On Theme: Design Systems in Depth

Layoffs, rebrands, and getting "zero results" from your design system, with Noelle Lansford — #03

• Elyse Holladay • Season 1 • Episode 3

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You can't talk about design systems lately without addressing the elephant in the room: layoffs. Noelle walks us through her experience of multiple layoffs in one year, why 2023 was so different than 2020, and how the success criteria of design systems correlated with team layoffs. We discuss the bogeyman of "getting zero results from your design system" and what Noelle was hearing from business leadership about that, and how storytelling might matter more than metrics. Plus, a very spicy take on ~the rebrand~, and why at least one company was hiring for someone to delete  their design system 😱

Warning: F-word/language.

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🎨🎟️ Into Design Systems is May 25-28
Get your ticket at intodesignsystems.com/ontheme

Into 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. 

Noelle Lansford:

It was a lot of the design system team promised this and we got zero results, even if they didn't technically get zero results. It felt like zero results. Because we know what happens. You spend a lot of time pitching the design system, and then you finally get to do it, and it's really a lot, because you're pulled in a million different directions. You're suddenly a developer. You're suddenly a designer. You're suddenly a project manager. And there is a lot of wasted time there as far as the business is concerned, right? During that time. All of those promises that you've made to leadership and product leaders, it's on pause.

This is On Theme, Design Systems in Depth, and I'm Elyse Holladay. Together, we'll be exploring how successful design systems get built, maintained, and deliver impact. Design systems is due for a major reinvention moment, and I want to share what's working from design system practitioners out there forging the way. We can't look forward without knowing where we've been, though, so we're kicking off season one with a journey back in time to how design systems as we know them today came into being. As you listen, text the show with your thoughts, aha moments, and questions by clicking the text link in the show notes. Before we begin, a quick thank you and word from our generous sponsor, Into Design Systems. Into Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28 30, 2025. Visit intodesignsystems. com slash ontheme to get your ticket to 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. Get your ticket at intodesignsystems. com slash on theme, and I'll see you at the conference in May. All right, let's dive into the show.

Elyse:

Today, I'm super excited to have Noelle Lansford on the podcast. She is a digital product designer and design system consultant. She has experience shipping digital products at stealth startups to fortune 500 companies, most recently, including Alaska Airlines and Nationwide Insurance. Noelle focuses on building bridges between design and business leaders, which will be relevant to this podcast. Noelle lives in Columbus, Ohio with her bearded dragon, mustached husband, and enjoys local theater and interior design. I got to know Noelle because she wrote a blog post in April of 2024 called The State of Design Systems, Where Have We Been and Where are We Going? And in it, she was reviewing the layoffs in 2023, the state of design systems work, what had been happening in the industry. And it really, really resonated with me, I referenced it in my ClarityConf talk, last year in 2024. I think 2025 is going to be really exciting for design systems, but we have to also understand how things currently are before we can move forward. So, Noelle, welcome to On Theme. I'm so excited to have you.

Noelle Lansford:

Thank you. I'm excited to talk about this. You and I have been talking about this for a while and it's about time that we recorded it.

Elyse:

Let's start with the blog post. And I'm sure we'll get into the details of your experience, but tell me a little bit about writing the blog post and the response to it.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah, the response was really surprising. It actually started as a local talk. There's a IXDA chapter here in Columbus, Ohio, where I'm located. And I really wanted to talk about it because there were just so many layoffs happening locally in Columbus, we had a group that spun up independently just for people that had experienced layoffs. I wanted to bring it to an audience of people that both had jobs and we're looking for jobs. And after I presented it there, everybody at that event was like, hey, you really need to write this down. But yeah, the response to it was really surprising for me. People picked it up in their talks that they were giving that year. And a lot of people approached me about it. I'm glad that it seemed to be helpful for people because in it, I talk a lot about it objectively, but there's one section where I'm kind of like, hey, FYI, this sucked, you know? I think, that resonated with people.

Elyse:

I think one of the things that made it so powerful is that you were able to capture what a lot of people were feeling in design systems, not just the, layoffs are hard, layoffs are painful. But also existentially like what is happening? So that's what we're here to talk about. Let's go back to, what I've been sort of calling like peak design systems, right? This is like 2021, 22. And this is, this is relatively early in your career, right? When did you start working in design systems?

Noelle Lansford:

I started working in design systems right at the tail end of 2020. I got lucky with finding design systems. I'm about six years into my career now, that's pretty early, but I just happened to join at a weird time in the industry and got plugged into design systems right at that peak. So it was really exciting for me because I was this weird designer developer hybrid, not sure which lane I wanted to completely, you know, put my flag in yet. And then, you know, 2020 was happening. So I saw that round of layoffs and hiring freezes really early in my career. A lot of people were getting hired that had experience, but people that didn't have as much experience like myself, it was really hard to find a job in 2020, but I would rank 2023 worse, even though I was getting a lot more bites.

Elyse:

You really did start this at an interesting time, because, in 2020, there was this sensation of we don't know what's going on, we're just going to put the brakes on for a second. But then 2021, 2022 was just this explosion of hiring, almost across the board, and interestingly, a lot of hiring on design system teams.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah.

Elyse:

Was that your experience?

Noelle Lansford:

So, I remember job searching around 2020 and starting to see more unique titles come into play because everybody was trying to figure out what to call this thing, but everybody wanted to hire for it. I remember scouring job descriptions and just looking for the word design system anywhere, it was mentioned. And it definitely got more brutal as it went along, I would say, but at the beginning, everybody was excited about it and trying to find words to describe it.

Elyse:

So one of the things that you talk about in your blog post is that the layoffs in 2023 were really quite different, systematically different than a general retraction or company changes or even 2020's kind of freeze. Tell us about your hiring and firing and rehiring story, and then like, why you think 2023 was so different.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah. So for reference, in 2020, people were doing layoffs, and hiring freezes. Those were the most common things. It was more of this play it safe mentality. Whereas I would say 2023 was like aggressive downsizing. A lot of leadership was changing at a really high level at a lot of companies, and overall the market was kind of tanking then, and so people were trying to figure how to be really scrappy. Which meant downsizing these teams that they had created in 2021 and 2022 that everyone was really excited about. It wasn't just design systems, by any means. Like you look at layoffs.fyi, and in 2022, there was about 165 thousand ish layoffs. If you look at 2023, that's like, more than doubled, it's like two sixty four hundred thousand—

Elyse:

Wow.

Noelle Lansford:

—people. I had two layoffs in 2023 that I experienced. Which sounds terrible,

Elyse:

Two in one year is brutal.

Noelle Lansford:

Right. And I joined three different teams in that year. So got hired three times, trying to adjust to all of, you know, the onboarding, a different company culture, things like that.

Elyse:

You don't even get through onboarding in time enough.

Noelle Lansford:

Pretty much, yeah. So, the interesting thing for me is the layoffs all kind of happened for different reasons. The first one, I was working at an agency and a lot of their clients were downsizing, and so it meant that the contracts weren't being renewed. So that was kind of interesting to watch happen with the clients firsthand and then see the second wave hit our company. And then the next one I was like, yeah, you know, it's a risky time in the market anyway, so might as well join a startup. That would be fun.

Elyse:

And risky.

Noelle Lansford:

Right, and risky, but I was like, yeah, I'll just try that out. And I was, you know, like the only designer in the company, but the startup had been around for a decent amount of time. And you know, it was funny at that time, this company included, there was a lot of people that kind of use 2020 as bragging rights, where they'd be like, we've never had a layoff and we survived 2020. I heard that all the time in interviews. But all of those companies, most of them, experienced layoffs, and I remember tracking that, like anybody that I interviewed with, I was like, yep, there it went.

Elyse:

I think every company I've ever worked for has at least once had to let a number of people go. And, and I mean, I guess I believe there are companies who have never done that. But it seems like such a weird and naive thing to brag about, because when you run a business, things change, the economy changes, the market changes, your customers change, your needs change, how can you ever say, we're, we're never going to need to adjust the team that we have? And, and I, I imagine this is like, a, we took care of our people in 2020, but that just seems so dangerous because if you ever have to do it in the future, now you just look like an asshole.

Noelle Lansford:

And it was so unimpressive to me, like anybody that was saying it, I remember being—

Elyse:

Noelle is not impressed.

Noelle Lansford:

No, I wasn't. I was like, that's so great that you survived 2020. Anyway, how are you going to survive 2023? One day they're going to be like, yeah, our company is our family. And then the next day it's like, hey, actually the market sucks. We still love you, but we can't have you here anymore, I'm like, I don't care how much you love me. What's your cash position?

Elyse:

So looking back on it now, it was definitely not just design system teams that were affected. Lots of companies really slashed recruiting, marketing, software engineering and design in general, but this is a design system podcast, and we're talking specifically about this niche, so I would love to hear your thoughts on, why do you think design systems in particular were so affected? Like why were design system teams ramped up so much in 21, 22? And then why were they so heavily affected in 23 with layoffs?

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah, that was actually what really inspired me writing the article. That was the core issue. Because like you mentioned, I wasn't that far into my career. When I was looking at layoffs, all of those cool companies that I had been hoping to work for some day, all of those amazing rock star teams, regardless of the talent that was on them, everybody was suddenly jobless. And I was questioning, like, should I stay in design systems? Because it seems there might be other more stable things to do in tech than this. But what I was finding in my interview process, because I ended up using my interview processes as research. I did about 45 interviews. A little more than 45 interviews.

Elyse:

In one year?

Noelle Lansford:

In one year.

Elyse:

Brutal.

Noelle Lansford:

Which, is actually pretty great because, like I mentioned, in 2020, I was hard pressed to get one interview. And now I was having this opposite problem of like, why am I having 45 interviews? This is ridiculous. What I was finding as I was interviewing and as the year progressed was the beginning was still optimistic where it was like, yeah, we really are hoping to like hire for this role, and we only want to hire the best people, you know, that kind of spiel. And then the farther along I got into the year, the more angry people were, because that role had been rotated so many times, and people were complaining about, the design system in general. And so the synopsis of my understanding was people were really complaining that the design system teams that were in place were not meeting business objectives, and so they were getting cut. And the word redundancy came up a lot. And I think that is really core to what a design system is. It is solving for redundant use cases. That really put people on the slash list because it was seen as an efficiency gain. Even in a design system pitch, you're going to say, yeah, it's an efficiency gain. It's a simplicity gain, it's a consistency gain. It's a, you know, all of those Y words that we like to use to pitch design systems. All of that came to a problem when you're represented on a spreadsheet to a newer leader that's trying to figure out how do I keep the majority of my team and keep the core product in place, keep revenue turning. We're not a revenue department.

Elyse:

I think this is my biggest complaint and frustration with the design systems are products. Like, I, I was there when that first came around, and I understand it was really good then, but I think it's been a little damaging because one of the things that we never say when we talk about design systems as products, is that products typically make money

Noelle Lansford:

Right.

Elyse:

A design system is just a cost center. But here's the thing. It's a cost center. The way that. database infrastructure and maintenance, DevOps, and, and deployment, and all of that stuff is also a cost center. And we think of that stuff as really critical. And so I'm, I'm fully on board the design systems as infrastructure train because you can't look at it and go, well, it's not making us any money.

Noelle Lansford:

Right.

Elyse:

I think design systems save you a lot of money. But when you look at it on that business spreadsheet, it is still a cost center. And I think we have to recognize that, and recognize what a design system can actually do for a company. And I think that we were aggressively trying to over scope and like over deliver and then not really being able to do it. And I know this sounds mean, but like, it's not really a surprise that we had these massive teams predicated on this promise that somehow it would like make us all this money or save us all this money. And then we weren't really able to—

Noelle Lansford:

There wasn't

Elyse:

follow-up. right to really do that. And, it's not that the design system teams in particular, were doing a bad job. I think it was an expectations problem. And it sounds like you heard a lot of that in your interviews.

Noelle Lansford:

totally. It was a lot of the design system team promised this and we got zero results, even if they didn't technically get zero results, it felt like zero results. Because we know what happens, you spend a lot of time pitching the design system, and then you finally get to do it, and it's really a lot because you're pulled in a million different directions. You're suddenly a project manager. You're suddenly a designer. You're suddenly a developer. You're suddenly a consultant on every product team that's ever existed at your company, right? And it takes a while for that dust to settle. And there is a lot of wasted time there as far as the business is concerned, right? Establishing the design system wise, though, it's a lot of really well used time to establish how you're going to run and operate, get to know your org, all of that kind of stuff. But during that time, all of those promises that you've made to leadership and product leaders, it's on pause. You have to report back your successes. Somebody made an investment and they're waiting on you. I don't think people were feeling that pressure of that time ticking of reporting back their successes and/or adjustments to their planning.

Elyse:

Yeah, strong agree. And I'm, I'm very like, I love an analytic, that's great, but I'm very much on the design system success as storytelling—

Noelle Lansford:

Totally.

Elyse:

—wagon, like there are some metrics that you can report, but the metrics themselves are not particularly exciting. Like, you know, I cleaned up 50, old junky components or deleted five deprecated things. And it's like, okay, that's great. But that is not getting my senior leadership cheerleading me. That's just like, it's just, it's just kind of interesting. It's like a good look back. But the story you want people to remember, especially at your leadership level, is much more about, I'm not even gonna say like efficiency and consistency and things like that. I think there's, there's more specific things you promise in a specific organization, right?

Noelle Lansford:

Mhmm.

Elyse:

We are making this new product arm move faster. Literally. And here's some, here's some anecdotes, here's some ways that we can actually show that. We are innovating. We are going back to basics. We are rolling in this acquisition and updating the branding. We're supporting these things. And those things are narratives. Those things are outcomes that your leadership wants.

Noelle Lansford:

Absolutely. If we're talking to leadership about design tokens, I feel like we're selling it wrong. It is much more about what you're talking about, that storytelling of how are you actually looking at the business roadmap and putting yourself on it as a way to success and are you following up on that? I would say the other big factor was an attitude shift that I noticed. A lot of people on the consuming side were having a lot of complaints about design system teams being kind of the no team. It's funny because you pitched to design leadership, like, yeah, we're going to enable teams to do all this stuff. And then when teams actually came to talk to the design system team, they were getting told, no, you can't do that. A thing I got to in the heart of my article is I was feeling like a lot of design systems practitioners weren't trusting their product designers. And I've noticed that as I've gone from company to company as well, since then, since writing that, that I really have a hard time convincing a decent amount of design system practitioners that their product designers want to and can do a good job.

Elyse:

Really?

Noelle Lansford:

It's like, they wouldn't just out and say that, but it's like, you kind of catastrophize things when you're making a component where you're like, oh, well, what if somebody uses it this way or this way or—

Elyse:

No, the world's going to end and we won't have consistency anymore.

Noelle Lansford:

They're going to use it wrong. But I hear that all the time. And I'm like, okay, what does use it wrong mean? And also do you think that your product designer wants to do a bad job?

Elyse:

Well, and also I love that you said catastrophizing because I do think that there's an inability sometimes for systems-minded people to let go and give up control a little bit. Because when you see something out in the world and you're like, oh god, like that is wrong, like that's not great. Because it's going to happen and not because our product designers. Don't give a shit and want to do a bad job. But just because there are so many factors that go into things: speed, urgency, different people picking things up, different levels of skills, different levels of needs, your product manager designed it, like there's just all kinds of stuff going on. It can be a little upsetting as the design system pattern system person, who's like, I can make this perfect system. And then you go look at your product and you're like, what the fuck is that?

Noelle Lansford:

To be aware of that pace layer of where you're at in the pace layer and where they're at in the pace layer, because there's totally different constraints. Like we get the benefit of living in this bubble where we feel like we're under time pressure and we are a lot of times, but—

Elyse:

No, not like product teams.

Noelle Lansford:

—not like product teams

Elyse:

But we get so upset and it makes us really tight fisted, and again, I love that you use the word catastrophizing because I think that's what happens in our heads. We're like, Oh no, I've done a bad job. My system has failed. It is wrong. It is no longer perfect because this thing happened. And I really would love to encourage design system practitioners in general to just be like, let go a little bit, like fucking relax. Okay.

Noelle Lansford:

Well, yeah, and it became this thing like what you're talking about in peak design systems of like, do you have a real design system? Like, why aren't people adopting the perfect system? And it's like, well, because products aren't perfect. And they're going to have to break it, but there might be a good reason to break it in their current constraint. And that was a fun thing for me to experience in that middle portion where I was the only designer at a small startup, making a design system. I was building that while building the product. So I was a design system maker of one, consumer of one, right. And that was really eye opening having been in the design system space and actually being forced to use what I was making and I was like, whoa, I hate this.

Elyse:

Oh, that doesn't work.

Noelle Lansford:

I need this, not that. But when I was thinking about that at scale, I was like, no wonder everybody doesn't want to use this. Or people are saying it's a constraint on creativity. And we all go, no, it's not, it opens the door to creativity. And I want to believe that's true, but that wasn't my experience firsthand.

Elyse:

And and sometimes it's just as simple as things like, I need this gray to just be a smidge different, or the background gray instead of the border gray. And I mean, these, these problems are complicated. Like we're making fun a little bit, but,

Noelle Lansford:

They are.

Elyse:

You know, it's it's not possible to have a perfect system because products are not perfect and things are changing. I've mentioned this a number of times but at Color, we are building a new internal tool and our customer facing product is also shifting from a design and user perspective, right? We're having different kinds of users. We're having growth and needing to change some of the patterns that were embedded from a couple of years ago. We're starting to see all of these places where our patterns don't always make sense anymore. But it takes time and effort to change those things. It does not happen overnight. And it's here's the storytelling thing again, that the story is not the design system is failed, and it doesn't work.

Noelle Lansford:

Right.

Elyse:

The product is changing and the system needs to also change and evolve with it to support those things. And I feel like, you know, kind of coming back to your, your conversations in interviews, hearing a lot of, it's failed or it's not working, this didn't happen or this promise wasn't delivered on, therefore, the whole thing is just trash. That's what I was getting out of a lot of what you were saying in your article, is just the sense, especially on product teams, or even on the design system teams themselves, like this very black and white thinking.

Noelle Lansford:

What I was finding with people being really frustrated with design systems, was where their entire design systems team was completely wiped out. And they were stuck with the largest legacy system that was entangled on every single product, and nobody was there that was there when they built it. So nobody could help them untangle that web.

Elyse:

You had that experience more than one time.

Noelle Lansford:

Oh yeah, people were like, we built this design system. It was a promise to do this, this, and this, we got rid of the team. And now we realize nobody knows how to help us undo it. There was two companies in particular that were trying to completely eliminate the design system and wanted to hire a design system practitioner to simply help them undo it.

Elyse:

Wow. I assume you did not take that job.

Noelle Lansford:

No, I didn't. Um, but no, other people that were kind of more like medium upset, there was a, there was a gradient of upset, it had to do with like, we've been trying to get our design system and it was stress of people on the design system team that finally got the capacity that they needed to set up these giant goals with that new capacity in mind, only to have that halved or down to like two people. And then leadership go, hey, you still have to do those goals. And that's not unique to the design system layoffs. Everybody was feeling that push of having set these big year goals and then, hey, go do it with half the staff.

Elyse:

Right and when.you are left behind, there's survivor guilt, there's trauma, little t trauma, there's frustration, betrayal or just disenchantment. And so you're not stoked about the project you're working on when the entire team around you has been let go.

Noelle Lansford:

That's why I have so much sympathy for the people that are left, because that was rarely the case for me. When I would go back to talk to coworkers at, companies that had those layoffs happen, I felt like it was almost worse to be a survivor. Like people that were left was like, well, I really don't want to be here, I want to find a new job, but I don't know if I can, because the market's really bad. And then the people that had to do the layoffs, they really cared about their people and they're really bummed that this happens. And now, they're trying to coach this team that's left, but they can't be fake and just say everything's going to be okay either.

Elyse:

Pretty hard on everybody. I mean, I think there's a lot of rightful anger around layoffs, to leadership, to investors. There were some really inhumane layoffs, especially in the way they were handled. I am confident that there were investors and leadership who were just like, oh yeah, we can just get rid of some people and make better returns. But in a lot of cases, companies, did not want to be doing this. That doesn't sit well for a lot of people alongside the anger and the greed, which is also very real, um, but it, I don't think it was easy on anybody.

Noelle Lansford:

You know, that was one thing that I mentioned my article, like businesses are made up of people and people's

Elyse:

mental state has everything

Noelle Lansford:

do with how the business is doing,

Elyse:

Exactly. Exactly. So we've talked a couple of times about the broken promises, right? Like the product teams won't use it or it's stifling creativity, and the design system team really gets blamed for that lack of adoption. I think we're at a sea change in the design system space where we're recognizing that the system wasn't delivering value to the organization. Whether that is real value or perceived value, kind of up for debate, but we're recognizing that something needs to change in how we're talking about what a design system is for, what it actually does, how and why you are going to use it, and how we talk about that to leadership. I'm curious, what did you get out of all of your interview conversations, and your experiences? Obviously you did get a job after all of these layoffs, like several jobs. What have you been seeing in terms of what success looks like, what actually delivering value to an organization looks like, since these interviews?

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah, I think the storytelling has changed, at least it has for me personally, and I'm trying to get other design system practitioners on board with this, and a lot of times it's pretty easy too, because they're like, yeah, I see that. A lot of what the storytelling was right before the layoffs, was this idea that you need to invest in a design system and a design system is simultaneously never done. Because that was kind of this reaction to, well, is the design system done yet? Is it done yet? And our storytelling was no, it's never going to be done. That didn't bode well for layoffs. And so what I was hearing from these interviews was, you talk to consumers and they're like, we can't use this, they're always telling us no. We're always having to customize it. Whenever they do an update, it's a manual process. It's not saving us time, or at least the perception is that it's not saving us time. We have to customize things on top of what they've already built. Because it's not made for us, it's made for the world of design systems, not this company, Um, and so yeah, the storytelling has changed a lot from, you need to be investing in this perpetual system that isn't done, to how can I balance telling long term goal stories while giving my stakeholders quick wins? And I think the quick wins piece is really important. I still subscribe to the design system as product, not in the way that it generates revenue, but in the way that you need to storytell and report back up to your leadership, I think should really mirror how a lot of product teams already do that. One thing that's been really neat at Alaska is that we actually have a dedicated product manager, and I think that's been so nice. It's like a kind of a luxury and I'm like, okay, everybody needs this. Because a lot of times that falls on the designer or an engineer to go and be that storyteller to leadership. And it's like, people have PMs for a reason where you're keeping yourself on track. You're thinking about short term wins. You're thinking about roadmaps. You're thinking about reporting that back up. You're thinking about socializing it. And somebody who's actually fully dedicated to that, obviously it's still a team effort, but at least having one person that's really, really dedicated to that, I think is amazing.

Elyse:

It is. It is quite a lot of work to be aware of all the things that are going on, across all of your product teams and balancing your roadmap and their roadmap. It really can be a completely full time job for a person, or if you are the person and you don't want to be doing that, feel very overwhelming.

Noelle Lansford:

And then it becomes this really hard balance of how do you be proactive while also meeting your short term and long term objectives, because that's different than a normal product team. Some people don't like the word consultant, but in the more positive sense, it's like you are going from team to team consulting, not telling people what to do, but listening. A big part of consulting is listening. And it takes a lot of time to listen well and understand their problems well, and suggest a solution, whether or not it has to do with you. Another trait of a good consultant is saying, hey, that's actually not my thing, let me point you to this thing. That's a huge part of what a design system team has to offer, is you do have a team of multidisciplinary people that are able to listen well and suggest reasonable solutions, and they have visibility across a lot of different things happening at the company, and that's a really nice spot to be in to help people and to consult. I think that has become part of my storytelling with the design system. We could talk about how many components we made, how many minutes we saved developers, but we could also talk about, hey, we were in the room and we're a creative solutions consultancy baked into your organization.

Elyse:

Yeah, yeah. We were talking about, you know, delivering value and, you know, the, the component, the built thing, the designed thing is not the value. It's just got potential. The places where value lies are in visibility, oh, I can see that we are using this pattern now, or we're starting to deviate from this pattern, here's the reasons. Here's how we can bring this to all of the product teams. Here's the direction we want to move. Here's how we bring this across design and engineering. Like I see that y'all are working on this thing, let me help you put this back into the system. Or let me get this in the hands of this other team who might actually need it. You know, there's something you said in your article, where you're talking to leaders, especially in interviews, where you were asking, what is it that you need right now? And then thinking about how do we actually deliver on that? I love this because I think so much of design systems work in the past was like we are going to establish a design system. That means we have to do tokens and a color set up and we have to do all of this tooling and we're going to build buttons and inputs and 25 foundational components and then magic will happen. Then efficiency, then consistency, just like voila. Anybody who's ever tried this knows that that like, just is not how it works. But really turning that on its head, instead of being like, I'm building a design system, being like, what is it that you need right now? And how do we provide that? Can you talk a little bit more about where that question came from and those conversations?

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah. I think this was a really heavy emphasis for me, especially in 2023, because teams are in the mentality of being really scrappy. What can I do with as little as possible to get the biggest results, right? That was the headspace of most leaders in 2023. People were like, I have all these expectations. I wished it would have done this. I wished it would have done that. And they were really these big problems, like big questions that couldn't be solved in the amount of time that they wanted to solve, right? So I found myself just asking, what do you need now? What is your next goal for the month? Let's talk about it on a weekly basis on a monthly basis in this interview process, because that kind of clued me into what they felt the greatest sense of urgency was. While there wouldn't be a way for the design system itself to solve it, there is a way for people in general to solve it, you know, to say, let's break down this problem, let's do this. And it was more about creating a plan for people and breaking it down into a sizable chunk that they could at least see progress, on a weekly or monthly basis. It was almost like you were doing the same thing anyway, you were just letting people in on it at the appropriate moments. That was pretty much all that changed.

Elyse:

That's a perception shift. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the whole do more with less and be scrappy. I used to think this very much, as a systems minded person, you're constantly changing things on us, we're never going to get to do the long term thing, we're never really going to have the resources to get it right, and if you would really just let us get it right,

Noelle Lansford:

Mm

Elyse:

then all of these promises that we've been promising will actually come true. The reason it's failing is because you never actually give us the resources to sit down think about it and get it right. And I think a lot of design systems people for many years felt that way, and maybe some still do. And it has been very enlightening for me personally, to come around to this realization that change is the only constant. It is going to be shifting around the product is going to be changing, the tools are always going to be changing. You want to get things right. And there are some things that you take more time with than others, but the only thing that happens when you take infinite time and resources to get it perfect, is that you never ship anything.

Noelle Lansford:

Right. If we go with the product analogy, product teams don't get to do that either. It's better shipped than perfect. At some point you just have to call it done and go and, you

Elyse:

know. We pay a lot of lip service to that in design systems, but we don't do it. And then I think, we sort of vilify this idea of being scrappy, where we're like, scrappy is just, glorified startup terminology for never having enough resources. And like, yeah, I mean, okay, sometimes it can be, but in a lot of cases, it's this idea, or it should be this idea, that you don't have to get it perfect for it to be valuable, and you can help your team, you can provide improvements, you could make things smoother and faster, and you can do that incrementally, I'm hearing that from a lot of people, the desire to do that or willingness to do that in a way that a handful of years ago, we believed that we could get it perfect and deliver a shipped finished perfect thing. And I think we're recognizing now that maybe that's just not true.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah, and along with that, idea of the perfect system, that question, what can I do for you right now, kind of shifted for me where it was like, no, like, what do we have today? What are we actually trying to solve today? Because when I look at all these different design systems, a lot of times design systems, when they're public tend to be a marketing tool. And I think that's fine because there's a whole reason why you would want to use design systems as marketing, similar to how you would want to use a rebrand as a marketing opportunity. But that does lead to these really perfect looking systems and everybody going, why doesn't mine look like that? When you actually look beneath the surface, it's not quite like that. And it's kind of gotten me to the point where I'm like, what do we actually have today? I don't really care what so and so's doing in their system. I think that's great that they're doing that, but I'm going to look at those use cases and go, what do those use cases actually solve? If there's one that I can use as heavy inspiration, that's great, so I don't have to redo that thinking in that category. But a lot of times I think, we think that somebody has the perfect system that can withstand all types of change, and I really like what you said about change being the only constant, because that's really what has had me narrow in my scope a lot with design systems, is when we get into the mentality of catastrophizing, the most common way of doing it is thinking about the rebrand. That like looming rebrand. Will this withstand the rebrand? And like there may or may not be a rebrand on the horizon, but it's like, that's

Elyse:

imaginary rebrand,

Noelle Lansford:

The imaginary rebrand. It's everywhere. Everybody has the imaginary rebrand because, it's one of those things that you're selling your design systems on. It's a real reason why we think that way. I'm poking fun at it, but it is real. We're saying, yes, with design tokens, you should hypothetically be able to rebrand. And you know, honestly, rebrands are more complicated than that. We all know that. But we think about that when we build components, when we build tokens architecture, like, and I've stopped doing that, We want the design system to work for you right now more than I do a potential rebrand. Let's look at the problem that's right in front of us, not the one that's potentially in front of us down the line. Uh, most of the time, what I saw in 2023 and beyond, most people aren't going to consult the design system team on a rebrand. They're going to hire a third party, and they're the rebrand,

Elyse:

and and

Noelle Lansford:

you're not going to be consulted about it.

Elyse:

Yeah, and the rebrand is just different. Like your patterns are different. You have to do new stuff.

Noelle Lansford:

Well, I mean, this really hit me when I saw this happen firsthand in 2023. This particular company, a large tech SaaS company, had done a lot of work establishing the brand in the design system. That whole team, maybe other than like two people, were either moved to a different department or laid off. Then there was a rebrand. And when I looked at the rebrand, I could tell you that 10 percent was original to what we had built in that design system and the other 90 percent was net new.

Elyse:

Yep.

Noelle Lansford:

And I was just like, yeah, okay, the design system doesn't need to survive the rebrand. Like, I don't know.

Elyse:

Maybe it just won't anyway.

Noelle Lansford:

Maybe I'll get that tattooed on me. The design system doesn't need to survive the rebrand. You'll, you'll make something new and that's okay. Like I forgot that. And it does stifle creativity. Like you need to be able to imagine beyond what happens now and what is going to affect the little webs of things that happen now. Because that's one great capability that design system practitioners have, is the ability to understand the web effect, of everything touching everything, right? You get this mental model of it. but with that mental model, a lot of times comes this hesitancy towards new things. Because you're like, oh, we just fixed that. No! You need to make new things. You need to be creative. You need to push the bounds of it. And maybe that, that means having to recreate something that you spent a lot of time on.

Elyse:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I feel like we've kind of naturally gotten here, but I would love to hear some of your thoughts about, you know, where are we going with design systems? What did you start to see emerge in 2024? What are some of your, hopes or predictions for, for the future? Sure.

Noelle Lansford:

So for me, what I did, and this is by no means what I think everybody should do. I, in fact, I don't advise it. But, but for me, I was seeing really high churn of personnel in 2023. And I was kind of like, why would I join somewhere totally full time at this point? And so I went ahead and started my own consulting business. I adopted that risk. So I actually, you know, get to charge for the fact that I'm not a permanent employee. I was thinking about it like, okay, if we're going to think about scrappy, if we're going to think about risk, I should adopt the risk and get paid to do that. I will say, okay, there's a couple things. There's an uptick in people being hired as contractors, through, third party, staffing agencies. There's a lot more of that in 2024. I'm curious to see how that shakes out in 2025.

Elyse:

Yeah, and not, not just in design systems, I think in tech in general, in recruiting and operations, there's been a lot of engineering contracting for a long time, but I think that that's a trend that will definitely continue,

Noelle Lansford:

Yes.

Elyse:

Across the board.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah. And like, what I'm seeing is leadership kind of coming to terms with, oh, we actually do need increased resources to accomplish this thing. Like, that was kind of the, the heart of what everybody was trying to communicate in 2023, it's like, we have these goals, you've cut us in half, we can't do it. And they're like, okay, how do I augment that? And so then a lot of companies go that staff aug route. I've seen people hiring more senior strategists, which was true of 2023 as well, but I don't see that going away, where people want fixed people in their companies to be kind of thought leaders that manage the staff aug.

Elyse:

As you think that's kind of a response to the peaks and valleys, like the, oh, now we don't have anybody who knows anything about this.

Noelle Lansford:

I think so. I think they're like, oh, we actually do need somebody that is dedicated to this company, is dedicated to owning this project. And I think that was a huge thing for me I was just having a really hard time finding anybody at any organization that was willing to take ownership of things because it was a risk factor. It was like, oh, if I take ownership of this and it fails. I'll probably not be here, you know,

Elyse:

Hmm.

Noelle Lansford:

The stakes were upped. It used to just be like, you could make a mistake and that would be a metric that didn't go well, maybe your reputation would be a little bit tarnished, but you could generally recover from that. But now it was, oh, if this fails, I'm gone.

Elyse:

I mean, that would be true of any kind of staff principal or director plus title where you're responsible for the team, you're responsible for your deliverable. We have to take responsibility and accountability for the decisions that we make. Like it is really wild to me that the tech industry in general, from, you know, 2010 to 2020, right? Like the zero interest rate period. We literally built our whole concept of our industry on, we have a bunch of VC money and we're just going to throw money at things and figure out how to be profitable later. There's no other industry that does that.

Noelle Lansford:

Right.

Elyse:

Everybody else has to figure out how to have a business that makes sense. You would not have an entire design system team doing whatever, the business doesn't think is really providing value to them, if you didn't just have like this boatload of money that you can just do whatever with. And so, I mean, actually, I actually think this is a really good thing. Like if we're going to come here and say, we, we think that we can deliver some stuff that's going to make design more consistent or more effective, we should be able to actually deliver that and take ownership of that.

Noelle Lansford:

Right. Leadership at the time, when I was really asking like, what do you need right this minute, they wanted somebody to say it's not working, here's how to fix it. Like, that's really what they wanted. And nobody was willing to do that. They were just getting the same answer of well, we think it should be this way for the greater good of design systems. Or the product teams are doing it wrong. And you know, that's an oversimplification of the answers they were getting, of course, but they just really wanted somebody to be straight up with them and say, yeah, this isn't working. Let's come up with a plan that's going to work for this business as it stands today. And I think we're seeing that going forward. They really want people to put in position to do that, to say, okay, when is it working? When isn't it working? And having somebody that can be honest about when it's not working, I think is really critical. And part of why I did go ahead and start my business, because I found for me, when you're not full time somewhere, you don't have to worry about as much of the structural impact of the organization. So I found it was a lot easier for me to be that person Because of that mentality that came out of 2023 into 2024 of, oh, if I get this wrong, I'm probably going to get fired. Um, or I'm going to get laid off, which was the new way of firing people. For me, yeah, I signed this contract. I'm going to be here. I'm, my goal isn't to make people mad. My goal is to actually fix problems with people and to be somebody that can say, hey, this isn't working. Why isn't it working? Not to bash on the team, but to say your team's done amazing work. Here's what they've done, but what do you want from this in the future? So I think they're hiring a lot more people that are strategically placed in that position to guide the influx and outflow of staff aug. So I think instead of mass hiring and mass layoffs, we're seeing more churn just in that staff aug space.

Elyse:

Yeah. So contractors, staff augmentation, smaller internal teams with more responsibility or ownership or more strategic ownership. What else, any other design system predictions or hopes? What do you hope to see in the future?

Noelle Lansford:

I, this is, okay, this is a hot take. I want less emphasis on doc sites. Um, because I think it kind of, and I don't mean no doc site, but I think it did kind of accompany the perfect design system mentality. I'm all for your doc site being a great marketing tool. Love that, but actually story tell that and get credit for it being a marketing tool. Don't just do it and make it perfect and don't say anything about it. Get your leadership on board with the benefits of making your doc site a marketing site.

Elyse:

I feel like the eBay playbook that they came out with in the fall of 24 was a really good example of that. That was all custom built, but the design system was just a part of it. It was very much around their design practice, their accessibility practice. But I think it was doing a different thing than what you're talking about, which is like, look, we're just publishing our storybook, but it's somehow like so much more perfect than yours.

Noelle Lansford:

Right.

Elyse:

You feel like you need to live up to this. I think the eBay playbook was a different category of project that was showcasing a whole lot of other things about how eBay wants to build product in general. And so I think it was a really, really nice example of that. And I think to your point, not everybody needs to have one.

Noelle Lansford:

Hmm. It's like that actually most of the time doesn't answer your design system consumers' questions. It's a really cool tool for bringing in new talent or getting in certain conversations that your company might be interested in. But it doesn't actually most of the time answer, how do I use this? why do I use this? when do I use it? And I also feel like we've over documented in some ways and under documented in other ways. I hope that we can remedy that in the future. I kind of feel like we should be done saying what a button is. Cause I would feel like most product designers and most product developers know what a button is and in general why you would or wouldn't want to use it. What I'm more interested in documenting is at your organization, stylistically, technically, when is it possible to do this? I think it was Jina Anne that said this at their Clarity talk, like, instead of saying do's and don'ts, empower the person reading your documentation to make the decision themselves and say, here's why we don't do this. If you have to do it, here's what you should consider, might happen or might be the scenario if you have to do it. And saying highly suggested or, we recommend. But being aware of what the problems are and saying, okay, at our organization, you might run into this. We say, this is a button. This is exactly what is inside the button. This is why you use it. Did you know that we use a button tag and sometimes an a tag for a link because that's an age old debate. But you know, once you get past that, it's like, where do you use that? And obviously a button is a simple example, most people know where to use it, but I'm thinking about bigger patterns, or medium sized things, if we go back to Atomic Design, like those organisms that we have, those are often the ones people really want examples for, like, when and where should I use this? When it's on mobile, does it actually expand to this? Does it constrict to this? You're showing them the variants of mobile versus desktop a lot of times, but actually, why, where should I use this and give good examples. Even if they're not live pages, if they're live pages, even better, cause you can highlight and bring up a product team and say this team did a really good job and everybody loves that. So all that to say, I want documentation that's more specific to the organization and less to do with the elements themselves that everybody at this point is pretty much familiar with, especially those atomic ones, and also examples in the doc site. And I think that's really helpful for stakeholders to be able to see those examples and be like, oh, yeah, design system team is contributing to this level of thinking.

Elyse:

I love that. That's, goals for documentation for me, in 2025. I need to do more of that. I think you're absolutely right. So to wrap up your story, you started your own consultancy, and I, I know that you've actually had quite a lot of success with this. What has that been like? Quitting your full time job, going off to start something on your own, which I've done it and I know that it's very scary. What has that been like? And how have you been finding success with that?

Noelle Lansford:

Honestly, it's been a lot of fun. It is scary, when you're thinking about doing it, you're like, oh but I have a Paycheck every week right now, what am I doing? You know, I think especially honestly, it was both scary and not scary because I know what it's like to lose my job. Very familiar with that feeling. So I was kind of like, you know, what the worst that could happen is That.

Elyse:

That I've already been at

Noelle Lansford:

right? And like, one thing for me is I can always get a job outside of tech. Working a part time job is not something that I'm afraid of doing. That's what I did in 2020. I couldn't get a tech job, so I went and was a manager at a fast food place. I'm okay with that. It's fine. That was one part of it. The feeling was familiar. So the risk felt a little bit less. And the other thing that I was running into with those interviews, that stood out to me was, a lot of times the full time positions that were being offered were really limiting, I felt like. And I think this is starting to shift, but especially in 2023, those full time roles were like, we want you to do this. And when you would go into an interview, you had to find somewhere in your portfolio that had exactly that thing. There was one interview that stood out to me about, data visualization. I didn't have any data viz in my portfolio, but the level of data visualization that they were talking about, it wasn't like some complicated internal tool dashboard, it was like, do you know what a pie chart is? That's what they meant by data viz in that particular interview. And I did like five interviews with this company. They were like, it was down to you and another candidate, they had data viz, you didn't. So we went with the person that had data viz and I was kind of like, that's so dumb. Like, I'm like,

Elyse:

I know what a pie chart is, too.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah, I was like, I don't want to sell myself this way. I don't want to pitch my candidacy this way anymore. I was like, you know what? No, I own this. This is mine. This is how I do things. And not to trample over people, but just to say, I kind of don't care what's in your job description. What I want to do is get in your organization, figure out what you need and create a strategy around that. If it happens to be data visualization, we'll do data viz. If it happens to be something else, I want to help you figure that out. I just found that sometimes the job descriptions and the expectations and the pressure around hiring for people, like that was the other thing, people were under a lot of pressure to just hire people. You could do that with that, with that candidacy pool you had thousands and thousands of applicants. So you could be that picky. I just don't want to interview that way anymore. When I interview, I want to give my presentation on what I think is going to work, regardless of what organization you are. And for me, starting a consultancy was the way that I figured out how to do that. And that was really refreshing, because it was less about how many years have you been in the industry? What exactly have you done? Tell me about a time when blah, blah, blah. It was me actually asking them to pull up what they were hoping for up front, and us just diving into strategy and figuring out if our strategic mindsets were compatible. It really sets you up for success when you're able to interview that way and you walk into an organization, because you're already aligned on strategic goals from the interview, and you already know what you want to do versus the other way around. And to me, that's what an interview should be for a full timer anyway, um, is, like prepping your candidate to give good answers, versus withholding information and hoping they give the right answer magically and then hiring that person. So I think honestly I've been more successful that way because of that mentality.

Elyse:

What are some the ways that you are talking to potential clients about the kind of value that you bring? You know, we touched on this a number of times in our conversation today about the design system not delivering value, or the perception of it, not delivering value. How do you, how do you get them to be willing to spend that kind of money on a consultant? Because, the transaction is much more explicit—

Noelle Lansford:

yeah.

Elyse:

—than for a full time employee, even though it's literally exactly the same, it just feels more explicit.

Noelle Lansford:

It's just, yeah, it's funny. It's just a difference of what paper you signed, essentially. I would say again, I'm at liberty to say a lot more blunt things in the room where other people have a history of being told no or yes on certain things. And I have the advantage of not knowing that that happened.

Elyse:

Freedom.

Noelle Lansford:

Right. I don't know that that happened. And even if I did know that that happened, I can ask the question anyway. And yeah, it just allows me to be a lot more blunt without potential repercussions. But yeah, upfront, a lot of it just has to do with asking questions. Like that's really how I try to spend my time with people is like, I want to be embedded on your team. And there's a very real reason why I want to be embedded on your team. Because I'm like, design systems is 90 percent people, and the people that I build with have to believe that this is going to work and I need to understand their side of the equation. What they've been spilling all of their hours into, and not to tell them that it's wrong, I actually try to spend a decent amount of time celebrating the work that they did. And I find that this sometimes makes the biggest difference. So it's like first of all let me understand the problems I understand you're under a lot of pressure stakeholder. Design system team, let's celebrate what you've done. And those two things, that's been really successful because kind of the, like, nobody's been able to come in and do both of those things at the same time. Um, and I happened to be positioned to do that because I'm coming in, outside, quote unquote, outside of the organization. But when I start learning about their problems, I'd be like, yeah, I saw how you tried to solve for that. That's actually a good solution, but you know what? We have this problem layered on top of that now. So we might have to change it a little bit, but let's first bring up what you did to your stakeholders, cause I don't think they knew you did that. So let's celebrate that and let's move on.

Elyse:

Yeah, I love that. And I hope that there's some takeaway there for folks listening, even if you are internal, because I don't think there's anything about what you just said that can't happen when you are a full time employee on an internal team. Yes, there's some of the politics or hierarchy that we mentioned, there's history, but you can always kind of take a step back and you can always surface the good work that has been done and what is working, and here's where we don't have any problems, and here are the ways that we can leverage that.

Noelle Lansford:

I'm curious what's going to happen actually in 2025.

Elyse:

I am too.

Noelle Lansford:

We're at this little cliff where we had a really high mountain with design systems. They rode the roller coaster down it's coming back up in a really interesting way. A lot of people are thinking differently than they've ever thought before. People that have been in the industry that everybody's looked up to for a long time. They're starting to change their mentality around a lot of this too. It's a response to having had this thing that we put on a pedestal and where we want to go with it. Because we're like, hey, that original idea, super cool, but what are we going to do with it? And I'm excited for that. I think there's a lot of potential for it to get really big again, but in a good way. And I think it's on the way there.

Elyse:

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And as we think about how are our tools going to change in the future, and at the same time, the thing that has remained the same is, how do you build good product with humans, with designers and engineers? And that is, like you said, 90 percent people. That is process, that is culture, that is communication, that is ownership. And there have been companies that have been doing that forever, way before design systems, but I think that we are going to, stop building design systems and start remembering that design systems are a tool for building products, and start to adjust the way that we do that so that they can be really really sticky in our organizations again.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah, yeah. Like to me the best metric I'll call it is product teams coming back and saying I couldn't do my job nearly as well, we would not have been able to do X if it had not been for the design system team. And I don't care if that's in the form of a component they really needed, or it was just us being in the room helping, maybe not even delivering anything technically tangible. But whatever that is, just being on board with what our teams are actually doing and what our problems are right in front of us. It is this kind of energy of what's next. You know, what do we do with this now that we kind of have it? We kind of are familiar with it. We're not reinventing the button or the input, um, what are we, what are we going to spend our time strategizing on?

Elyse:

Lots of potential things to spend our time and energy on. Well I ask every person who comes on this show, give us your spicy take on design systems. Please drop us a hot take.

Noelle Lansford:

Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna reiterate something I said. My hot take is stop worrying about the rebrand. Don't. Just don't. Your design system doesn't need to fix the rebrand that will happen in a year that you're not going to be asked to contribute to. That's my spicy take.

Elyse:

Yes, let it go. Everybody relax. Oh, amazing. Noelle, thank you so much. This was a pleasure. Thank you for writing and talking so honestly about your experience with layoffs, especially earlier in your career. Early in my career, getting laid off was seen as a very negative personal thing, like you had done something wrong. The perception around layoffs and people who have been laid off has really changed in the past couple of years, um, and I think a lot of that has to do with, people like you who are just talking really honestly about their experience. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for sharing it with us on the show today. Where can folks find you if they want to read your blog posts or work with you?

Noelle Lansford:

I am most readily available on LinkedIn, so feel free to drop me a note there. And then my personal website is NoelleLansford.Com, and that is where I have all of my existing articles. You can also use the contact form there if you're interested in working at some point in the future.

Elyse:

Thank you so much.

Noelle Lansford:

Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to On Theme. This is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform and at DesignSystemsOnTheme. com to stay in the loop. See you next episode!