I recently sat down with the team behind the Design System Guide to talk about Nord Design System and how it’s been shaping our work at Nordhealth. We discussed the challenges of building a design system in a fast-paced environment, the importance of collaboration, and the impact design systems have on the organization and people involved.
Focus less on the tools and processes and more on the people involved and the design system’s impact on them.
I also shared some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way and how we’ve been able to overcome some of the challenges we’ve faced. I hope you find the interview insightful and that it provides you with some valuable takeaways for your own design system journey.
If you have any questions or thoughts, or just want to chat, please feel free to reach out to me on social media. I’d love to hear from you!
I’ve been leading various successful design systems teams over the past six years and in this post I wanted to share a simple set of fundamental rules that has allowed those teams to get to the highest level of productivity while benefiting both the company and the team members.
The team should be sharing what they’re doing whenever they can. Building things transparently increases visibility and accountability and makes them push towards higher quality.
Running a design systems team has some minor differences compared to a more traditional product team setup, but there’s still enough overlap that all of these rules can be considered universal and applied to almost any product team out there.
As a caveat though, what might’ve worked for my team in the past, might not work for every team out there. We’ve been operating in a remote first culture so these rules apply in that context.
Once upon a time a child was born. This was no ordinary child, this was a child who was trapped inside a body she didn’t belong in. For the next thirty something years this made her wonder; would who she was, who she truly was, be accepted by others in the kingdom? Or would she be doomed to live her life forever as someone else?
As years went by and she aged, Ariel began to lose pieces of her authentic self. She tried hard to suffocate her true feelings, but that just made things exponentially worse for her and everyone around. Piece by piece, she became thinner, until a day arrived, when she couldn’t take it anymore.
She knew there was no magic spell that could frankly help her. And that this was perhaps the greatest risk any of us could take. Having the courage to unpeel, to get rid of our stringencies. To be seen as we truly are. To shed our past lives, the expectations of others, and become something new.
As frightening as it felt, Ariel knew this was the only way forward. And in this update, she decided to share this to you, dear reader.
I’ve been years watching everyone around me change. Seasons coming and going. People growing roots. Building houses. Giving birth to their babies. Becoming stable parents. And I’ve tried hard to change as well. Become that, understand it. I’ve been through these things, but I feel like I’m still the same scrawny kid full of dreams and restlessness.
Warm autumn breeze blowing from the Pacific Ocean. Misty mountains around me, swaying fields in the moonlight, colors of the autumn, and music that fills our souls.
Eventually, I’ve started becoming part of everything I’ve seen around the world, if nothing else. And when I’ve travelled forward, a small part of me is always left out there somewhere. On the deserts, mountains, forests, oceans, and the cities around the world. It’s a little bittersweet. It’s the same with people. I ain’t got roots and I don’t know where I belong.
I have this dream where I’m sitting on top of Mt. Tamalpais East Peak gazing over San Francisco city lights across the bay. Warm autumn breeze blowing from the Pacific Ocean. Misty mountains around me, swaying fields in the moonlight, colors of the autumn, and music that fills our souls.
I was recently interviewed by Lovers Magazine about what led me into design and what type of things inspire me as a designer. I think it was refreshing to answer their questions and really dive into the deep end of what ultimately took me where I am today.
I spent all my childhood in art galleries and observing my parents create, so you could partially blame this creative environment for the initial spark.
I sometimes tend to forget that I’ve been working in this profession for two decades and many of the people I meet inside and outside of work are just starting their careers. I’m not really saying that I’d be offering any kind of career advice in this particular interview, but it’s still a brief look into one person’s journey to become a systems oriented designer.
We’re excited to announce the first major release of Nord Design System, v1.0. With this release, our design systems team is shipping a number of new tools and features to improve the experience of designing, building, and shipping products at Nordhealth.
Providing a good developer experience is very important to us. Developers should be able to start using our tools in minutes, not hours, days or weeks.
Looking back in time, we started our design systems journey at the end of 2020 with initial user research, but the concrete design and development work on the system didn’t start before the late summer 2021 when Eric Habich, Nick Williams, and David Darnes joined the team.
Now, 8 months later, I’m excited that we’re launching Nord Design System and all of our tools for production usage! To learn more about the new features included, keep reading below. 🎉
Why does it feel like the devices we use are getting slower over time? A smartphone I bought a few years ago seems to be losing its edge when browsing websites. My computer struggles to play audio. Even my car’s interface can’t keep up anymore after all the updates. Am I just imagining or were they always like this?
No, these devices aren’t actually getting slower, it’s the software that is getting more bloated. Whenever new hardware is released out in the wild, it takes only a few months until it becomes the benchmark for software developers. Because hell, why not. We have all these resources to utilize, why wouldn’t we. Why give a fuck about the needs of users.
If you’ve observed this too, it’s not just your imagination. Software is becoming increasingly complex and requires more resources than ever before. As CPU power increases, software is expanded to consume that extra performance. We live in the era of disposability.