98. Exploring Alexandrian Patterns in Design Systems with Kevin Muldoon at Dow Jones
Jan 30, 2024
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Guest Kevin Muldoon, Lead Design Technologist/Design Systems at Dow Jones, explores Alexandrian patterns in design systems, discussing the challenges and potential solutions in creating composable and scalable design systems. The conversation dives deep into the evolution of design methodologies and the democratization of the creative process.
Alexandrian patterns provide a generic way of thinking about reusable design solutions, contributing to the development of object-oriented programming theories.
Themes in design systems promote a holistic approach, considering the broader context and allowing for customization and overrides at specific levels.
Deep dives
The Significance of Alexandria in Patterns
The podcast explores the importance of Alexandria in patterns and how it revolutionized the concept of design systems. Alexandria in patterns, popularized by Christopher Alexander in the book A Pattern Language, provides a generic way of thinking about reusable objects that solve specific problems. The patterns consist of a name, context, considerations, problem, solution, and post-considerations. This format enables the description of reusable solutions and encourages contributions from other architects. The podcast highlights how Alexandria in patterns influenced the creation of a wiki website by Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck, leading to the development of object-oriented programming theories.
Applying Alexandria in Patterns to Design Systems
The podcast discusses how Alexandria in patterns can be applied to design systems. It mentions the wiki website created by Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck, which serves as a repository for patterns and best practices. The podcast emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to design systems, considering the broader context and solving problems at a higher level. It explores the idea of defining themes in design systems, such as theming and sub-theming, and the importance of considering collections of tokens that represent attributes of a theme. It also mentions the importance of defining themes centrally, while allowing for customization and overrides at a more specific level.
Challenges and Opportunities in Design Systems
The podcast delves into the challenges and opportunities in the design systems landscape. It acknowledges the existence of numerous design systems and the lack of a central design component repository. The podcast highlights the importance of composability and creating recipes to build complex patterns from smaller components. It explores the balance between integrated and modular patterns and the need for systems of systems to accommodate different brands and products. The podcast also discusses the potential shifts in design education, where designers will be taught about design systems as a fundamental discipline, similar to object-oriented programming for computer scientists.
In this episode of The Design Systems Podcast, we’re joined by guest Kevin Muldoon, Lead Design Technologist/Design Systems at Dow Jones, to discuss the concepts of alexandrian patterns and their application in design systems. We explore the idea of themes as reusable objects to solve specific design problems, discussing the challenges and potential solutions in creating composable and scalable design systems. The conversation dives deep into the evolution of design methodologies and the democratization of the creative process.
Guest Kevin Muldoon is a designer, programmer, writer and speaker on Design Systems and a Lead Design Technologist at Dow Jones. He created the Genome Color Tool palette generator and advocates the study of Game Design to create Design Systems at scale.
Host Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.
Sponsor Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.
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