Our next meetup will be with Varya Stepanova (Design Systems Specialist at Intergalactico) and Sandra Meek (Product Designer at FutureLearn).

With all the talks, articles and posts out there about Design Systems, we now know almost everything about how to create one, how to promote it, how to nurture and maintain it. But what about "what to do" when it needs to take a quite different direction?

The subject of the evening will be "the hard choices" that sometimes need to be made around a design system – because the problems for which it was built have been solved, or new/different business needs emerge, or people and teams change.

During the evening, the speakers will share with us some interesting stories about their design systems, and what lead them to take some of these "hard decisions" (and of course, what was the rationale behind their choices).

Schedule of the evening

18:30 - Doors will open. Welcoming drinks and pizza.
19:00 - Building design systems that leverage your designers, developers, and products - Varya Stepanova
19:45 - Some more pizza and drinks.
20:00 - Stepping back to go forwards - Sandra Meek
20:45 - End of the meetup

Building design systems that leverage your designers, developers, and products

If we compare design systems of several companies, it is visible that this concept has different meanings to different people. So, how to decide which path to follow and what aspects of design systems should be in focus at your organisation? Varya tells a story of managing a design system in a large company, making decision on its further focus and approaches behind the implementing which include design thinking methods, community management, and technical tips.

Varya Stepanova

Varya Stepanova is a design systems specialist at Intergalactico, Helsinki-based design studio. She has a long history working in a field of component-focused UI design and development, creating helpful tooling for the subject and spreading the practices across large organisations. Nowadays her focus is to apply design approaches to the field of front-end development and encouraging cooperative work in a collective.

Twitter: twitter.com/varya_en

Website: varya.me

GitHub: github.com/varya

Stepping back to go forwards

In the melee of the everyday it can be hard to step back and assess whether the tools and processes you and your team use are really working in the best way possible. Then coming to the realisation that things could be better, and making the decision to change them — well, that’s a big step. This talk will take you on the journey we’ve been on over the last few months with our design system, where we stepped back, understood the problems and worked to make it work better for us.

Sandra Meek

Sandra Meek is a product designer at FutureLearn, the social learning company transforming access to education, where she works to develop user-centred and delightful experiences for people across the world. Over the last 14 years, in addition to her work at FutureLearn, Sandra has worked on projects for financial service providers, retail giants and non-profit organisations; conceptualising, enhancing and transforming their digital offerings. In her spare time she likes to make analog things and go outside.

Twitter: twitter.com/sandrooni

Website: sandrameek.co.uk

Sponsor

The sponsor of the evening will be Buildit / Wipro Digital, who’ll be providing some food and drinks. Thanks from WEBdeLDN for hosting us.