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- What layoffs and getting "zero results" from your design system have to do with each other, with Noelle Lansford
What layoffs and getting "zero results" from your design system have to do with each other, with Noelle Lansford
don't forget the rebrand
🎧 listen to Episode #03 with Noelle Lansford on the elephant in the room (layoffs), and what getting “zero results” from your design system has to do with it (everything).
Read on for a peek into the episode.

We’ve had a history lesson, so let’s enter the current era, shall we? You can't talk about design systems lately without addressing the elephant in the room: layoffs.
Noelle Lansford walks us through her experience of multiple layoffs in one year, why 2023 was so different than 2020, and how the success criteria of design systems correlated with team layoffs. We discuss the bogeyman of "getting zero results from your design system" and what Noelle was hearing from business leadership about that, and how storytelling might matter more than metrics.
Plus, a very spicy take on ~the rebrand~, and why at least one company was hiring for someone to delete their design system 😱
Warning: F-word/language.
🎧 Layoffs, rebrands, and getting "zero results" from your design system, with Noelle Lansford — #03 (58min)
Elyse:
I think we're at a sea change in the design system space where we're recognizing that the system wasn't delivering value to the organization. Whether that is real value or perceived value, kind of up for debate, but we're recognizing that something needs to change in how we're talking about what a design system is for, what it actually does, how and why you are going to use it, and how we talk about that to leadership.
I'm curious, what did you get out of all of your interview conversations, and your experiences? Obviously you did get a job after all of these layoffs, like several jobs. What have you been seeing in terms of what success looks like, what actually delivering value to an organization looks like, since these interviews?
Noelle Lansford:
Yeah, I think the storytelling has changed, at least it has for me personally, and I'm trying to get other design system practitioners on board with this, and a lot of times it's pretty easy too, because they're like, yeah, I see that.
A lot of what the storytelling was right before the layoffs, was this idea that you need to invest in a design system and a design system is simultaneously never done. Because that was kind of this reaction to, well, is the design system done yet? Is it done yet? And our storytelling was no, it's never going to be done. That didn't bode well for layoffs.
And so what I was hearing from these interviews was, you talk to consumers and they're like, we can't use this, they're always telling us no. We're always having to customize it. Whenever they do an update, it's a manual process. It's not saving us time, or at least the perception is that it's not saving us time. We have to customize things on top of what they've already built. Because it's not made for us, it's made for the world of design systems, not this company.
So the storytelling has changed a lot from, you need to be investing in this perpetual system that isn't done, to, how can I balance telling long term goal stories while giving my stakeholders quick wins?
I still subscribe to the design system as product, not in the way that it generates revenue, but in the way that you need to storytell and report back up to your leadership, I think should really mirror how a lot of product teams already do that. One thing that's been really neat at Alaska is that we actually have a dedicated product manager, and I think that's been so nice. It's like a kind of a luxury and I'm like, okay, everybody needs this. Because a lot of times that falls on the designer or an engineer to go and be that storyteller to leadership.
Elyse:
It is quite a lot of work to be aware of all the things that are going on, across all of your product teams and balancing your roadmap and their roadmap. It really can be a completely full time job for a person, or if you are the person and you don't want to be doing that, feel very overwhelming.
Noelle Lansford:
And then it becomes this really hard balance of how do you be proactive while also meeting your short term and long term objectives, because that's different than a normal product team.
Some people don't like the word consultant, but in the more positive sense, it's like you are going from team to team consulting, not telling people what to do, but listening. A big part of consulting is listening. And it takes a lot of time to listen well and understand their problems well, and suggest a solution, whether or not it has to do with you.
Another trait of a good consultant is saying, hey, that's actually not my thing, let me point you to this thing. That's a huge part of what a design system team has to offer, is you do have a team of multidisciplinary people that are able to listen well and suggest reasonable solutions, and they have visibility across a lot of different things happening at the company, and that's a really nice spot to be in to help people and to consult.
I think that has become part of my storytelling with the design system. We could talk about how many components we made, how many minutes we saved developers, but we could also talk about, hey, we were in the room and we're a creative solutions consultancy baked into your organization.

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