94. Josh Clark, Founder of Big Medium: Scaling Digital Strategy Within Complex Organizations

12/19/23 • 41 min

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Josh Clark and Chris Strahl dive into an in-depth discussion about navigating the digital landscape amidst economic unpredictability. They discuss the intricacies of building and maintaining design systems in large organizations, addressing the challenges of scaling, and emphasizing the strategic value of digital investments. Josh, an advocate for design systems as capital expenditure, shares his expertise on how these systems contribute to product development, impact revenue, and enhance customer retention, all while ensuring a balance between innovation and automation.

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Guest

Josh Clark is the founder and principal of Big Medium, a digital agency that specializes in big design, helping complex organizations design at scale. He‘s a UX design leader who guides projects to build design systems and transform digital organizations through emerging technology, process, and user experience. At Big Medium, Josh’s clients include Caterpillar, United Airlines, UPS, the Cigna Group, Dotdash Meredith, Pfizer, and many others.

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.

Send us feedback or episode suggestions.

View the transcript of this episode.

Check out our upcoming events.

Guest

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.

Previous Episode

93. Nathan Curtis, Co-founder of EightShapes: Balancing reuse and customization in UI Design

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Chris Strahl sits with Nathan Curtis as he explores the delicate balance between reusing existing components and creating customized solutions in UI design. They unpack the complexities of design systems, touching on everything from color selection to ensuring functional and aesthetic harmony, providing insights on principled design choices in a world where reuse and customization are equally important.

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Guest

Nathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown near Washington, DC in 2006. He’s passionate about information architecture, user experience design, and front end development, and leads and consults with design systems teams to chart a strategic path and optimize operations. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs about design systems regularly, and speaks at events worldwide.

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.

Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.

Next Episode

95. Matt Weinberg, Sr. Product Designer at Angi: Empathy-First Approach to Evolving Design Systems

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In this episode of the Design Systems Podcast, we discuss the evolution of design systems with special guest Matt Weinberg, Senior Product Designer at Angi. Matt has a passion for empathy-driven design solutions and shares his unconventional career path that led him to tackle the challenge of refining and improving the design systems at Angi. He reveals how he approached the initial state of the design system, identified user needs, and implemented incremental improvements. Matt also shares the importance of gathering user feedback, conducting usability tests, and embracing a collaborative approach between designers and engineers. His insights provide a valuable roadmap for anyone navigating the complex world of design systems.

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Guest
Matt Weinberg is a systems-specialized product designer from Brooklyn, NY, currently working on design systems for Angi. He is largely focused on design system ergonomics, designer-engineer collaboration, tooling + workflows, accessibility, and keeping systematic UI creative + fun.
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.

Design Systems Podcast - 94. Josh Clark, Founder of Big Medium: Scaling Digital Strategy Within Complex Organizations

Transcript

Chris Strahl [00:00:00]:

Hi, and welcome to the Design Systems podcast. This podcast is about the place where design and development overlap. We talk with experts to get their point of view about trends in design code and how it relates to the world around us. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Knapsack. Check us out at knapsack.cloud. If you want to get in touch with the show, ask some questions, or generally tell us what you think, go ahead and tweet us at the Dspod. We'd lov