Nathan Curtis has been swimming in the deep end of the UX pool since 1996, when he started focusing his creative energies on IA, ID, usability, and front-end development. Nathan authored Modular Web Design and has presented and led daylong workshops for years on the topics of design systems, component and pattern libraries, sketching, and design communications.
He’s also an entrepreneur at heart, having founded EightShapes, a UX design agency headquartered in Washington, DC.
A design system is made up of parts: visual style, UI components, code, editorial, and often more. We know how to design, build, deliver them is like any other digital product development process. And there’s the rub: your system is a product in and of itself, applied to an enterprise’s ecosystem of other products built by autonomous teams of designers and developers.
Your strategy needs answers to “What products will use it, when and to what extent?” “Who's our audience?” “Who participates and contributes?” “What groups must we align with?” “Who wants it, and — really — who doesn’t?”
We’ll explore ways to identify and prioritize how to engage your enterprise's people and products as you spread and sustain a system over time.