My Dear Friends of Figma in hey everyone I just wanted to thank figma for the opportunity to share my story today um I love the Design Systems Community I think that it’s super special I’ve been working in design for 15 years I could talk about color and typography.
And systems for days I transitioned from product design into Design Systems five years ago when I saw the opportunity to scale my passion for visual design and Empower other designers to improve their craft and the quality of product experiences I’m an Enneagram eight also known as a challenger which means I’m empowered to.
Stand up for what I need and want I’m also an Aries which means I throw myself at the world eagerly and without fear I’m in pretty into astrology I know a lot less about astronomy so please take all of my science metaphors with a grain of salt that being said.
Having guts always works out for me so today I want to share a framework for how I think about power dynamics at work and lessons I learned while trying to expand my influence to help you recognize the power that you have before that a little bit more about my background I got started in Design.
Systems working at Expedia we were a small unofficial team building the company’s first cross-platform cross-brand system and I absolutely loved it we got to spend 10 weeks picking out a new typeface for the brand and really sweat the details on all of the foundations.
And I was only able to have this much Focus because unbeknownst to me my manager was deep in the trenches getting buy-in and influencing others of the value of Design Systems so then when I left to join Dropbox I found myself in that position and realized how hard it was to create change.
I went in with the expectation that everyone was already bought into using the system they had three designers and six engineers and regular office hours they also had a pretty slick component Library Dropbox interface guidelines and I thought this is going to be easy in reality.
There were 3000 hex values referenced in the code office hours and systems usage was inconsistent and not measured our design system was seen as a nice to have plus we had a major Library update right ahead of us with no plan for product teams to adopt or migrate.
I found myself knocking on doors trying to get attention and onto product roadmaps and I was doing so in a foreign language like kpis Dows TTI Roy I made an assumption that I needed a mandate from someone else with authority and what I realized navigating these new leadership skills was that all of these.
Failed attempts and changing course led to a rapid path to burnout slowly I started to feel my effort pay off our system Dropbox interface guidelines was getting mentioned in feature releases and office hours were starting to fill up support channels were more active and.
After 18 months leadership mentioned dig adoption in a company Town Hall our team doubled in size and our products started to look more consistent across features and platforms and what I learned was that no matter the size or the scale of the work I always had to be advocating on the value of Design Systems.
Because Design Systems are culture change disguised as a UI kit being able to drive change requires new Tools in order to expand my influence with the introduction of the web telescope we have seven times more light Gathering capacity than its predecessor the Hubble telescope and that means that astronomers can see.
More depth and detail into complex galaxies similarly with more experience and new tools I can see new complexities in my own corporate universe and like astronomers that’s changed everything I thought I knew and I have way more questions than I had before what I realized was that like the web.
Telescope advocating for the value of Design Systems requires new tools for Cosmic reach but I don’t rely on infrared sensors advocating for Design Systems requires tools like trust communication and relationship building so let’s talk about a framework for understanding power dynamics and how.
They relate to influence you might find yourself advocating or getting buy-in for things like contribution and incentivizing people adoption especially if you have a new library resourcing and it could be seasonal like performance reviews or annual planning.
Some changes are in your control and others have decision makers beyond your team a simple example of this is we own our component backlog and therefore we decide what we build however when it comes to collaborating brand with brand with brand we have to decide on our corporate color palette.
Together we use our product and our accessibility expertise to influence brand to meet contrast ratios in product and that’s because influence is successful when you provide an informed opinion to the decision maker or rather certain people are the broker of yes.
And these decision makers can be different depending on what you’re trying to do and they exist all over the company they’re Dynamic just like our universe and they change depending on priorities and reorgs what I realized is that your opinion can be influential in the decision that.
Results in change this is a form of power however making noise is not the same thing as influencing influence is having an impact on the decision that causes change everyone on the Design Systems team has the capacity to influence it’s not just managers or leads.
In an organization power is two-dimensional in the book design your work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans they suggest think about it like an X and Y axis you have influence and you have authority this is an oversimplification about how things operate in the corporate world but most people in your organization.
Probably don’t have much of either they’re important for business outcomes but they’re not critical to big decisions on the top left you have people with a lot of authority and low influence you probably know a few people with fancy titles but you don’t really see them doing much of anything.
On the right side that’s the power Zone these are people with authority and influence and you want to build relationships with these folks because they’re probably the real decision makers and then you have people that may be influential but they do so without Authority.
These are the people that leadership listens to I kind of think that this is The Sweet Spot and largely where successful Design Systems teams live so how do you expand your influence by demonstrating value and strategically aligning to things that people in power care about.
Because your influence is your value and your recognition but you’re not trying to influence everyone so now I want to share some lessons that I’ve learned and I’m still learning about advocating and trying to expand my influence when it comes to Design Systems.
So I’m going to frame this by navigating three spheres of the organization first let’s talk about designers or the people that use the system these are the main users of and your team has the highest potential for influence here if you’re a manager I highly Empower I highly recommend that you Empower your.
Team to influence here the Optics of my own authority going into a figma file or dming a junior designer can be terrifying and I’m not here to scare people into using my components so start by establishing Trust you want to be seen as a resource from day one that way you can help them expand their.
Skill set in the past we used to have a 30-minute class in an employee’s first day first week of work and they were in content overload and rarely we’re jumping into designing a feature we knew there was a better way to onboard and so we completely overhauled.
Our program this year our new onboarding starts with a checklist that introduces new designers to Dropbox interface guidelines it’s a self-serve guide that includes video training that can be viewed anytime and it’s always available and a figma playground where designers have hand Hands-On training in their first.
Few weeks this was heavily influenced by schema’s talk last year from the team at Lyft and the change in our onboarding came with a perception shift from one of many resources at Dropbox to a trusted trusted group here to help you be a better designer it’s important to build trust from day.
One and continue to cultivate relationships with the designers that you serve product designers come from a diverse background from strategy or psychology or engineering and not all designers have the same interaction in visual craft and that’s great because teams with diverse backgrounds.
Make better products so connect with those who use the system and ask how can we help you be a better designer you might learn a thing or two about their strengths and their growth areas build relationships with all different skill sets if people are looking to grow their.
Visual skills offer one-on-one pairing or mentorship on the other side of the spectrum strong visual designers are usually the first to critique the system and its limitations I’ve learned the great designers have strong opinions about border radius they think that the system is limited.
And want to go Rogue so help them understand the benefits of the system and find Opportunities to bring them closer of repair design sessions or feedback loops so that they can think outside of their individual feature and product and start to see the interconnectedness of their work and the universe in which they are building.
Product designers are your primary stakeholders so feedback is critical to Shared success make giving feedback on the system easy the primary way that we measure success of our system is through a satisfaction survey we like to ask is the system easy to use does it meet your needs does it help you work faster.
The system is only successful unless designers are bought into using it Design Systems have the opportunity to transition incentives from Individual to Collective so use your influence with designers to create shared equity and expose designers to the universe in which they’re building.
Next let’s talk about managers you can really multiply your impact with this group by turning them into advocates for this advocates for the system and they can then Advocate on behalf of Design Systems for their designers or their cross-functional peers I consider this group my peers and they.
Come with a certain level of authority around the company but they might be unfamiliar with how Design Systems operate and have likely never used your components themselves so start by creating shared understanding so you can work towards complementary goals in Adam Grant’s book think again he.
Describes this group as the challenge Network I like to use this group to share ideas early where I can get feedback and help ideas take shape I find people that I trust who have different opinions and perspectives to challenge me to think differently it’s important to establish trust by.
Asking what’s important to you now they might have more information about product or company level strategies and they can help challenge your perspective and your opinions design managers probably care about shipping great experiences quickly at Dropbox I work with managers to set expectations so that their team can use.
The system to increase their velocity those expectations are used dig first and if it doesn’t meet your needs build with dig foundations and if you’re designing outside of dig meet with us is this perfect no but it’ll evolve and it’ll iterate with the help of my challenge Network.
I like to set expectations by inviting other managers to collaborate on what I call the drafty draft where I share ideas early and they can challenge them to help shape my opinions this results in shared decisions and shared ownership and you’re creating a sphere of allies who will Advocate on your behalf.
Their opinions can help shape the message that will result in your final final V2 it’s important to identify who’s in your challenge Network so that you can build trust and influence and turn them into allies we learn more from the people who challenge our thought process than from.
Those who affirm our conclusions so expand your influence with managers by building shared understandings so that you can work towards complementary goals and finally let’s talk about senior leaders they have a lot of authority and building connections with here are.
Important so that they can speak to the value of Design Systems at the company level but it can be hard to build trust so find leaders that have a track record for being change makers they’re not always in your reporting chain it’s your job to help them understand your goals so that they can Advocate on.
Your behalf first figure out what do they care about what motivates them knowing that can help you identify what to communicate up successful companies hire leaders that are accountable for different things they are key performance indicators differ depending on what they’re leaving.
A product leader could be accountable for increasing daily active users while an engineering leader is probably focused on something like time to interact knowing what they’re responsible for can help connect their apis to your goals at Dropbox I learned that most decisions are made by product people.
And so advocating for cohesive design was not Landing with product leaders system migration was then not prioritized on any of their roadmaps and so I’m learning to speak the language of product while I’m not directly accountable for increasing daily active users I am able to increase my influence when I collect.
Connect my team’s work to the things that leaders find important there are some great business classes for designers from design department and designer fund that help you think like a product leader I’ve realized that communicating up is a different skill than communicating out to designers so remember Clarity and.
Brevity are superpowers drive your point home by speaking their language so rather than saying Design Systems means that teams can build features faster you could say feature development is accelerated when teams adopt the design system due to the.
Velocity gained when leveraging shared tokens and components an even better way would be to include a metric around velocity this is not a talk about velocity or measuring it you’re lucky if senior leaders have five minutes to read your doc so practice brevity and rely on something that I.
Like to call the tldr or the executive summary where you can highlight key takeaways communication at this level is just as critical as your component docs it’s essentially creating documentation for leaders to Advocate on your behalf so Workshop your communication with leaders so that they’re seeing your.
Final final V2 another thing that I personally learned the hard way was that great systems go unnoticed and it’s your job to make them visible as a team working on an internal tool that’s the best way that you can demonstrate impact so be consistent with reporting up and.
Provide context into your contributions and your value repeatedly reporting up can turn leaders from Silent support to vocal support and when you do focus on context and clarity it’s your job to set realistic expectations for the company and the system.
After 18 months of leading dig leadership mentioned 100 dig adoption in a company Town Hall and that’s great that leadership is advocating for the design system but that’s an unrealistic expectation for how we measure success what I realized is I never told them how we measure success.
But a hundred percent is not the goal and it should not be the goal for your system either first of all 100 of what components referenced across products components referenced in figma our team doesn’t plan to measure that our system covers most features but not all and we want teams to work faster not.
Have the system slow them down so remember senior leaders lack context be the web telescope and show them the details it’s your responsibility to help leaders understand the value of your work because influence is your value and your recognition to wrap up build trust with designers by.
Asking how can we help you be a better designer expand your allies by iterating on your communication with your challenge Network and build Advocates by learning what motivates senior leaders remember power is two-dimensional influence is not reliant on you having.
Authority everyone on the team can be a catalyst for Change and being a manager leading a team of experts with deep understanding of systems it’s my job to help them recognize the power that they have influence relies on trust communication and relationships so start by getting quick wins to build the muscle.
Iterate until you learn what works if you only focus on the black holes you’re on a rapid path to burnout focus on the good and practice resilience because empowered people Empower people Design Systems are a never-ending campaign against entropy or just a tiny part in this vast and dynamic universe.
So let’s enjoy it while we’re here they’re just rectangles on the internet there’s a QR code this links to a bunch of books and references that have helped me along the way it also has my burnout talk from last year and it’s on Twitter at Lauren laprette thank you.
Design systems are drivers of cultural change disguised as a component library — getting your org to commit to this change often …
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