Heading into summer, we’ll take a look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed. We’ll take the Ferrari.

Our team is growing

Design systems has a new manager! Welcome Amber Stickel! Amber joins us from Shopify (and before that, IBM, and before that, Indeed.) She’s an expert designer and front-end dev working out of our Miami Vice branch (JK – Tampa Bay area, Florida) and we’re thrilled to have her.

Design systems is still on the hunt for a Creative Technologist. If you know anyone who would be a great fit let us know.

Q2 system updates

Design systems has been busy! Find a list of recent updates below. As always, if you have questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out. We want to hear from you!

• Shoutout to Luke Gabrieli for extending Tooltip to provide truncation.
• Thank you to Katie Powell and the brand team from our brand spankin’ new composition guidelines and color updates.
• “Sparkle” has been deprecated and is no longer recommended for use in visual designs.
• Introducing Figma Cat! Follow along with conversations happening in Figma in relevant Slack channels. @figma-cat in your channel to get started.
• Design your Seeds contributions in Figma with the new Seeds contribution library.
• We’ve updated some of our interview materials and processes to more accurately reflect our design org and to improve candidate experience.
• We made significant upgrades to Seeds’ dependencies as part of a continued effort to manage security threats.
• Nick Lacke provided some updates for our Illustration docs.
• Product design is piloting a set of craft principles to help guide design decision making.
• Maurice has updated Numeral to a more modern API that covers a wider range of use cases.
• Margie, Sam, and many others with the Accessibility Guild have recently provided updates to our forms documentation.
• The product org has kicked off a dark mode working group. If you’re interested in being involved please reach out to design systems!

What’s next?

As Sonny Crockett, from Miami Vice, once said, “People in stucco houses shouldn't throw quiche.” I have no idea what that means because I’ve never seen the show. What I do know, is that with Amber, Maurice, and a Creative Tech joining the team, Design Systems is looking to see a big boost in bandwidth. This extra voltage should help us:

Streamline and scale our team rituals and processes on design systems.

We spent some time earlier this year wrenching on our process. “Scrappy” has worked for us thus far but as we scale our team we’ll need to grow our processes as well.

Provide a stronger presence and more support through, Slack, Racine, Seeds, and anywhere else DS conversations are happening.

We know that participation has been light at times and as resourcing increases we plan to make design systems more accessible than ever.

Strengthen interdepartmental relationships to ensure Seeds remains a resource for the entire organization.

We’re excited to have time to catch up with our strategic partners from across the org!

Hone our roadmap and prioritize our high impact projects and initiatives that are currently on hold.

We plan to come out of maintenance mode and begin prioritizing projects that will improve your work and the overall Seeds experience.

Have questions, feedback, or ideas for the Design Systems team? Send us an email or check out our wiki page to learn more about the team.

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