Posts

Notes on operating design systems: the people, culture, and organisational design that help them grow and mature.

Latest

2 November 202615 min read

Building a system of systems: What we didn’t see coming

The costs we never planned for: the hidden load on the core team, local systems that stalled, a programme that came apart, and success the model had nowhere to put.

12 October 202612 min read
Building a system of systems: What we didn’t know in 2019
Six years after introducing the system of systems model, what it became in practice, where the original vision held, and where it gave way.
23 April 20268 min read
Design handoff belongs in the bin
Improving the handoff process is a worthy goal, but it's the wrong one. The goal should be to make handoff irrelevant entirely, and here's how you get there.
23 February 20266 min read
Design systems are platform problems, not feature problems
Where you put your design system team within your organisation determines how they think, what they build, and whether the system stays a platform or the teams become a UI feature factory.
16 February 202616 min read
When the Decision Is Made, and You Can't Change It
Sometimes decisions are made for you. They're clearly wrong, and you can't change them. This is about how you lead anyway.
12 January 20266 min read
Is There Too Much Design in Design Systems?
Why are we hiring so many designers? Most design system roles are design-focused, but the biggest value comes from code. Are we building design systems, or just designing them?
8 December 202515 min read
Why Federated Design Systems Keep Failing
Why do federated design systems keep failing? I watched it happen twice at Spotify. Here's what actually happened, where they broke down, and why centralised models usually work better.