The ‘How’ of Design Systems: Defining and documenting components

Design Systems Community helps bring people together to share ways of working, successes, and other learnings to encourage best practices in building, scaling, and maintaining design systems. No matter how you engage with design systems, we all play a role in making information accessible for everyone, and without barriers.

We’re excited to announce our second Design Systems Community Meetup!

Thanks to Kijiji for sponsoring this meetup.

Agenda
18:00 - 18:30 - Registration, networking & snacks
18:30 - 18:40 - Design Systems Community & Housekeeping (Varun & Enrico)
18:40 - 19:10 - Talk #1 The Struggle to Define Components by Trish Lamanna and Harjot Bal (Rangle.io)
19:10 - 19:40 - Talk #2 Documenting components: prioritizing content for design, dev & beyond by Nadia Kaakati (RBC Digital)
19:40 - 20:00 - Closing remarks & networking

Who should attend?
Anyone and everyone who is interested in learning about design systems are welcome. This event does not require background knowledge.

Talk #1: The Struggle to Define Components
Trish Lamanna, Lead Visual Designer, Rangle.io
Harjot Bal, Lead Experience Designer, Rangle.io

How do you start to define components when anything can technically be defined as a component? How does the task of defining components begin? How do we even get to the point where we're ready to make such a commitment? To do this takes more conversation than you think, and if you're struggling, then you're doing it right. Trish and Harjot are here to show you that the struggle is real...but manageable.

About Trish
Trish is a Lead Visual Designer at Rangle.io and has been working in the digital advertising and product space for over 10 years, serving a number of international brands and products. Her passions include but are not limited to, bringing the U back into UI, learning through doing and leading by example. She lives in a world where context is everything, has a cat who's a wizard and plays with fire in her spare time.

About Harjot
Harjot has worked as a designer in Toronto for the last 10 years in ad agencies, startups, and product companies.With a background in Psychology and Design Research, he is an advocate for design that prioritizes usability, accessibility, and performance. Harjot currently works as a Lead Experience Designer at Rangle, where he defines the experience of digital products through research, design, and development phases.

Talk #2: Documenting components: prioritizing content for design, dev & beyond
Nadia Kaakati, Product Design Lead, RBC Digital

Building a component library may be the 'what' of your Design System, but documenting those components provides context around the 'when', 'how' and 'why'. But how much information is too much? What content should you prioritize? What about serving different audiences - designers, developers, QA, business? Nadia will address these questions plus share some tips, tricks, and lessons learned from spinning up a Design System at a large organization.

About Nadia
Nadia is the Product Design Lead at RBC Digital where she works to build and scale a cross-disciplinary Design System for multiple lines of business. She's passionate about Design Operations, improving efficiency, and bridging the gap between Design and Development. She leverages her past experience as a Private Investigator to solve complex challenges, and is also an avid baker who specializes in pita bread and sourdough.

How can I contribute?
Interested to host, sponsor, or speak at our meetups, email us hello@designsystems.community