Selling Design Systems; Refresh Austin

Design Systems: they’re all the rage right now, as they should be. Teams at Salesforce, GE, Airbnb, IBM, and others are sharing wonderful stories of constructing, managing, and operating Design Systems. This is not one of those stories. Instead, this talk will detail how too sell and gain adoption of a Design System before asking for buy-in to build it.

Transcript

1. Selling Design Systems An "adoption-first" strategy for selling a design system at EA Refresh Austin September 12, 2017 Ryan Rumsey @ryanrumsey
2. Design systems are all the rage
6. This is not one of those talks
7. Stuff that’s worked for me
12. IT
13. Hi. I’m Mary. Inherent expertise
14. Knowledge Management Learning Management Workforce Management Performance Management Travel Management Facilities Management Support Customer Relationship Management Resource Management Career Development World of systems
15. Accidental complexity
16. Workforce Management Knowledge Management Learning Management Resource Management Facilities Management Customer Relationship Management Travel Management Career Development Performance Management Support Expense Management Intranet Dashboards File Management Desktop Applications Mobile Applications Websites Tools Frameworks Guidelines
17. Workforce Management Knowledge Management Learning Management Resource Management Facilities Management Customer Relationship Management Travel Management Career Development Performance Management Support Expense Management Intranet Dashboards File Management Desktop Applications Mobile Applications Websites Tools Frameworks Guidelines SORRY, I CAN’T SHOW YOU
18. Workforce Management Knowledge Management Learning Management Resource Management Facilities Management Customer Relationship Management Travel Management Career Development Performance Management Support Expense Management Intranet Dashboards File Management Desktop Applications Mobile Applications Websites Tools Frameworks Guidelines CHALLENGES WITH SCALE, REUSABILITY, & CRAFT
19. EX CX The perceived value customers have in interactions with EA. The perceived value employees have in interactions while working at EA.
20. WHY A DESIGN SYSTEM?
21. “Can you make my thing look like your thing?” — most frequent request from Anonymous
25. http://wolf-sheep20.tumblr.com/post/45480229605/homestuck-gif-challenge
27. Accidental complexity
28. https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1t5ywe/the_bitcoin_community_again/
29. Design whole experiences
30. Murmuration of starlings in Utrecht, The Netherlands, https://vimeo.com/121168616
31. WHAT IS IT?
32. A collection of resources for individuals and teams at EA to design, develop, & write applications, websites, communications, & products.
33. DEVELOPERS DESIGNERS
34. WHAT NEEDS BUYING?
35. “I’ve been pitching our services for 23 years and I’ve never once successfully convinced an executive of anything.” - Jared Spool
36. Lead with empathy to drive understanding of the perspectives of the humans who: USE DESIGN TOOLS
37. Lead with empathy to drive understanding of the perspectives of the humans who: BUY DESIGN SERVICES
38. OBSERVE OUR ENVIRONMENT
40. “We want to collaborate, have great documentation, and to fork. We must be able to fork.” — perhaps a made-up, generalized request from Anonymous, but you get the idea
41. *Not our actual project process
42. “Can you save us time without spending money?” — another generalized request from Anonymous that might not be so made-up
43. CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT AHEAD!
44. SUCCESS IS NOT FUNDING
46. Design Systems should deliver and live Projects should deliver and die
47. Design Systems should deliver and live Projects should deliver and die FUND WITH A PROJECT?
48. SUCCESS IS ADOPTION
49. Innovation Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and radical innovation: Design research versus technology and meaning change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96.
50. Radical Incremental Improvements within a given frame of solutions (i.e., “doing better what we already do”) A change of frame (i.e., “doing what we did not do before”) Innovation Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and radical innovation: Design research versus technology and meaning change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96.
51. Radical Incremental Improvements within a given frame of solutions (i.e., “doing better what we already do”) A change of frame (i.e., “doing what we did not do before”) Innovation NOVEL UNIQUE ADOPTED Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and radical innovation: Design research versus technology and meaning change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96.
52. Radical Incremental Improvements within a given frame of solutions (i.e., “doing better what we already do”) A change of frame (i.e., “doing what we did not do before”) Innovation NOVEL UNIQUE ADOPTED Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and radical innovation: Design research versus technology and meaning change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96.
53. HYPOTHESES Save time. Save money. Collaborate, share knowledge, must fork. When a constraint isn’t explicitly said, it’s not a real constraint.
54. ASSUMPTIONS We will support multiple platforms & devices. We will partner with dozens of engineering teams, hundreds of developers, engineers, and architects, working on tens of products in an environment where teams have choice in technologies they use. We will not be resourced to every product/project. We will support teams creating, customizing, or configuring digital products. We are a small team, so we can’t build completely from scratch. We will consider EA culture.
55. LET’S DO THIS
62. https://medium.com/sketch-tricks/sketch-measure-master-a-thorough-walkthrough-57d3df25a1cf
63. https://medium.com/sketch-tricks/sketch-measure-master-a-thorough-walkthrough-57d3df25a1cf
64. https://medium.com/sketch-tricks/sketch-measure-master-a-thorough-walkthrough-57d3df25a1cf
65. https://medium.com/sketch-tricks/sketch-measure-master-a-thorough-walkthrough-57d3df25a1cf
66. Made for humans at EA, by humans in IT
69. SELL, SELL, SELL
70. Do they need help? Do they know they need help? Sweet spot How did we find early adopters?
71. Hackathon
72. Guerilla Marketing & PR
73. Trojan Mice http://www.trojanmice.com/
74. HOW WE DOIN’
75. 1. 20+ teams using the framework (not just Devs) 2. 15+ projects 3. Community writing case studies about their usage 4. Community building extensions 5. Still no direct funding
79. “Hey, we always needed one of these!” — all the Anonymous
81. STUFF THAT CAN WORK FOR YOU
82. 1. If you build it…
83. 2.Nobody puts baby in a corner
84. 3.Build from something working
85. 4.Promote like a college kid pitching credit cards
86. 5.Be pragmatic. Ellen Lupton, http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/12/designing-the-humanities/
87. CREDIT WHERE DUE
89. Thank you! Ryan Rumsey @ryanrumsey