I’m a design system consumer now: lessons from the other side, with Beau Ulrey — #07

03/03/25 • 43 min

I invited Beau to the podcast because of his great Medium articles on design systems... but he's not working on a system team right now! Beau shares his experiences on both sides of the—fence? aisle?—and the lessons he's taken away. We chat about the tradeoffs of building for speed vs stability, bringing new designs for AI products into the system, onboarding, cross-team empathy, and why we're always complaining about the other side. Plus, find out what Beau wanted to be when he grew up.

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

🎨🎟️ Into Design Systems is May 25-28
Get your ticket at intodesignsystems.com/onthemeInto Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28-30, 2025. Get your ticket now for three days of practical, hands on sessions showing the what, why, and how of design systems. This year, the conference is focused on developer handoff, accessibility, multi brand theming, and governance. You'll get hands on knowledge you can put to use at work immediately, files and resources to take away, and hear from very well known industry speakers.

📲 Text the show your thoughts!

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

Previous Episode

Building a multi-brand joint venture design system for BetMGM, with ToniAnn Drenckhahn — #06

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ToniAnn joins the show to share her experience building a multi-brand design system for BetMGM and Entain's joint venture. This episode is our first project deep dive and it's full of legacy codebases, lessons learned, and big wins. ToniAnn talks to us about dealing with ambiguity, owning your decisions, and keeping leadership on board as you ship a system that changes the way your business works—and your partners businesses, too.

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

Next Episode

What happens when your system can’t support your flagship product?, with Adriana Morales — #08

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Adriana Morales from HEB (aka the best grocery store) poses a tricky question for the show: what happens when your design system can't support all your products, or your flagship product? Hashtag enterprise organization problems. Adriana and I explore some of the scenarios where this might occur, the "system of systems" concept, product team autonomy, and pace layers. Don't miss Adriana's explanation of her "ways of working" workshops and thoughts on creating empathy across your org.

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

Adriana Morales on LinkedIn
HEB
Pace layers (might as well just link this from every episode??)

On Theme: Design Systems in Depth - I’m a design system consumer now: lessons from the other side, with Beau Ulrey — #07

Transcript

Beau00:00:00.130

It's becoming more and more apparent, the designers that

Beau00:00:04.799

really understand how the business works and what the business values are, like they're usually able to illustrate that in their portfolios, or they're able to talk about what was going on within the business and why did they make the decisions they made? Now that I'm back in products, it's clear that those skills are huge when it comes to being a