Design System Office Hours Ep 87: Thinking Like an Engineer
Sep 30, 2025
Davy and PJ explore the intersection of engineering and design, emphasizing the need for product designers to adopt engineers' rigorous methods. They discuss how peer reviews can enhance confidence despite initial slowdowns. The conversation highlights the friction engineers face with changing design files in live projects and the importance of documenting dependencies. They imagine how design unit tests could catch layout issues and advocate for a single source of truth in JSON tokens to maintain consistency across platforms.
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Process Slows Now, Saves Time Later
- Engineering processes (branching, reviews) feel slower but save many hours later.
- Davy says good process buys time and reduces long-term chaos.
Freeze Or Communicate Final Designs
- Treat Figma as a live file with caution when delivering to engineering.
- PJ advises freeze or communicate finalized designs before engineers build.
Design Systems Mirror Engineering Rigor
- Design system teams already adopt some engineering rigor compared to feature teams.
- Davy highlights that execution parity matters because engineering is design execution for systems.
