Good morning!

As the weather is warming up as we are getting closer to summer, I’m greeting you this month with the topic of design systems. This particular topic has been one of the favorite’s for me in the field of design for some time now. As it might sound somewhat difficult to approach with all of its nuances and technicalities, design systems are the basic building blocks of your digital services. At best, they can make decisions in daily work easier and thus efficient, and at the same time be also a catalyst for your organization's ways of working around design and development.

Meet our curator of the month

Ville Aaltonen is a Lead Designer at our Helsinki office and has been working in the design field for over 20 years. Ville also has a strong background in marketing communications but is now focused on working closer with organizations to make the user experience of their digital products as best as possible.

Ville's picks

Design system subtasks, by Step

By Nathan Curtis

As I’ve been working with design systems, I’ve noticed that a good structure for the ways of working makes many things a lot easier. Nathan Curtis, one of the most famous figures in the design system scene (you should get familiar with his articles if you have not already) has described an example process for design system teams to follow in their work. Your team could do fine with the top-level process described in the article, or dig deeper into the subtasks - or fine-tune everything according to your needs. But A process is still my recommendation.

The component gallery

By Lain Bean

The component gallery is a tool I often come back to in my work. This is more of a resource than an article, but still something to have a place in your bookmarks. As we all know; part of the design process is often gathering a few good references to research best practices and build your own decisions on those (great artists steal!). And by searching this site you will get great examples! It’s also great to see some Finnish design systems listed amongst the “giants”.

A global design system

By Brad Frost

What if there was a Global Design System that would be tech-agnostic and provide a baseline for theming it with your own design? This idea is put up by Brad Frost, the man behind the well-known “Atomic Design” concept. And if his idea were to be implemented, it could possibly “save the world’s designers and developers millions upon millions of hours, freeing up time and human potential” as Brad describes.

PS - as the article has raised a lot of discussion around the topic, Brad has already written a follow-up article too.

Generative UI and Outcome-oriented design

By Kate Moran and Sarah Gibbons, Nielsen Norman Group

You might already be wondering: “Didn’t AI already take over the boring design system work?” Well, as AI-generated user interfaces are mainly created by using tools (such as UIzard etc.) at the moment, that usually make use of already existing UI libraries, there are many implications in the air that there would be true AI-generated user interfaces in the future, and design systems would become indeed obsolete. What do you think? I think it might still take a year or two to get there.

Know your curator better

Tell us about a project you’ve worked on that you found particularly interesting or challenging.

I had the opportunity to be part of the team that built the design system from scratch for SOK. The number of digital product teams using the said system for building their web services was quite big, and when I left the project, we already had 10+ brands running in the system. While we needed to serve numerous needs by managing various styles and components, it was one of the most interesting projects I’ve been involved in, despite its complex nature. 

What hobbies or interests are you passionate about?

A couple of years back I started snowboarding. I had some basic skills from my youth to begin with, but I ended up having to learn everything from scratch after more than 20 years without practice. I got deeply interested in it, and one of the best things about it is that I feel like there’s always something new to learn. The sport became a really good way for me to balance my work and free time since it needed all of my focus. You can’t quite think about your project work while you're in the middle of a 5-meter jump to the sky!

How do you stay updated on the latest industry trends and technologies?

I mean, I don’t want to brag too much about it, but at Futurice I’ve met some of the smartest people I know. Having discussions with my colleagues always gives me some new aspects to think about, and I really like this way of learning, and keeping up with what's new out there in tech, design, and business. This of course works both ways! If you want to have a sparring session with me, DM me on LinkedIn and I’m sure we can arrange a meeting around the topic of design systems, and include a cup of fresh espresso if you happen to be in Helsinki.

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