Help, I'm starting a new design system job! with Amy Ogg

This one’s a little bit different than some of the projects and topics that we've had on the podcast so far — we’re talking about starting a new role. I think it's one of the hardest things that we do sometimes as design system practitioners, because the design system is really about changing your organization, changing the way we build UI, and so there's a lot of weight on your shoulders when you come into a new role.

Amy was generous enough to open up to us on the show about the ups and downs of your first year in a new design systems role, and how her experience in coffee shaped her approach to UX.

🎧 listen to Episode #11 with Amy Ogg on your first 30-60-90 as a design system practitioner, changing industries from coffee, and why cross-training outside your expertise is a must.

Read on for a peek into the episode.

Starting a new job as a design system practitioner can feel exciting and terrifying all at once—but Amy Ogg has some insights to help us navigate the emotional rollercoaster. Amy and Elyse chat about how to spend your first 30-60-90 days, building genuine trust, and why making big changes as a new hire can actually backfire. They commiserate over balancing the overwhelming backlog as a small team, and Amy shares why she thinks cross-training outside your expertise is a must. Plus, Amy shares how her experience as a barista shaped her approach to UX design ☕️

🎧 Help, I’m starting a new design system job! with Amy Ogg — #11 (58min)

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Amy:

When you first join a company, you can be like, oh, things are like set up well, and this is great. And then you pop the hood and look underneath and realize, oh, here's all the opportunity. Here's the challenge.

Elyse:

That's a much nicer take than I was [saying]!

Amy:

Some of it's very, it's very very ugly. But it is that opportunity to make it good.

I've worked on design systems that have been really established, and then others that I've built from the ground up, but it was new for me to come into a situation where it's a fairly new design system, but I'm not actually part of it being born from the very beginning.

Then you pop the hood and look at the dirty underbelly of, oh, there's variables and tokens in Figma, but those aren't existing in [code]. Okay, if we want to scale this, we need to get tokens in place.

And [then] identifying like, this isn't working, but you know, what is an educational opportunity and what is something I can fix?

I had mentioned designers coming to the file to copy a component instance and pull it into their file. But part of this was because if you're searching in assets and you can't find what you're looking for, that's frustrating and you give up! Or if library updates are not being published and kept up on, you're going to come to the library to get the most updated version of what you need.

So unraveling all those things [where] designers have modified their behavior because of this, and here's how I can better serve them, and support what they need to make their workflows work better.

Elyse:

I love this focus on being like, hmm, what are you doing? Why? Why are you doing that? I'm very curious why you're doing that.

Amy:

It makes me think actually of that UX meme: here's the path, and how the neat little path is laid out, and here's the actual path that two people are taking.

Elyse:

Walking across the grass straight to the bench.

Amy:

Exactly. This is the shortcut that they found, and they've created their own path. So it's like, how do you just meet them where they're at?

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See you next episode!,

Elyse