to better design for screen readers, for a better web experience.

We start our series with learning about how design systems interact and help our other team members from different disciplines. We start with Matt Petitt, Engineering Manager at Dayforce.

Davy and PJ talk in depth about the perils of chasing efficiency, and how we approach measuring effort and time-saved. And does this tie into velocity at all?

In the tough market of design team contractions, Davy and PJ talk about how to maintain focus and stability as a horizontal design practice.

On this episode, PJ talks about his time using Figma's REST API and how with so much data collected, we just need it to do a little more for us.

These have become some of our favorites, and tend to cover more ground than a typical ep. Nico, community manager for Zeplin joins as a co-host for this special ep.

Happy episode 60! Davy and PJ talk about a popular design system topic when we start out, Contributions and Federated Help. While this all sounds good, what are some of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on contributions and help from external design resources.

Is system adoption the only measure of success? Davy and PJ talk about adoption metrics we tend to tie ourselves to, and how it may not always paint the most complete picture.

Or aptly named, Color Complexity in Design by our GPT pal, Davy and PJ discuss the use or rather overuse of color in product design. When thinking about color in design systems, once again, less is most appropriate.

Fresh off 2 days of Config in-person conference, Davy talks with PJ about his time IRL, and talk about what they thought about feature releases, and what we might have expected.

Pre-Config episode, Davy and PJ follow up our last "Just Say No" episode with an ep about design system fatigue. As a service team, how do we maintain the good graces, and continue to help designers produce the best work. It all starts and ends with a design culture that promotes early communication with the your design system frens.

When you're on a team of one, or fully staffed team with design and engineers, you'll soon have to shift some of your yes responses, to no. Davy and PJ talk how this at times trickles in through contributions, something that was an exciting concept in early days, but can get harder to manage as demand scales.

Davy and PJ go over their favorite Davy and PJisms, their versions of design principles that they have been following them around through several design roles over the years. 

We had such good traction on one of our first episodes, we decided to bring on another friend of the program, Donnie D'Amato to talk about design technologists, where they should sit in the org, and how we can use them as designers to be our best helping hand.

It's a design system emergency! Our updates are no longer behind a somewhat blocking dialog in Figma. Davy and PJ had to jump on to talk about how this may help or not receive and adopt new system changes.

Davy and PJ talk about the importance of standing up rituals, much like our product design partners, including, how might design system teams handle crits and office hours. How might a designer working at a Facebook leverage a feed, or a internal Facebook group, to share updates.

We made it to our 2 year birthday and 50 episodes! We reflect in Davy's shift into back into IC at Meta, and PJ's shift from IC to Manager most recently at Pinterest, and how the roles differed for us in design systems.

Davy and PJ talk about how to get into your first DS job, the answer being things to know OTHER than building components. On the second half of the pod, we flip to how to get into DS as a discipline as a product designer.

As we approach 2 years, and 50 episodes, we recap this year and dive back into how AI changed some of our thinking this year, as well as what we would like to see out of the design systems practice in 2024. Episode Transcripts

One theme that has been our mind working in large mega design teams, is how our product design teams handle outside, external POV, vs historical cannon. Davy and PJ discuss this, weaved in with how we like to evaluate potential solutions for our systems. Episode Transcripts

With convos of relying on external services such as design system docs sites, Figma plugins, or analytics, we talk about our experience working in large teams with funding to build our own, vs utilizing third party services that can simply get you up and running immediately. Episode Transcript

Davy and PJ talk a little more in depth about support and the dangers of being a purely reactive design system team. How do you handle requests, and how to operate the program during times of duress. Episode Transcripts

Listener question: DS team of one, and how to keep afloat and keep the program going. We touch on what you might want to focus on, and getting help as soon as you can so you can scale. Episode Transcripts