Working Group on Design Systems

Design systems, often documented as pattern libraries, UI standards, and UX guidelines, address products and services in holistic ways to enable organizations to deliver consistent and congruent experiences across all platforms to users, customers, and employees. The focus of this working group is how to develop and maintain scalable user experience design systems esp. for complex organizations and applications.

Often misunderstood as being simply an extended style guide or a collection of user interface patterns, design systems are full-blown products that need to be supported and maintained accordingly by the whole organization in order to be successful and sustainable. From an organizational perspective, a design system covers practical routines of how to develop, implement, maintain and communicate such systems. In this way, teams have to deal with all sorts of hurdles and restrictions related to scalability and understanding of UX.

What participants will be expected to do before, during, and after the conference

• Before: Prepare a short case study with insights from their real world design system projects, including sample artifacts from design systems they have been involved in.
• During: After brief presentations by each participant in the working group, everyone will be invited to take an active part in the session, bringing their expertise, sharing their work artifacts, and learning from each other on how to create Design Systems that scale.
• After the conference: Possibilities for activities after the workshop include:
  • Publish a recap of the working group in the UXPA International User Experience magazine.
  • Build up an online community of practice; a place us all to hang out and continue sharing information about design systems.
  • Start the development of “a design system of design systems,” with best practice examples, guidelines and blue print development processes for the development of design systems.
  • Develop a body of knowledge, such as a compilation of research studies related to design systems.

Who should participate

Colleagues that have hands-on experience in creating design systems of different complexity in various industrial sectors and organizational contexts. If we have more participants apply than we have room for, we will select the set that gives us the broadest and  deepest coverage of design systems (e.g., preference for people with unique perspectives).

Minimum/maximum group size

6-20 UX professionals

Group Leaders

Michael Bechinie

Michael Bechinie has more than 15 years of practical experience in the field of operational and strategic UX consulting in a broad variety of different industrial sectors. He works for USECON, an international experience design and consulting company, as the head of experience design.

He holds a university degree in Biology / Anthropology from the University of Vienna, Austria. He is passionate about sharing knowledge with his peers. Michael is an author, public speaker and instructor for more than 10 years, writing, speaking, and training on a variety of UX topics (e.g., usability engineering, user centred design, strategic experience management).

Michael has experience in the development of complex design systems in various fields, such as e-government applications, insurance systems, and industrial machineries. He also presented User Interface Design Style Guides are not dead, the just smell funny at UXPA 2017 in Toronto.

Benno Loewenberg

Benno Loewenberg is business consultant and strategic designer for digital products and services. He shapes digital touchpoints ranging from enterprise expert software to interactive installations.

He is experienced in developing design systems for complex applications, like SAP “Fiori”. He has worked with more than 30 companies and organizations, including Accenture, Deutsche Bank, EU Parliament, the German Government, Google, Jaguar, Lufthansa, Nestlé, Roche, SAP, Sony Music, United Nations WFP and Vodafone. He has also built and led several digital design departments, including one for Publicis.

Benno studied life sciences and economics, he is trainer for media design, a start-up mentor, as well as a facilitator and speaker. Benno is a Google Expert for product strategy and user experience as well as a certified Google Design Sprint Master.

In 2017, he presented “Design Systems – Making Everybody’s Life Muuuch Easier” at Fluxible UX Festival.

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/BennoLoewenberg/design-systems-english-fluxible

Keith Instone

Keith was part of the IBM.com design standards team for about a decade. He now consults with clients on design system projects. In 2012, he presented Integrating User Interface Design Specifications at the Internet User Experience conference.

If you are interested in participating, see the general information on working groups.