A transcript of Episode 278 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom discuss the end of the era of design systems in Russia, and a status report on toxicity in digital design.
This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Cristian Pavel.
Transcript
Computer voice
UX podcast episode 278.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
I’m James Royal-Lawson.
Per Axbom
And I’m Per Axbom.
James Royal-Lawson
This is UX Podcast, balancing business, technology, people and society every other Friday for over a decade, and with listeners in over 200 countries and territories from Guatemala to Colombia.
Per Axbom
Nice. And today, we have for you a link show when we during our digital travels, find links, surprise each other with these articles. So we have two articles for you.
James Royal-Lawson
What do you mean surprise each other? It’s like I cannot write, run around your lakeside cottage, and then like, you wake up in the morning and I’m at your window, holding a printout of a medium article. Traumatised.
Per Axbom
That’s the way it went down.
James Royal-Lawson
This is exactly how we plan these episodes.
Per Axbom
We have an article about design systems, which actually is entitled The era of design systems is gone.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, that is originally by Seryozha Plaschinsky. I’m terrible with names, especially Russian names are not even even easy for me.
Per Axbom
Seryozha Plaschinsky.
James Royal-Lawson
So much better. That’d be a bit of doing anyway. And that was the original author. And this has been translated by Onchky. Don’t really know so much more about Onchky.
Per Axbom
it’s a publication with several writers, I think.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s seems to be a person and seems to also be a host of a podcast and the person seems to be Russian in Germany, I don’t know.
Per Axbom
That would be fantastic if they just follow up and let us know.
James Royal-Lawson
Yes, that would be good.
Per Axbom
And the second article we have for you is a follow up article by Lisa Angela, who we we had her first article a year ago on the show as well: Toxicity in digital design: A status report is this one. Which is a follow up to the one last year was: Undoing the toxic dogmatism of digital design.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And she actually opened the article with: “No, seriously. It’s been a year”.
Per Axbom
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
That is really a very good opening line to that article. But we’ll get to that.
Per Axbom
Yes.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
So first up is “The era of design systems is gone”, which as we mentioned in the introduction, this is an article that was originally written back in May 2020. In Russian, by, … Per?
Per Axbom
Seryozha Plaschinsky.
James Royal-Lawson
Thank you very much. And this has been translated into English. As, as always, when you when you translate something, it gets a little bit rough around the edges at various points. But I think it’s… what what attracted me to this article anyway, was the fact that it gives you a glimpse into another culture.
Per Axbom
Yes.
James Royal-Lawson
Russia is one of those places in the world, that’s, there’s a little bit of a barrier to what’s going on there. Because the character set and the language is very different to what we use. And there just doesn’t feel like there’s a huge amount of overlap at times between the design community in Russia and the rest of the world. Maybe that’s just my westernised view on it all, or the way that our design world is dominated by English speaking things. But I really like it when we do get these glimpses into these other worlds. And that was what the main reason why I wanted to, but, it’s one of the main reasons it given us the opportunity to talk about something from another culture on the show. And also, I think he’s actually got some interesting points to do with design systems. That is what the article is about. It’s not just a generic article about design systems. It’s about the history or the development, the journey of design systems as a thing in Russian design and development over the last six years, or five, six years, I guess.
Per Axbom
Seven years, even it starts out in, oh yeah. 5-6 years.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s yeah, it’s basically it’s… It starts by going through the history, the recent history of Russian design systems, and pinpoints the beginning of it all, to a CSS conference that was held back in 2016. So it goes back a little further with the global side of things like Brad Frost, atomic design, Sketch, iOS Seven that came in 2014 with flat design. mentioned also things like Material Design. IBM design language, Lightning, MailChimp, BBCs Gel. And also goes into the idea that was born, or rather the thing that was born from that with graphic editing software had no future, it became obsolete. And that components and the code itself, were the source of truth.
Per Axbom
Right? Even even this concept of design engineers, which I think is either design designers, independent of developers, or developers independent of designers and building the solution by just piecing together stuff from a design system.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, it’s a high a hybrid role. And yeah, you’re right, the article doesn’t really go into the makeup of that role completely over then it is expected that one person will be doing both of these, these jobs.
Per Axbom
I remember even when went way, way back, when we were looking into these things that people were talking about: now, automated design. So AIs would take a design system and build a website for us and we would become obsolete!
James Royal-Lawson
I still think you’ve got the whole kind of thing with the designs get creative and you judge them. But that’s another show Per, and another kind of topic, it’s still gonna happen. But this, the author, speculates about the rising demand for design engineers, and tech solutions that accelerate the release cycle came during a period of renewed economic growth in Russia, after the fall of the ruble, from 2015 to 2018. And may have been a response to the shortage of skilled labour. So this is fascinating that there, you’ve seen how parently, the Russian design and developer community is looking towards the global trends, which are rife at this point. And looking at their own situation, with who’s available to work on stuff. And the natural, I suppose, evolution of that is that you create hybrid roles, to keep going forward and to keep doing stuff to achieve something that’s expected of you at that period of time. And with the, we all know, when you’ve got a period of economic growth, and things are booming, then there is that momentum, and you’re expected to kind of keep on going. So that’s a it’s a plausible, from what we’ve read and know about it, then it’s a plausible explanation of the situation.
Per Axbom
I really like that connecting what is happening in design to a broader view, or what is happening in society and specific culture. I think we do that. too seldom, really, we only should think about where we fit in, in a larger context, and more perhaps on a local scale, then in a design interest scale.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. It makes me think as well, about going back to, like the mobile web, that we’ve discussed how in certain countries in the world, often it’s particular countries in the continent of Africa that get brought up as examples where they’ve completely skipped the desktop web, right? It doesn’t exist as a thing. Because people don’t have desktop computers, they have mobile devices that are internet connected. So when you look at things from a world point of view, it isn’t the case that every single part of some country or territory in the world follows exactly the same development path of web digital design as each other, some steps will get missed, or jumped, or ignored, or, you know, and it’s not because they’re not relevant steps, just that circumstances are different.
Per Axbom
But that’s a really good point, because it’s such a huge trap for some junior designers who go online to search for design education, a watch a few videos on YouTube, and what they get is largely a representation of Western design culture, which may not be what they actually need, from their own perspective where they’re designing.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, Western design culture and Western circumstances. Absolutely. So the article then goes on to say: “Then we hit 2019.” And, oh, what seems to be actually, I suppose it gets a little bit more tricky, I think the article now. It says that this all came to an end the use of the hype around design system seems to come to an end, around 2019 in Russia. There was an example of a design systems club. And that now it only had like links to eight design systems. And I’ll quote all of them by enlarge, copy each other and a branding pages with sets of basic elements and principles and all the differences boiled down to who chooses which font and colour palette. The article also then goes on to a little critique of a published design system are actually set of library basic components. And he pointed out that the graphic editing software that seemed to be getting made redundant by the hybrid designer engineers seem to have survived the war, we’ve covered, as the article says, mainly thanks to Figma. And it’s remained a tool of a designer. It also says that it seems that only mobile design is the thing that lends itself to some sort of systemization. Again, these points are talking just about this published set of, of components library, but from point of view of reflections on design systems and how they have been developed, used and applied in Russia. It’s really interesting.
Per Axbom
I did like what he said about the design systems club, and the links that were posted within that forum, where it actually seemed like all of the design systems, the eight links, these sort of copy each other, and then they have the same basic sets of elements and principles. And the different differences really are, what font and colour palette are you using,
James Royal-Lawson
Exactly. Like I said, it’s kind of already iterated something standard. And the article also points out that, in the author’s experience, the standard components that you get from these libraries rarely solve things. They just exist to purely save time. But that’s not a design system is just a library of basic components that aren’t the thought through and designed for your context and situation. And that that really can relate to because I mean, I’ve been part of plenty of projects and teams where things have been pulled in, you know, libraries have been pulled in. And yeah, it gets you over the line quicker in the first iteration. Then you test it, you analyse it, you get feedback on it, and you realise, that wasn’t maybe really great, you kind of knew that anyway, because you were just getting stuff done, you were shipping stuff. And then when you realise the investment that you need to make your own. And you add all this up, you kind of start to realise that rolling your own from the beginning probably might well have been the cheaper and better option. So it works to use the standard components, if you are aware of the fact maybe they are going to be a stepping stone and need to just kind of use it to get something out there analysing and itterate. But I think too many times we use it as an end solution.
Per Axbom
And when he talks about the learnings or the problems, or what are the takeaways from this, it’s that, it seems that, products really have to move fast. So they change quickly to be competitive. And the design system doesn’t really allow for that. Because if you have want to add a new component to a design pattern library, what have you, that takes time, and people just want to get the product out. So they’re getting frustrated?
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Yeah, the quote there is, it’s quite ruthless: “And the business doesn’t care whether it’s done using the system or not, as long as you’re not as well, as long, as long as it’s the case that you’re losing to your competitors.” So what they’re saying is they’re ruthless as a business that, you know, solve yourr design system, we’re, you know, we’re bleeding cash kind of thing. That is one of the difficulties with getting buy in for design systems. So why do they exist? What is the benefit of having an overarching design system of maybe multiple products, maybe even multiple brands and companies and it is a challenge. And the cohesion of all that is very difficult to maintain.
Per Axbom
A really, really like the point he makes about unskilled designers and experienced designers as well. So, even an unskilled designer with even the most elaborate tool will still do poorly. So, this is the thinking that a lot of people seem to have that if you have the design system, then you can take a junior designer, just give them that and they have all the pieces to put together something that works. And on the other hand, if you have a skilled designer, and you tell them this is what you have to use, they stopped analyse and think critically is what he says. And this stops their development. And I can identify you kind of get frustrated as well.
James Royal-Lawson
I think what’s interesting conclusion from this article was that the author thinks that this design engineers and possibly even degree design systems disappeared because the emergence of cross functional teams and companies having the resources for engineers to engineer and designs design. So what he’s saying is basically, we Russia reached a maturity point where they saw the value in having dedicated resources to do stuff so they weren’t they didn’t need to be doing the quick and dirty stuff as much that it turns out to be better.
Per Axbom
Right.
James Royal-Lawson
Strong team, strong communication within the team, strong leadership, and gradually after the big guys, everyone will start investing in it was one of the quotes from the, toward the end the article.
Per Axbom
Yeah. And the article itself has a quote from Spotify design that I really, really like. Because I think that is one of my biggest takeaways that this doesn’t mean that you don’t need a design system or that you shouldn’t have one. It’s how you use the design system and how you communicate it to the people who are using it. So the Spotify quote is, “each team should be empowered to diverge from our recommendations, acknowledging that one solution may not work for everyone. So the crux of it is, does the team feel confident enough to diverge?” And to be able to do that you need experienced designers?
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. I know, we don’t we normally go with recommend listening until the end of the show, but really good recommended listening, would be our interview with Jina Anne from a number of years ago about designing systems, because she talks about that you need to have that flexibility. Brad Foss has also mentioned it whan we’ve talekd to him, you know, it’s not dogma.
Per Axbom
Exactly.
[Music]
Per Axbom
Moving on, to Lisa Angelas, follow up article, I’ll have to say. To her article from one year ago, and you’re right, it surprised me when she wrote that it is actually a year ago. Time moves in strange ways these times, oh,
James Royal-Lawson
I actually could have sworn it was just before the summer.
Per Axbom
Yeah, I would have said it’s a couple of months ago, we did that.
James Royal-Lawson
This timeline is really weird.
Per Axbom
So her first article from a year ago, is Undoing the toxic dogmatism of digital design. And it’s a very well written critique of the digital digital design industry, and immediately got huge attention and chairs across the world, I’ll say. And we brought it up here on the show, in Episode 252. And in it Lisa describes the design industry as a living paradox, with a lack of self awareness and incredible inconsistencies in quality. And she called out a number of issues related to education methods, seniority levels, lack of exploration and hierarchy and ethics and inclusiveness. And she posted some reflections now and additions. And again, we want to bring them to your attention. Because first her own reflections on the first article relate to what her expectations were and what happened, she had expected more backlash. And we should didn’t get that that actually made her more aware that these problems actually were something that the design industry seems to be aware of, but not dealing with.
James Royal-Lawson
So she expected more people to to say to her, you’re wrong.
Per Axbom
Exactly.
James Royal-Lawson
And they didn’t.
Per Axbom
She also felt there was too much focus on her as a person. So people thought, well, now you’re the spokesperson for this, and she doesn’t want to become the spokesperson for the ills plaguing digital design. So she sort of had to turn down some speaker engagements just because she wanted didn’t want to be that her thing. But also her network expanded. And I can relate to that. I mean, if you do posts that a lot of people read you, you get a lot of interesting conversations going, which is lots of fun as well. But I think let’s get real, then about the issues that Lisa with her keen eye still sees that we digital designers get wrong.
James Royal-Lawson
Additional four that she brings up in this article.
Per Axbom
Exactly. “We don’t share critiques of successful work enough.” And this is interesting, because our go to thing it seems in UX that I hear a lot about, we need to share about all the thing that’s got things that go wrong, the experimentation and how we fail. But rarely do we actually, and she’s so right about it: “But rarely do we actually critique the things that went really, really well and show people this is what we did to make it go really well.”
Per Axbom
So all those processes, she’s obviously not talking about UI. Lots of people love to talk about UI and this is so beautiful, and this is how people click and use it. She’s talking about I mean, how you work as a team and the processes and the framework that makes something a success. And I love that because it’s related to the first article we talked about, just now. She says: “We adopt design systems we don’t even like because they’re robust, complete, and come from the design teams of big successful companies. I’m looking at you material design.” I love that quote, just because of what we just talked about, because it seems that we are actually letting go of some competence and taking shortcuts.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, but especially like material design when you’re faced in an organisation organisation by a thing, a monolith like material design, and like Google and Google are saying, We’ve spent X 10s of 1000s of man hours designing this, we’ve had studios with lamps. And we’ve been moving lamps from different angles to see the shadowing. So we can develop the layers and kind of think through. I mean, as a designer in a organisation, and you’re looking up to that, you can understand that it’s difficult to fight back against it. It looks massive, the resources in there look massive.
Per Axbom
Exactly.
James Royal-Lawson
But it does mean to say we shouldn’t be critical.
Per Axbom
Right. Which should be the role that we’re playing, as UXers, that is what we say that we are competent at and adapt at. Her second point is about power dynamics. She doesn’t welcome someone looking at her avatar and assuming things about her identity, that give them licence to educate her. And that which goes for so many people. And I think this is something we see a lot on social media. But I think we forget that. And even even let’s say a person like myself, who has quite a large following on Twitter, can forget that the effect that me replying to someone has on surfacing that conversation to a lot of followers. So you boost the visibility of the discussion to outside of the original posters network, which means that if it’s a controversial topic that can give, and can be, as she says, quite traumatic for that person, for someone who’s less experienced and junior from a historically excluded groups. So it’s more this is a really a point about letting people know that they should think more before talking on social media, or in other contexts as well, because their voice is heard to such an incredible extent, because they have a large following. They have a large name in the industry. And so if you have a substantial following, just think about your impact a lot more.
James Royal-Lawson
You know what, Per, I think it’s not just about substantial following. I mean, a lot of this, it’s down to the white male thing, which is so incredibly frustrating and annoying. The, the amount of times, you see. And these white man is jumping on conversations. And it just absolutely, I mean, that’s the thing, it’s absolutely shocking, some of the conversations that get highlighted to me, to you as well, from people showing what, what kind of rubbish men do online to people. And, you know, first it’s difficult to understand because we are white men, but it just really just upsets me at the time seeing the kind of stuff people have to put up with. And it’s even more upsetting when it’s people of stature, you could say, people with a power position on social media or in our design industry, that still maybe don’t kind of think twice before jumping on someone’s tweet or, or comment or something.
Per Axbom
Exactly. I love her summary of this as well: “Don’t assume you have to participate in the conversation at all.” Which I think is something that I do tend to think about a lot more, there’s no reason to participate in every conversation that you feel some sort of emotion regarding, sometimes the best thing you can do is actually stay away.
James Royal-Lawson
Yep. We took up quite a bit of space anyway, Per.
Per Axbom
Not enough historically, and I am down to number three now, not enough historically excluded folks own alternative channels of design education. And this was actually sort of related to what I was saying earlier about acknowledging how many different types and you were saying as well different types of design contexts are are in different countries across the world, on different continents, but in different localities in many different ways. And we are looking at so many in the industry, looking to the same types of leaders and same types of design, looking at models and tools that seem to be the same and should be applied everywhere, which just is not the case. So we this is why there needs to be, to a large extent, so many more people from other walks of life to be the educators.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And our what we see as our design community, design world. As you mentioned, the first article is very much English speaking and white. Yeah, and we know from the listen to the podcast, it’s Americans followed by Brits followed by well Swedes, but that’s kind of a quirk of geography. And, and then Australians, which is not surprising given that it’s an English speaking podcast about design, but that is then an ecosystem. It’s a bubble that perpetuates. And also means that there’s not enough people, from minorities in those countries. At the top of the pile when it comes to the conferences, the publishing companies, the education, educational platforms and courses.
Per Axbom
Exactly. We need to do better. Yeah, I’ll move on to number four: “We don’t know where to put our frustration with how things are. So we’re directing it to all the wrong things.” And this really struck a chord with me. Because I’m in I’m so involved in this ethic space. And it’s really easy to get into that frame of mind where you think: well, if you’re not really concerned with what’s going on in the tech space, and how people are getting hurt, then you’re not caring enough. And Lisa, I think is making really good good point here that some people actually aren’t suited what they they don’t have time to care, or they’re doing just doing it, they just want to do their job, and they want to do the job well. But being an advocate for responsible design is not for everyone. And we have to accept that. If we are these people who stand up at the front of these debates and say that we need to do better with regards to ethics, well, some people just also need to do their jobs. Not everyone can be a change maker is the word she uses. And so not everyone has to adapt identified as that. And we need to allow that we need to stop with these conflicts happening within the design guild, if you will. Some people just want to do good enough work and make a decent living, and that’s fine. That’s fine.
James Royal-Lawson
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s fine, it’s at the end of the day, your individual needs to survive, and taking the moral high ground is, is hard. And in some cultures, that’s going to be harder than others. I mean, we know how it is in America, the way your your job is packaged with your healthcare and, and, and other aspects, maybe even the mortgage, your house and so on that you’re that you can’t, you don’t have that privilege of being able to kind of just: “I quit, I’m not doing this!” and move on, which puts you into a into a ethical dilemma, but you’ve got to continue working, because you need to work and you don’t feel as if you can shift, and then maybe don’t feel as if you can point things out, call things out, fight for change, because it might get you thrown out of that organisation. That’s not the case in all cultures and all countries, but it’s, it’s gonna be tough for a lot of people. And it’s not going to be the choice that some people want to make or feel that they have the space, opportunity to make.
Per Axbom
Exactly. So it’s about allowing other people to be who they are. And the approach I tried to take, and I know I don’t always succeed in it. And that’s, that’s part of it. But you want to know what, what approach you want to take. And for me, it’s like, if you want to make a change, here are some insights and tools that helped me so I want to share that. But if you don’t want to participate in the types of stuff that I’m doing, that’s fine. Maybe you can’t for some reason that I don’t understand, or it’s not in my business. And that’s okay, too. But sort of lead by example, by showcasing this is how I work, and also be humble, and open to critique and understanding. There are also a lot of other ways of doing it.
James Royal-Lawson
I mean, it’s like you said Per, that you know, “Change comes from within”, that phrase, and a lot of time, I suppose, is your understanding what you value and making little changes to what you do do. That might be over time. What actually does make the big change, because we’ve made that 10s of 1000s of small changes. Yeah, this is a big, it’s a big juggernaut of a machine is this, it’s because it’s not just design. It’s business and its society and its cultures, and there’s so many things pulling so many directions. So, you know, it’s gonna be a big, big ask for one person or for smaller people to stand up and and drag it to a new direction.
Per Axbom
It’s, so hard. And just having this conversation with you right now is actually putting ideas into my head about our responsibilities that feel uncomfortable, and I like that. I like that because that is the purpose of her post. And it’s fine. And that’s why we need to have these conversations. Because as we mentioned, time and time again, now, we are two white men, middle aged white men doing the show. And we have a lot of people listening to us from from across the world.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, absolutely. And it also makes me think about how the amount of times when you don’t kind of criticise.. well criticise maybe it’s too strong a word. But when you think that maybe something isn’t doing the job, it should, whether it’s a framework or, you know, a way of working or just something that you don’t feel is quite right. And there’s a, there’s an expectation that you don’t criticise it, or that you don’t kind of shout out against it. So that pushes you back in your box as such that you aren’t, you don’t feel comfortable with with lifting a question about something because maybe it’d be seen as you know, you’re inexperienced, you don’t understand you’ve misunderstood. You know, you’re wrong. All these things are feelings you get, you know, right, some of them, but I suppose, I’d like us to be better at not being as hostile when, when some somebody just is querying something.
Per Axbom
Exactly, because that’s the thing they’re querying. They’re trying something out. And they’re testing it. Because what happens is, and that can happen so easily, especially then on Twitter and other types of social media is that somebody posts something an idea. And somebody goes in and totally destroys that with the way they say that they’re wrong, instead of being curious and trying to get more information about what makes you think that when trying to understand your perspective, and once that argument is going on, if there’s somebody with a lot of followers, then at once there are 10 more comments. And then going in from coming in from the side and trying to defend that first person, all of a sudden, it’s just this mess of arguments. That’s just not, I mean, it’s embarrassing the way people are behaving.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. I mean, I suppose some of it might be the fact that people are protecting the spaces. That’s what if you someone’s been working with a particular thing, or a particular framework, or something has proved to be successful for them, then that’s going to increase, I guess, the natural defensive reaction. If someone is exploring or calling out maybe there’s something that maybe isn’t working for everyone.
Per Axbom
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
There was also towards the end of the article, there’s a couple of things, designed humanitarianism, so a design humanitarian, that was interesting phrase. But I also love the the quote: “Don’t shout down, shout louder”, Lisa says, so just arguing about stuff and kind of talking something down, then take your thing and just talk more about that thing? Is my interpretation of what she means.
Per Axbom
Yeah, no, I agree. Because that fits with her final words: “Choose an issue that you care deeply about that feels personal to you. Think carefully about how much time and energy you can reasonably commit to it and find a community that will hold you accountable.” I like that as well… “for doing the work. And then don’t worry about perfection.” I like that as well. “Just do your best to keep going and stay involved.” And I totally agree with your interpretation. Find your thing, be vocal about that, and stop destroying other people’s arguments, or ideas and declarations. So we’ve already mentioned some listening ideas for next. The “Lisa episode” was 252.
James Royal-Lawson
That is correct.
Per Axbom
Yes.
James Royal-Lawson
Yes, Lisa is (episode) 252. That was a year ago, absolutely, amazingly. I’ve also mentioned Episode 268, which was “Managing design systems” with Brad Frost from just before the summer. And, of course, I also mentioned the Jina Anne podcast, which, that’s four years ago now, Episode 163
Per Axbom
Oh, wow.
James Royal-Lawson
So historically, it ties in nicely with the period of time we’re talking about with the Russian design systems article.
Per Axbom
Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson
See on the other side.
[Music]
Per Axbom
So James, you know how many ears Captain Kirk has?
James Royal-Lawson
I think I know how many years Captain Kirk has. Do I need to guess?
Per Axbom
Yeah, it’s three.
James Royal-Lawson
Three?
Per Axbom
Yeah: the left ear, the right ear and the Final Frontier.
James Royal-Lawson
Oh…
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom recorded in December 2021 and published as episode 278 of UX Podcast.