What should we call design systems?

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.The eternal question is back... do designers, especially designers on design systems, need to know how to code? Or at least know enough to be dangerous and understand what they're looking at? Luke and Michelle dive into everyone's favorite topic, which has probably changed quite a bit in the age of AI. So, do you need to open VS Code right now?Show notesInformation Architecture Conference is in Philadelphia in April, and Poster Night (hosted by Michelle) has its call for posters open for a couple more weeksDesign System Report — the annual state of design systems survey, open until DecemberDS ARC — the AI readiness checker for your design system docsPiccalilli — front-end courses, and the people who make them get paidJosh W. Comeau — tutorials and courses on good front-end practiceCSS-Tricks — back in community handsFrontend Mentor — recommended in the chatW3Schools — the classic referenceA Global Design System — Brad Frost's proposal for standardised componentsLuke on BlueskyMichelle on BlueskyEmail: [email protected]

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.Luke's already rabbited on about structured content in previous episodes, but now the landscape has changed, is structured content still important? Or have LLMs changed the game and made it a moot point? In this episode, we dive into structured content, where the limits are, and what you should do to make sure your content is as readable as possible.Show notesDesign systems as knowledge graphs Roam Research and Obsidian — the structured-content note tools referencedDesign System Documentation Spec W3C Design System Documentation Community Group Design Tokens Community Group — the precedent Guillaume referencedDS ARC zeroheight MCP Luke on BlueskyMichelle on BlueskyEmail: [email protected]

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.Everyone talks about how you should automate as much as possible in design systems... but what can you actually automate? Luke and Michelle go through all the things that they've had success automating and things that are better with a human touch. From script-based automation, to tool-based automation, to AI-based automation.Show notesAutomating your documentation webinar and accompanying github repoDesign System Documentation Spec — what the AI audited its own output againstDesign Tokens and a Source of Truth — your first zeroheight article (March 2021), the "docs in the middle" future that still hasn't arrivedGet in touchLuke on BlueskyMichelle on BlueskyEmail: [email protected]

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.With the release of Figma Motion, we finally have a tool that talks to our design systems that do motion. So now it's time to ask the question - are we covering motion within our design systems in the right way?Show notesIntroducing Figma Motion — the Config 2026 launch (24 June) that kicked this topic off: timeline on the canvas, animated components, and motion variables with modesAtlassian Design System — Motion — the foundations page Luke screen-shares, with the four principles and the semantic token bundles like motion.popup.enter; the Applying motion page covers composing custom motion, and the motion primitive component is the componentised bitUber Base — Motion — Michelle's pick, with the accessibility-first guidelines, timing and easing, transitions, the atomic animation patterns, and the motion office hoursCarbon — Motion and Material — Motion — the other tokenised examplesThe Animator's Survival Kit — book by Richard Williams Designing Interface Animation — book by Val HeadVal Head at Converge US 2023 — "Animation, Your Design System, and You!" GSAP (now owned by Webflow) and Lottie — the dev-side enablersCassie Evans' live-coded GSAP game talk — (SmashingConf Freiburg 2025, and State of the Browser 2026 has a recording with transcript)Bonnie Kate Wolf — the illustration systems workBlush — Pablo Stanley's composable illustration toolKano model — the "emotional connection has been proved" referenceLuke on BlueskyMichelle on BlueskyEmail: [email protected] — and send your design system's motion docs, we want to see them!

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.A few years ago everyone started talking about how AI-powered interfaces are going to start generating UI on the fly. But how close is that from being a reality? Have there been any advances towards it being a mainstream thing? And what do we need to know from a design systems perspective to cater towards it?Show notesRachel-Lee Nabors — "Death of the Browser" — the talk that sparked the topicChatGPT Apps SDK — the plugin-style generative UI route, with Booking.com among the launch partnersInteractive apps in Claude (MCP Apps) — the Anthropic equivalent A2UI — Google's declarative spec letting agents send UI as component descriptions rather than executing codeThe Complete Guide to Generative UI Frameworks in 2026 — a rundown of the generative UI framework landscape, covering A2UI, CopilotKit/AG-UI, MCP Apps and moreNN/g's 10 Usability Heuristics — the "codified best practice" comparisonGeri Reid — the Converge US talk — Geri’s talk about flexibility and NewsKitGet in touchLuke on BlueskyMichelle on Bluesky

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.We really screwed the pooch when it came to naming design systems. Why is the name so bad? And should we call it something else? Or should we bin the whole concept of design systems and start over in a completely decommodified way?Show notesNASA Graphics Standards Manual — the classic design handbook Luke referencesA Pattern Language — Christopher Alexander's town planning/architecture bookApple Human Interface GuidelinesAtomic Design — Brad Frost's original article, which credits the earlier pattern library workAnna Debenham and Laura Kalbag — referenced in that article as part of the originsCo-op Experience Library — Co-op's renamed design system; their follow-up post explains they changed the name because "design system" implies it's only for designers, which backs up the whole episode thesis Co-op Digital BlogValve's Handbook for New Employees — the famously flat, no-job-titles structure Luke half-remembers (it was Valve, not Epic)Luke on BlueskyMichelle on Bluesky

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.Agentic is the buzz word of the moment - but what does it actually mean for design systems? Luke and Michelle have a real conversation about what's hype, what's possible, and where they see it all going.Show notesLuke's webinar on automating documentation — the session covering the facts / distilled / authored bucketsTJ Pitre / Southleft — doing agentic design system work (also behind FigmaLint with Brad and Ian Frost)Sil Bormüller — founder of Into Design SystemsRomina Kavčič — The Design System Guide — the knowledge-graph-to-pattern work Luke describesDesign System Documentation Spec (DSDS) — what you're auditing zeroheight docs againstObsidian and Roam Research — knowledge-graph tools mentioned by MichelleThe Information Architecture Conference — Michelle's conference, which usually runs a knowledge graphs workshopn8n — Luke's stacked-agents automation instanceClaude Code — used in Luke's Figma-MCP-to-code component flowzeroheight MCP — for the docs-as-context part of that flowPaper — mentioned by Mark in chat for better HTML outputPencil — design-as-code tool with .pen filesPenpot — the open-source, web-dev-structured design toolGet in touchLuke on BlueskyMichelle on Bluesky

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.We're all in agreement that UX Research and design systems should work hand in hand. But how do you actually get this to work in practice? How can UX Researchers and design systems folks work best together? What cadence should you be doing things? And should you be included research findings as part of your design system documentation?Show notesDesign System Documentation Spec (DSDS)zeroheight MCPzeroheight MCP overview (help docs)Design Systems WTF #39 — Should designers know how to code?zeroheight Design Systems ReportLuke on BlueskyMichelle on Bluesky

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.Governance seems to be one of those fancy words that gets thrown around a lot by design system people - but what level of governance is actually worthwhile, and how much of it is theater? Michelle and Luke will dive into governance, what level is good enough, and what bits they think you should scrap.Show notesBrad Frost's governance flowchart — the component approval flow Michelle borrowed and adapted: A Design System Governance Process. Also available as a Figma community file, and his lighter-touch follow-up: Master design system governance with this one weird trickNathan Curtis on governance and contribution — his writing on contribution models referenced in the episode: Contributions to Design Systems and Team Models for Scaling a Design SystemManaging Chaos: Digital Governance by Design by Lisa Welchman — Michelle's book recommendation for adding process in a way that isn't "gross", with a historical look at how web governance emerged: Rosenfeld MediaOrg Design for Design Orgs by Peter Merholz & Kristin Skinner — Luke's companion-piece recommendation on ritual and process for design teams, transferable to design systems: petermerholz.com / O'ReillyBig Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul — the Netflix documentary on Juul and "how not to do a startup": Netflix

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.Config 2026 happened in San Francisco last week, so we got together straight after the announcements to discuss what the announcements mean for design systems folks - from code on the canvas, to agents, skills, and connectors, to Figma Motion. What will these announcements mean for the work we do day to day?Show notesBlog post - What do the Config 2026 announcements mean for design systems?