Clarity 2020

List of talks

In 2020 I had a chance to participate in an online Clarity conference. All the presentation recording are uploaded to Google Drive and below is a list of talks with short descriptions highlighting the key points. Some talks I really liked or shared complex topics I marked with 💎.

— Domas Markevičius (domasm@wix.com)
Day 1 [Watch Video]

The Design Systems Spiral by Jina Anne
Jina discussed why design systems are the bridge between designers and developers and why we claim there’s a gap to bridge. She expressed codeless solutions bringing multiple disciplines closer and removing the gaps.

The Importance of Perspective by Ben Colar
Ben spoke about branding and how strong brand can change the rules which we tend to follow in design world.

Accessibility Beyond Color Contrast by Allison Shaw 💎
Allison shared her experience about accessibility,  why we should make accessible experiences to everyone and how everyone benefits from it. She went beyond software accessibility and shared real life examples how it creates comfort in life for all of us. Really great talk, recommend it.

Design Systems as a Service: Keeping your Customers Happy by Alex Skougarevskaya 💎
Alex was a design lead at Atlassian design system team. She shared her experience how Atlassian had to stop producing components and rethink how they should be shared and communicated to designers and engineers.
Day 2 [Watch Video]

The Systems of Design by Asia Hoe
[Missing description]

Designing for Happiness by Sam Kapila
[Missing description]

Calculating Color: Dynamic Theming With CSS Variables by Una Kravets 💎
Una shared a bunch of nice features the latest CSS supports and how to use them. No hard subjects, just a nice presentation about a tool.

Design Systems, or: How I learned to stop fighting and love the team by Natalya and Tim Shelburne
Shelburnes spoke how team members should be collaborative between disciplines, because we don’t work against each other, but we work together against the problem. Collaboration enables the possibility to look at the problem in a broader view. One nice analogy the couple shared: “we need less sand and more rocks”, meaning that small tasks should not dominate or routine. Clear docs and tools can eliminate small tasks and repeating problems. Without empathy, respect and trust some projects cannot move forward, because you can’t make someone see if they’re determined not to.
Day 3 [Watch Video]

Designing teams. Designing systems by Farai Madzima 
Farai presented four main design system principles introduced by Alla Kholmatova  in the book Design Systems. He spoke how Cause, Pattern

Creating Inclusive Content: Why it Matters by Brittney Ball 💎
Britney shared her knowledge how to create the content that’s friendly to everyone and doesn’t create a bias. In example, using words like ‘simple’, ‘quick’ may imply that it’s simple for one person, may be hard for other. Instead she suggest to state the facts, like mentioning a brief number of steps to achieve the goal.

An Introduction to Multi-Platform Design Systems by Daniel Banks 💎
Daniel works at Amazon Seller and he spoke about complexities that occur when designing a system for iOS, Android and Web platforms at once. Dan spoke about two main design system benefits — consistency and velocity. However, he replaced these phrases to cohesive and autonomy, because different platforms share very different technologies and practically it’s impossible to keep consistency at all levels, while cohesive experience is achievable. His team tries to provide as much as possible autonomy to the teams, so they can start code early on creating real app prototypes instead of making high fidelity mockups. It enables a possibility of pair coding and designing at the same time.

Mutualism by Alison Rand
Alison is head of operations at Invision. She spoke about how one person’s work unintentionally assists others and creates a design ecosystem.