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Nathan Curtis

Founder and design systems consultant at Directed Edges. He’s passionate about information architecture, UX, front-end dev and design systems. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs frequently on Medium.com today, and speaks regularly at events worldwide.

Nathan Curtis's Talk

Managing Design Systems, from Features and Releases to Roadmaps and Backlogs

Tue 29th – 10:50

Making design system features is exciting. But what about managing assignments, tracking tasks, and discussing status? The momentum of emergent tokens and rapid Figma and code prototypes gives way to the dulling rigor of quality and collaboration across designers and developers wanting to operate independently. In order to earn trust and reach success, design systems need to sweat the details together. Managing the work need not be so daunting and tedious.

In this talk, Nathan will demonstrate the process he’s installed and evolved across the design system teams he’s led over the past ten years. Using tools like Asana and Jira, he’ll demonstrate how to organize design system work, record scope, assign and track tasks, and release features over time. Workflow challenges – repetitive reviews, quick tasks amid formal workflows, when to discuss requests – will season the tour. Whether you are a system practitioner considering how you fit or a manager refining a practice, you’ll leave inspired to refine the speed, precision and clarity of your design system process.

Nathan will also give a workshop on Design System Planning and Process.