Design System Office Hours
Davy and PJ, design system practitioners talk about design-led product ownership, scaling and adoption, community and engagement, design system team models, and much more.
Episodes
Ep 104: The Governance Junk Drawer
Davy and PJ debate how automation, visible chaos, and human judgment can help teams move fast without turning the design system into an expensive junk drawer.
Ep 103: Config 2026 Recap
Davy returns from Config with a backpack full of new Figma features. Also our annual discussion of were these releases for us?
Ep 102: Figma's History with AI
From the comical wizard prompts of 2024 to the heavy-lifting reality of Figma MCP, Davy and PJ chart the compressed timeline of design system and canvas automation.
Ep 101: Sharing Ideas and Open Source
Why do we build in public when corporate nature tells us to hoard our work? Davy and PJ break down the unglamorous reality of sharing open-source tools, micro-contributions, and why 90s music is a hill worth dying on.
Ep 100: Happy Podcast Bday, and Schemas
We hit the Centennial! In our 100th episode, Davy and PJ look back on 4 years of our design systems chatter, before diving deep into the future of design systems: a community-driven, machine-readable schema that moves us past the "Figma-as-Source-of-Truth" era.
Ep 99: Durable vs Temporal Artifacts
Davy talks about trading a week of manual Figma updates for a "code-to-canvas" workflow that gets us "close enough" while PJ talks about running multiple worker-based agents to do production and qa work in tandem. Are these burner tasks?
Ep 98: Zeroheight's 2026 DS Report Chatter
Davy and PJ dive into the Zeroheight's 2026 Design Systems Survey to figure out why 61% of teams are drowning in work while a third of them still have "no plans" to automate—plus, Davy forces PJ to listen to some truly questionable AI-generated design jokes.
Ep 97: Tokenize Everything
Davy and PJ dive into the future of design tokens, exploring how to "tokenize everything" from complex color transformations (OKLCH) to utility tokens for motion and content strings.
Ep 96: Trying Out New Tooling
Davy and PJ discuss why the future of design workflow isn't just better handoff—it’s starting with the code itself.
Ep 95: When Docs Becomes a Liability
Davy and PJ discuss the "liability" of stale documentation and why AI still needs human oversight. They explore using Figma’s API to automate visual updates and kill the "pain in the butt" of manual maintenance.
Ep 94: Tech Dependencies
Building vs. Inheriting: Davy and PJ discuss the performance cost of design system dependencies. Learn how to choose the right framework without bloating your system or losing control of your architecture.
Ep 93: 2026 and our 4th Podcast Bday
Davy and PJ celebrate four years of Design System Office Hours by looking ahead at the shifting landscape of 2026. They explore how interoperability, open-source tooling, and AI-driven documentation being major themes to uplevel design system practices.
Ep 92: Naming is Hard
Davy and PJ tackle the notorious difficulty of naming in design systems, advocating for human-readable, descriptive language over "cute" metaphors and discussing how AI is making file cleanliness more critical than ever.
Ep 91: The Erosion of Open Design Systems
Davy and PJ discuss a potential trend of major design systems going from public to internal only, stressing that public documentation is the ultimate forcing function for quality and a huge win for the community.
Ep 90: WTF is Craft
Davy and PJ talk about the term "craft," emphasizing that high-quality design work requires designers to understand engineering constraints and that a good design system needs to provide education, not just components and prototypes.
Ep 89: Figma Slots Conference
Davy talks to PJ about his trip to see Figma's slots conference, formerly known as Schema. We talk about the releases and rejoice on a focus on the main editor again.
Ep 88: Stay in Learning Mode w/ Ben Callahan
Davy talks to friend of the program, Ben Callahan from Sparkbox about his series The Question, which brings together design system designers bi-weekly to share and learn collaboratively in a 60-min workshop.
Ep 87: Thinking Like an Engineer
Davy and PJ talk about how amongst many good engineering traits, the rigor, and ways they work should be more adopted by product designers and specially us, maintainers. If we can track, version, and test our work as rigorously as engineers, we would be in a higher quality bar.
Ep 86: I'm New to the TEAM w/ Guy Segal
Davy talks special co-host, Guy Segal, about his first month at his new design systems job at Atlassian, and the fun of being a newbie after the first 30 days, when the going really starts getting tough.
Ep 85: Design Systems Ambassador
Davy and PJ talk about the role of our designers on the ground, we call them our ambassadors. These good eggs not only inform our day-to-day product improvements, but help keep up informed across the org.
Ep 84: Design Systems Interviewing w/ Chela
Davy with friend of the program, Chela Giraldo talk about their recent experiences looking for a new design systems, and the struggles with developing the "design system portfolio" that can tell our unique stories.Chela has a recent post about it, which you should check out on Design System Collective.
Ep 83: Design Systems Education
Davy and PJ discuss the challenges and strategies for design system training, especially when it comes to Figma. We explore the line between providing direct tool training and focusing on how the design system integrates with those tools.
Ep 82: Local Product Systems
Davy talks about what he's seen with the popularity around (local) product systems and how you can may want to adoption via providing just some design system team support. PJ ends the convo with the lighter weight approach of supporting templates in code and design.
Ep 81: Disagreements and Alignment
Another takeaway from our cross-functional discussions, how do design system team members handle disagreements with consumers, or even our own teammates?
Ep 80: Building Single Use Figma Plugins
Davy and PJ talk dive into designers building helpers and plugins to support more specialized design system maintainer workflows, and the beauty of unblocking ourselves.
Ep 79: Cross-Functional Partnerships
Davy and PJ talk about how to plan to best support inbound product design work, in addition to the differences between product-led work vs design system team-led initiatives.
Ep 78: Davy and PJ go to Figma's Config
Because it was PJ's first Config, we decided to record a live, IRL episode, recap our first thoughts about the new product releases and a thread that we started about who Figma is designing for, dating back from last year's event.
Ep 77: Component Flexibility
We're back with an episode an episode about component and design system flexibility. How opinionated should your design system be, vs a large set of reusable pieces that can be put in any which way together. Davy and PJ weigh in on both methods and where you may want to dive into a framework that allows you to build starting from anywhere.
Ep 76: Guy Segal and Design System Management and Ops
Our friend Guy Segal, Director of Design Systems at Thomson Reuters comes and talks with us about consistency in operations and how to scale out systems thinking.
Ep 75: Davy and PJ's DS Origins
We learn about PJ's start in design systems, dating back to 2011, and Davy's first introduction to it in 2015. They discuss while tech has evolved, aspects such as theming still remain a struggle to figure out. Also discussed is how we evolved our roles, and what might be suitable traits and tactics used by design system people in 2025.
Ep 74: Maintaining Large Component Libraries
Davy and PJ talk about design and code parity, how we keep our artifacts aligned with live product, and other nuances to maintaining large scale component libraries.
Ep 73: Component Migrations
Davy and PJ talk about the challenges of updating legacy components from yesteryear, and what it takes to migrate legacy code to new design system components. When is the suitable time to do this work?
Ep 72: Atomic Design
Davy and PJ talk about the concepts presented in Brad Frost's 2013 book, Atomic Design, and how a simpler format in present day with components, patterns, and screens may be common representation for design teams.
Ep 71: Reviewing Work from Product Designers
In our second recent episode about reviewing work, Davy and PJ talk about how we review output from product designers on our teams and the need to stay plugged in so we can help designers earlier in the process.
Ep 70: Comms
While the podcast is one form of communication, on our teams we heavily utilize async written communication methods to best spread the good work of design systems. We talk about the different methods we communicate to stakeholders and consumers of our design system artifacts, specifically, documentation.
Ep 69: Design System Crits
Davy and PJ dive into the various ways we've utilized crits on our teams to both do design ops related work, but also reviewing code, in addition to design.
Ep 68: IC Performance
Topical for the time of year, Davy gets PJ to spill some beans on how to best set up designers to best prove the value of their day-to-day work in design systems.
Ep 67: Medium-ish Sized Teams
While we touched on teams of one, which is quite common in our community, how do we function in medium size teams of 3+ designers, and how can we effectively, and intentionally scale.
Ep 66: a11y Again
In our second episode dedicated to accessibility in design systems, Davy and PJ talk about the surface level explorations of color contrast, then learning more about how to better design for screen readers, for a better web experience.
Ep 65: DS POV from Engineering w/ Matt Petitt
We start our series with learning about how design systems interact and help our other team members from different disciplines. We start with Matt Petitt, Engineering Manager at Dayforce.
Ep 64: Efficiency x Velocity
Davy and PJ talk in depth about the perils of chasing efficiency, and how we approach measuring effort and time-saved. And does this tie into velocity at all?
Ep 63: Shifts in Priorities
In the tough market of design team contractions, Davy and PJ talk about how to maintain focus and stability as a horizontal design practice.
Ep 62: Diving Into Figma's REST API
On this episode, PJ talks about his time using Figma's REST API and how with so much data collected, we just need it to do a little more for us.
Ep 61: Where Design Systems Sit, w/ Nico from Zeplin
These have become some of our favorites, and tend to cover more ground than a typical ep. Nico, community manager for Zeplin joins as a co-host for this special ep.
Ep 60: Federated Help
Happy episode 60! Davy and PJ talk about a popular design system topic when we start out, Contributions and Federated Help. While this all sounds good, what are some of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on contributions and help from external design resources.
Ep 59: Adoption Again
Is system adoption the only measure of success? Davy and PJ talk about adoption metrics we tend to tie ourselves to, and how it may not always paint the most complete picture.
Ep 58: World of Colour
Or aptly named, Color Complexity in Design by our GPT pal, Davy and PJ discuss the use or rather overuse of color in product design. When thinking about color in design systems, once again, less is most appropriate.
Ep 57: Config 24 Recap
Fresh off 2 days of Config in-person conference, Davy talks with PJ about his time IRL, and talk about what they thought about feature releases, and what we might have expected.
Ep 56: Design System Fatigue
Pre-Config episode, Davy and PJ follow up our last "Just Say No" episode with an ep about design system fatigue. As a service team, how do we maintain the good graces, and continue to help designers produce the best work. It all starts and ends with a design culture that promotes early communication with the your design system frens.
Ep 55: Just Say No
When you're on a team of one, or fully staffed team with design and engineers, you'll soon have to shift some of your yes responses, to no. Davy and PJ talk how this at times trickles in through contributions, something that was an exciting concept in early days, but can get harder to manage as demand scales.
Ep 54: Davy and PJisms
Davy and PJ go over their favorite Davy and PJisms, their versions of design principles that they have been following them around through several design roles over the years.
Ep 53: Design Technologists, Again
We had such good traction on one of our first episodes, we decided to bring on another friend of the program, Donnie D'Amato to talk about design technologists, where they should sit in the org, and how we can use them as designers to be our best helping hand.
Ep 52: Library Updates Available?
It's a design system emergency! Our updates are no longer behind a somewhat blocking dialog in Figma. Davy and PJ had to jump on to talk about how this may help or not receive and adopt new system changes.
Ep 51: Rituals
Davy and PJ talk about the importance of standing up rituals, much like our product design partners, including, how might design system teams handle crits and office hours. How might a designer working at a Facebook leverage a feed, or a internal Facebook group, to share updates.
Ep 50: IC vs PDM
We made it to our 2 year birthday and 50 episodes! We reflect in Davy's shift into back into IC at Meta, and PJ's shift from IC to Manager most recently at Pinterest, and how the roles differed for us in design systems.
Ep 49: Finding Your First DS Job
Davy and PJ talk about how to get into your first DS job, the answer being things to know OTHER than building components. On the second half of the pod, we flip to how to get into DS as a discipline as a product designer.
Ep 48: 2023 Year in Review
As we approach 2 years, and 50 episodes, we recap this year and dive back into how AI changed some of our thinking this year, as well as what we would like to see out of the design systems practice in 2024.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 47: Evaluating Outside Design Perspectives
One theme that has been our mind working in large mega design teams, is how our product design teams handle outside, external POV, vs historical cannon. Davy and PJ discuss this, weaved in with how we like to evaluate potential solutions for our systems.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 46: Tooling
With convos of relying on external services such as design system docs sites, Figma plugins, or analytics, we talk about our experience working in large teams with funding to build our own, vs utilizing third party services that can simply get you up and running immediately.
Episode Transcript
Ep 45: Reactive vs Proactive Support
Davy and PJ talk a little more in depth about support and the dangers of being a purely reactive design system team. How do you handle requests, and how to operate the program during times of duress.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 44: Design Systems Team of One
Listener question: DS team of one, and how to keep afloat and keep the program going. We touch on what you might want to focus on, and getting help as soon as you can so you can scale.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 43: Complexity
We are back in your lives with a normal 1:1 with Davy and PJ about design system complexities, and how you might want to consider a system with less tokens, variants, and what it's like for Davy to manage 149 components on web alone.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 42: Accessibility x Design Systems w/ Cintia Romero
We have a friend of the program, Cintia Romero from Pinterest to talk about her work leading the accessibility design and education programs that has been now consumed by hundreds of designers.
You can view the Pinterest docs site at:https://gestalt.pinterest.systems/
Ep 41: @cobradave + @disco_lu Twitter Space
Recorded with @disco_lu a few months ago, Davy and Luis go rapid-fire on various design system hiring, component-building philosophies, and training. See below for timestamps.
(1:25): How Davy got started in DS
(6:00): Package my narrative as DS designer
(7:00): How to posture yourself to obtain your ideal position
(8:34): How to utilize existing job postings internally mentioning DS to get into y
Ep 40: Move Fast
Happy 40th episode birthday. We talk about moving fast vs designing and building with intentionality, and naturally the convo led morphed into a half episode about ways of partnering with product designers, and how we work on our systems at Meta and Pinterest.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 39: Do You Need a DS?
With DS being table stakes on lots of product design teams, and even job postings, we talk about whether you need one, or whether your efforts should be scaled elsewhere. What are you really getting yourself into when you start this journey..
Episode Transcripts
Ep 38: Career Convos for Design Systems People w/ Romina Kavcic
This was a special LIVE RECORDING at The Future of Design Systems conference hosted by @IntoDSConf. Friend of the program @rominadesigner takes over as host. We talk about what hard skills are important to have (building components), and the novel idea of interviewing specifically for systems thinking.
Ep 37: Config 23 & IntoDS QA
Davy comes back from Config 2023, pondering life in and outside of the file, and some rapid fire QA with Davy and PJ. (01:25) Config 2023 IRL recap. (22:10) IntoDS, Future of Design Systems talk QA.
Episode Transcripts
Bonus link: Leading through Uncertainty @halli
Ep 36: Building Components
One of Davy's favorite parts of being an IC is being able to still build components, and chase Figma's quest for excellence. Davy and PJ talk about the approach their teams take for building and maintaining design components, alignment with code source of truth, and staying away from uber components.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 35: Design System Interviewing w/ Masato Miura
We’ve been following Masato’s project, designsystem.careers for a while now, and given the nature of the design job economy, wanted to pick his brain on how we can better interview design system designers and engineers.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 34: Roadmaps
As design system maintainers, we have the unique role of being deeply entrenched in our own product roadmaps. How can we find opportunity areas and advocate for what we think is best for our consumers? Can we even achieve this within a given time frame. Davy PM and PJ talk about how this has worked at Meta and Pinterest.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 33: Governance
Governance doesn't have to be a bad work, but can define how you convey intent through your system. We love governing so much, there's some bits and pieces that we covered in Ep 15: Support.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 32: Product Management x Design Systems w/ Angelina Allen
Special episode with a friend of the program, Angelina Allen, Senior Product Manager of Native Design Systems at US Bank. Infinitely curious without having product management dedicated support on our teams, Davy and PJ talk to her about her role and how important it is on larger design systems team to have a product manager/owner help guide the work through and be impartial to designer or engineer
Ep 31: Staff Presentation Designers
What happens when we get lost on our own sauce, our presentations, decks, vision work, and forget about the tactical and operational work we need to do so we can keep the design systems train moving along.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 30: Design Delivery
We made it to episode 30! It's about time we talked about Design Delivery and why design system maintainers are so passionate about it. Can we as a design and product team agree to deliver artifacts, in one single format? I bet the design systems team can help with a framework for that.
Episode Transcript
Ep 29: Early Career Designers w/ Val Poon
Looking to learn more about design systems with some friends of the program, we talk to Val Poon, an early career designer at Info-Tech Research Group.
Ep 28: AI, Allen Iverson
With all this chat (pun included) about ChatGPT, how else can we utilize some programmable help with AI and automation. Plus, the differences between a sweet potato and a yam.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 27: Listener Questions
Davy and PJ answer listener questions that came in from some friends of the program. We touch on fun component library design only components, governance, office hours issue tracking, documentation, interviewing, and much more.
Episode Transcripts
Ep 26: Design System Roles
With the rise of design system teams in orgs, Davy and PJ talk about how their roles have progressed through product design, and design ops. How have things changed while we have come in and out of IC <> management? Today in our roles, what does IC leadership in Design Systems look like for us?
Episode Transcripts
Ep 25: Happy Birthday, Best of '22
Happy 2023 and 1st birthday to the podcast! We got a treat for those new the program, our greatest hits from the first 20 episodes. Timestamps: Ep 9: ROI (02:08), Ep 10: Hindsight (07:00), Ep 13: Feedback (11:42), Ep 18: Contributions (15:38), Ep 20: Education and Onboarding (19:59), Ep 2: Design Technologists (25:00), Ep 3: Releases (28:33), Ep 5: Figma is NOT a DS (30:54), Ep 6: Mandates (38:55)
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