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The Design System Process

Brad Frost
Your instructor
Brad Frost
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Workshop includes:

  • Snacks and drinks
  • Tea and Coffee
  • Lunch
  • Paper and pen/pencil

Full-day workshop • Thursday, April 18
Design systems and provide solid ground for us to stand on as we tackle the increasingly diverse and fast-moving digital landscape. However, like most things in our field, the hard part of design systems isn’t specific design tools or code frameworks; it’s wrangling people and all their quirks. This full-day session will cover the process of creating a successful design system.

In this workshop, you’ll learn about:

  • Selling Design Systems – We all know design systems and pattern libraries are great, but how do you get your clients, bosses, and teammates on board? We’ll make the business cases for design systems, and discuss tactics and tools for selling design systems to clients and stakeholders.
  • A Pattern-Based Process – Making modular interfaces requires massive shifts in our design and development process. We’ll discuss why front-end development is an essential part of the design process and demonstrate how tools like lo-fi sketches, style tiles, element collages, Pattern Lab, and others facilitate collaboration—and result in successful design systems.
  • Atomic Design Principles – We’ll cover core principles of modular UI interface design and introduce the atomic design methodology that helps connect your design system design/dev work to your actual product design/dev work.
  • Anatomy of Effective Style Guides – A style guide is the happy home for all a design system’s ingredients. A robust and well-presented style guide can help a design system truly take root at your organization.
  • Design System Maintenance – Like a fine wine, a design system should increase in value over time. We’ll discuss tactics and techniques like team structure, governance models, communication strategies, and more to ensure design system provides lasting value to your organization.

By the end of the day, you’ll be armed with all the insights and resources you need to create and maintain a successful UI design system.

The workshop is intended for designers and front-end developers. Though Brad will be showing code examples, you don’t have to be a coder to attend this workshop.

What hardware/software do you need?

Please bring your own laptop.

About Brad Frost

Brad Frost is a web designer, speaker, writer, and consultant located in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of the book Atomic Design, which introduces a methodology to create and maintain effective design systems. In addition to co-hosting the Style Guides Podcast, he has also helped create several tools and resources for web designers, including Pattern Lab, Styleguides.io, Style Guide Guide, and This Is Responsive.

Time & Location

This full-day workshop will be hosted at Fort Mason and will take place the day after SmashingConf. The workshop will be running from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM on Thursday, April 18th.

Schedule for Thursday, April 18th

9:00 AM – Doors open, Registration
9:30 AM – Introduction & Kick-off
11:00 AM – Coffee Break
1:00 PM – Lunch
2:00 PM – Afternoon Session
3:30 PM – Coffee Break
5:30 PM – The End

Save 100 USD when signing up for the conference and a workshop!