112 - Creating Effective Design Systems for Small and Mid-Size Companies: Apiture’s Journey

Design Systems Podcast

Today’s episode features Ashley Willard and Sarah Kimball (Skim) from Apiture, a smallish fintech company with big enterprise ambitions for its design system. Host Christ Strahl chats with Ashley and Skim about the challenges and opportunities their small team faces trying to navigate the complexities of building a design system that unifies the look and feel of different products and technologies and helps accelerate product delivery. Whether you're working in a large enterprise or a growing startup, their story provides valuable lessons on creating and maintaining effective design systems.

View the transcript of this episode.

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Guest

Ashley is the Director of Product Design at Apiture and has worked in design and UX for 20+ years across many industries. She lives in Durham, NC.

Skim is a Design Systems nerd who has been working in this space since 2018. She currently works as a Senior UX Engineer at Apiture.

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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1. Small, integrated design system team faces challenges. (00:00:00)

2. Design system team building hub, consumer connection. Unique enterprise vision for integrated design system. (00:03:47)

3. Design systems: listening, feedback, collaboration, and progress. (00:08:46)

4. Effective Zoom meetings foster collaborative design process. (00:12:51)

5. Adaptation drives better metrics and more value. (00:15:40)

6. Legacy infrastructure hinders progress in company. (00:18:02)

7. Promising to address changes, tools, and feedback. (00:20:42)

8. Connecting designers & developers improves execution & support. (00:25:04)

9. Appreciate your strides, vision, and transparency. (00:27:04)