107. The Evolution of IBM's Carbon Design System with Scott Strubberg

Join host Chris Strahl as he welcomes our guest Scott Strubberg to the Design Systems Podcast. Scott is a product manager and a key figure behind IBM's Carbon Design System. Today’s conversation unravels the complexities and innovations of integrating brand consistency across digital and physical realms. Chris and Scott explore how feedback and community contributions shape the system's evolution, and delve into IBM's unique "brand first" approach. Tune in to discover the strenuous yet rewarding process of managing design systems at scale and the significant role of community and partnerships in driving a design system forward. 

View the transcript of this episode.

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Guest

Scott Strubberg is a Product Manager, Front-end developer, Designer, and Educator. Though his career has taken many forms over the years, a common thread of connecting technology to the people who need it has always been present. He spends most of his day rallying designers and developers around a common cause. When he’s not doing that, he’s a full-time parent along with his wife and their three boys.

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.

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 thedspaw.

Chris Strahl [00:00:19]:

We'd love to hear from you. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Design Systems podcast. I'm your host, Chris Strahl. Today I'm here with Scott Struberg. Tell me a little bit about your role, about your work with carbon and what you do with design systems at IBM.

Scott Strubberg [00:00:34]:

So I'm a product manager and I work on the carbon design system. And so my day to day and kind of what I do is making sure that all the stakeholders around IBM that need our design system are getting what they need from the design system and then working with our amazing developers and designers to execute on that. And so that's kind of where I sit dealing with the core components of the design system. And obviously, we can talk about, like the governance and hub and spoke and all that fun stuff, too. But that's kind of where I sit and making sure that all the trains are coming and going on, time and priorities are prioritized. That's kind of my role within the system.

Chris Strahl [00:01:17]:

So often when we think about design systems, especially in a large enterprise context, there's occasionally a product manager, usually a product owner on top of the organization. And that's usually somebody that's in like design or engineering or sometimes product management. But I think it's rare to think about, like, who is the product manager for a major design system like carbon. And so when you think about that role in particular, like, what does that day to day look like? How does that feel? What structure is behind program management?

Scott Strubberg [00:01:49]:

Besides myself, there's two other product managers within carbon. I feel like every day is a little bit different. Even before we're hanging out right now, I was just refining work with my team. Like, we were talking about making sure that we've got a work stream piped up and ready to go for WCAG 2.2 readiness. Right. And things like that. And so there's always almost like a fire to be put out, you know, within a given day. And, like, what's the given, like, work stream that we're going to be tackling right now? How do we, like, make it more clear how do we connect with stakeholders? So there's just a lot of meeting, a lot of talking, a lot of listening.

Scott Strubberg [00:02:24]:

I would say most of my job is listening. You know, at the end of the day, like, trying to reflect back to people what they're needing and making sure that our team is then clear on what we can deliver against for whatever the business is asking for in a given moment.

Chris Strahl [00:02:39]:

So there's part of it that's about the day to day firefighting, ambulance chasing of a product. Then there's another part of it that is really about user feedback, and that feedback coming back to you to really understand more about what you have to build. And then that's where the strategic side of it comes in, where you're trying to stay. I have this set of problems, fires. I have this set of feedback or interaction with users that are talking about need. Now, how do I align those into, like, what we build next? And when you think of that, like, what we build next for a system like carbon that has not just a reach inside of IBM, but a reach really far outside of IBM, how does that decision get made?

Scott Strubberg [00:03:22]:

The priorities are coming in every direction, you know, and I feel like one of the focuses that I've found in the last couple of years is I've taken on this role, is making sure that the business is taken care of first. That's like, the top of my mind, right, is making sure that we are hitching our wagon to what the business needs, right? And so, like, right now, we're a hybrid cloud and AI company, right? And so what's the design system going to do? We're going to build AI experiences. Like, we've got an AI slug that we just built, and we got all these AI elements to show whenever something is happening within a given product. And so we're, like, spearheading that, and so, like, finding ways to hitch ourselves to that, while at the same time we've got people that are like, divestitures, we're ibmers that are no longer IBM ers. They're another company that still use carbon. And so also trying to, like, bring their work, the requests that they've got for enhancements or features to enhance their work. So there's like, a matrix of finding, like, we got to pay the bills, right? We gotta make sure that the business is taken care of, but then also we're an open source design system. And what will make sense not only for our users, but people that are using this stuff externally as well, and then taking all of that against, like, the difficulty and challenges, whether it be dev and design.

Scott Strubberg [00:04:41]:

It's messy. It's a really messy, awesome process.

Chris Strahl [00:04:46]:

That's fascinating. Especially the idea of divesture.

Scott Strubberg [00:04:48]:

Right?

Chris Strahl [00:04:48]:

Like, we talk about, you know, design, system, and acquisition a fair amount. And when you think about, like, the impetus for an expansion of a design system or the impetus for a multi system model, oftentimes that's rooted in some sort of m and a activity. But at a really big organization, like one of the biggest tech companies in the world, where there's organizational units that are onboarding and off boarding fairly frequently.

Scott Strubberg [00:05:11]:

Yeah, I mean, that's like a big part of it even, too. But we've also got acquisition too. We're a big multinational company. Like, we acquire companies. That's a part of the game. And so bringing them on board, how do we get you on carbon and expedite your process of going from what you had as a design system into our world as a design system and becoming. Adopting IBM's brand and all the things, it's a wild game, right, whenever you got people coming and going on both ends for sure.

Chris Strahl [00:05:39]:

So that makes me think a lot about, like, what is the structure that supports this, right? So I know that IBM has a systems of systems model, and the thought process behind that model is like, hey, like, there is no one design system that's gonna fit every single need inside of the organization. It's a layering. When you think about that layering and you look at that, like, slice of cake. If I'm one of IBM's, say, new AI initiatives, how does that layer cake look for me?

Scott Strubberg [00:06:06]:

Yeah, it's probably important even just for the listeners to know, like, around, like, the makeup you mentioned, like the hub and spoke and like, the federated model. And, like, everything starts with IBM's brand, right? And it's probably the case for any company, right, is like, it starts with the eight bar logo, right, and how we show up in a visual and in a brand sense. And so everything starts there. And then from that point, we've got the IBM design language, that IBM design language that as carbon, we take the IBM language and we run with it as a digital experience. But then we also have people that take the IBM design language and. And they make, like, events and stuff like that. Like when we have our big think conference, people are making physical spaces that are basically from the IBM design language. And so we're just the digital manifestation of that.

Scott Strubberg [00:06:52]:

And so now we're talking about. Now we're on screens, right? And now it's like, okay, now we've got AI that we've got to build. How do we work with the product teams to build these experiences that have AI moments and then collaborate with them to be able to, like, bring this into their product in an easy way that makes sense with their roadmap so that, yeah, we can all be successful in building with AI.

Chris Strahl [00:07:15]:

So you have that core brand concept that exists universally across IBM, which I think is really common.

Scott Strubberg [00:07:21]:

Right.

Chris Strahl [00:07:21]:

You have digital, physical, print, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I'm sure that there's, like, an IBM stamp that's still on some piece of hardware.

Scott Strubberg [00:07:29]:

Yeah, there's a selectric typewriter out there, right?

Chris Strahl [00:07:32]:

Yeah, exactly.

Scott Strubberg [00:07:33]:

Yeah.

Chris Strahl [00:07:34]:

So you have all these different manifestations of that brand that exist everywhere, but you fundamentally think about the system as a brand first system, where the idea of the digital representation of that is carbon, and that digital representation of that brand then has this hub, which is, here's IBM as a brand, represented as carbon as a hub. And then there's some AI group or some AI initiative that's out there that has its own spoke that branches from that hub. And that spoke has a lot of decisions that are also encapsulated within it. So what does that decision at that spoke level look like?

Scott Strubberg [00:08:12]:

Yeah, so once you get outside the core of carbon, we start looking at the spokes, and we have, like, carbonforibm.com dot. This is one of our spokes that represents all of the marketing elements and the more expressive moments. Whenever you're looking at carbon in a digital experience, then we have carbon for IBM products where this is a spoke that is solely thinking about, like, the product experience and, like, the products that we're delivering within, like, our security suite and our data and AI suites and, like, how do we work with them? And so there are these connective tissues where we're working with those teams to be able to then deliver these AI moments out into the spoken, collaborating with them so that they can then deliver it out to the product. It's like a few steps removed, even, you know, where you've got these, like, connections upon connections to eventually get to that final result. And that process is wild. I know that you had tons of people talking about governance and how to, like, navigate these windy roads. It's a tricky one. Right, because there's lots of people, lots of stakeholders, lots of different needs.

Scott Strubberg [00:09:14]:

That's where it's at. That's where the fund's at.

Chris Strahl [00:09:17]:

Yeah, I mean, I've been doing this now since about 2015, experimenting, dabbling, but full time. My job has been in design systems since about 2015. And when I think about it, before 2015, I knew the phrase turtles all the way down.

Scott Strubberg [00:09:31]:

Turtles all the way. I'm not familiar with that.

Chris Strahl [00:09:32]:

Yeah, there's, like, this idea that, like, the world lives on the back of a turtle, but then if you zoom out, the turtle has to live somewhere, and it lives on top of another turtle. And so the idea is, when you're talking about things that are highly meta, like living in the meta, it's turtles all the way down.

Scott Strubberg [00:09:50]:

I'm way down is what you're saying, right.

Chris Strahl [00:09:53]:

I think it's southeast asian in its origin. Leave. Okay, I could be wrong about that because I don't totally know the origin of the metaphor, but this idea that, like, everything is cyclical, everything repeats, everything has a meta level to it. Design systems intimately lives that experience where the stuff that your product managing is ostensibly going to end up in some user facing experience for an IBM consumer somewhere. But how many steps it goes through between you and that experience? Experience is at least two and probably often varied to many more than that. And that doesn't even include the ones that you don't directly control, where you have a bunch of partner stakeholders that you've never met, that you've never talked to, that happen to grab IBM as an open source design system off the Internet and start to use it.

Scott Strubberg [00:10:41]:

This happened to be just yesterday I was hanging out with one of my buddies from the CIO, and he's like, in design ops and stuff like that. We connect like once a month, and we were just kind of, you know, chit chatting and catching up on what's going on in our lines of business and things like that. He's like, hey, I want to show you something that we're doing and that we haven't, like, put into prod yet. And so he's like, sharing his screen, and it's this for. This is on the CIO. They do carbon for the IBM, er, experience. And so now it's like internal facing IBM or tools. And he was showing, like, the new intranet homepage that has a generative AI experience.

Scott Strubberg [00:11:16]:

And there it was, our little AI slug that we just built, like a quarter ago. I'm like, hey, there's the slug. You know, and it's like, oh, cool. Like that. It got to the people. It's going to be getting to the people. It was, obviously, it's in pre prod or whatever, but, like, that's really cool to see I had nothing to do with that other than, like, I was helping work with the team to prioritize and make sure that we were all clear on what that slug needed to look like. What's the gradient, you know, and all the things so that that AI moment could happen for this new experience that all ibmers will be able to experience.

Scott Strubberg [00:11:50]:

Spoiler alert for anybody. For IBM, that's probably going to get launched sometime soon, but, yeah, it's wild to see your stuff get put out there in a product and like, oh, wow, that was the thing right there. And it's that far removed. Yeah.

Chris Strahl [00:12:03]:

And, I mean, knapsack works with carbon at our end. Customers that may work with IBM's consulting group, and that may have been how they were first experiencing carbon, but they definitely have very little to do directly with IBM once they're live and implemented. And so it's fascinating to see this design system that we're also pretty intimately tied to because many of our customers have adopted it as their core design system. It's a really interesting thing to see, like, hey, maybe I'll encounter that AI slug in the next couple of releases.

Scott Strubberg [00:12:36]:

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Chris Strahl [00:12:39]:

So this kind of goes to this other question that we get all the time. When I want to build a design system, or like, I'm a big organization, I say, I want to build a design system. And they probably have a design system or they have something that is like a bunch of the elements or pieces of a design system, but they say, you know what? I want to be like carbon. And usually, like, we stand back and our eyes kind of get a little bit wide and we go like, why do you want to be like carbon? And I'd love to hear your take on what you say when someone says, I'd like to be like carbon.

Scott Strubberg [00:13:11]:

First off, let me get you in contact with IBM X, our client side.

Chris Strahl [00:13:17]:

Yeah. Beyond selling them services.

Scott Strubberg [00:13:22]:

But then after that, I guess the real answer more is, like, I would check yourself in the sense of, like, how much are you willing to invest in this? Or like, what are you willing to invest in this? And I say that with the context of carbon was born. If we turn back the clock to, like, when you were first getting in design systems, which is when we were first building our design system and everything, there was like a multi million dollar investment from, at the time, Ginny Rometti, to have our, at the time, general manager Phil Gilbert, to, like, do a design transformation within IBM. And it was like, we need to train all at the time it was like 300,000 ibmers or whatever in design thinking, right. To be more intimate with the practice of design. And part of that was like, okay, we need a design language and we need a design system. And, I mean, that was over years of time, right. And so there is a commitment that an organization needs to make to be able to, like, undergo that design transformation, you know, in order to, like, pull off what I'm standing on the shoulders of giants right now as far as, like, how carbon has got to where it's got. Because we've had amazing designers and developers along the way, as well as executives fighting for and making sure that we had a consistent designed experience when using IBM products.

Scott Strubberg [00:14:43]:

And so, yeah, I hope you're ready to get involved with that, you know, because that's no easy task for sure. And I would agree that it's a task worth doing if you've got the means to do it.

Chris Strahl [00:14:53]:

I think that you had an interesting point there that I pulled out of that, which is the idea of having to unwind dozens of years of practice on how things are built to make it more design thinking centric. And there is a lot of this that represents culture change and organizational change. And you've actually re architected a lot of the communication flows and structures inside of IBM around this central systems concept. And I think that without that commitment, not just to the technology, but to the communication flows and the organization of the team, it would have been much more difficult to be successful. And I think that that, to me, is probably at least half of it, right?

Scott Strubberg [00:15:40]:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's that commitment. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Strahl [00:15:43]:

If you're going to think about this as just like, hey, I'm going to spend a million dollars or $2 million or $10 million on tools. That's not really the big thing.

Scott Strubberg [00:15:51]:

Yeah, it goes beyond a tool.

Chris Strahl [00:15:53]:

So if you were to look at this as like, what concepts could other organizations that are midstream or thinking about the next evolution of their design system? What are those universal ideas that you could pull out of the experience building carbon that would say, like, hey, look, maybe you don't want international, multi brand, open source, completely public design system, but here are some things that represent really core, tangible bits of repeatable value?

Scott Strubberg [00:16:25]:

Sure. I think that a big part is finding your brand and then finding like, whatever the expression of that brand is going to be is like a big part of it, and then making sure that you are building your components tied to the experience of your product. I think about people that I've talked to, like mentoring and things like that. Like, oh, I'm starting up a design system. What's the things I should be doing? What are the things I should be thinking about? It goes beyond just the tooling and the kits and things like that. It ties into, like, stakeholders and having people at the executive level and all around that believe in your heart of hearts that this is the right thing to do for reasonability and things like that. So I think that that's, like, probably a big takeaway is finding the partners that are in your business that believe in the idea of reuse, the idea of a consistent user experience. And once you start to find those people that tribe right, then the mechanisms start to take shape and you start to be able to build it kind of from the ground up and show that this is a thing worth investing in.

Scott Strubberg [00:17:31]:

That's often the case whenever I talk to people that they're like, hey, how do we, like, get into this? How do we, like, start this design system thing? How do I get the ball rolling? And learning about their organization and what they do is often the case. It's connecting with those stakeholders and making sure that you've got your tribe that believe in the system to do the thing it needs to do.

Chris Strahl [00:17:52]:

No, there's two core things there, right? Like, first of all, you tied it intimately to brand, which I think is not as well understood in the world of design systems. And then you basically said, let's go find the like minded folks that value consistent experiences, that value systems thinking, and that value that core structure, and then form a little mini cult and then start to convert people in lyrics.

Scott Strubberg [00:18:15]:

That's really what it is.

Chris Strahl [00:18:16]:

Yeah, but the brand expression thing is fascinating, and we've talked about this before, but never in the context of, like, a major design system being fully oriented around brand. When you think about that brand expression in a digital sense, you have all sorts of different digital expressions. There's ads on billboards, there's web marketing, there's your individual products. There's all these different places in a digital ecosystem where your brand lives. And they also have physical expressions, but those aren't in a design system for the most part. But when you think about those digital expressions of that brand, the design system has to be the place that people go to find that core expression. And if it's not, I think that very often the design system struggles to launch or struggles to find value inside of the organization. The big reason being, if there's a separate brand system, people are always having to go to two different places to find what they're looking for.

Scott Strubberg [00:19:13]:

Oh, absolutely, yeah. If you don't have like a tight relationship with brand, then that's where you got to start, you know what I mean? Like that relationship. And we do, we have a very tight knit relationship with our brand team to make sure that whatever we're doing is in alignment with them and vice versa, you know, because that tether, I don't think about it that much because I'm just so, like lost in the work. But when we sitting here in the context of this conversation, it's like, oh, yeah, that connection to brand is like foundational. It is an absolute foundation to the success of this thing, 100%.

Chris Strahl [00:19:49]:

And it's interesting because there's so much often political struggles or organizational struggles around getting brand on board. And it's not that brand teams necessarily resist the idea of, let's have one place where we express the digital brand. It's often that there's not a lot of systems thinking that percolates into that part of the organization. And so the idea of like, hey, belief in systems. Hey, belief in brand is a core piece of the value of a design system that feels like a really strong starting point. And it's maybe not like the very first thing you do, because oftentimes it's helpful to lend itself to a brand conversation when you actually have something to show the stakeholders you're trying to convince. But at least making that a very early part of that conversation. I love this way of orienting towards the hub is the IBM brand, and each of the bespokes are then the products or the product suites in the organization.

Scott Strubberg [00:20:48]:

Right. They're extensions and more bespoke experiences of that brand tailored to their part of the organization that they live in.

Chris Strahl [00:20:57]:

And it's kind of cool that you're like, yeah, this is almost invisible to me because I'm so steeped in it. Right.

Scott Strubberg [00:21:02]:

I know, yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah, that is how it works.

Chris Strahl [00:21:07]:

I don't think it's that way for that many people.

Scott Strubberg [00:21:09]:

Sure, that's fair.

Chris Strahl [00:21:10]:

There are organizations that we work with where we run their brand site, and that brand site is a part of how, like, knapsack delivers the design system. But the idea of, like, what does that brand site actually entail for most people that I've seen that are really mature, that is the design system. Like, when you think about it at IBM, like, is there another site that really shows the brand expression that isn't interrelated to the design system?

Scott Strubberg [00:21:36]:

So there's carbon design system.com and then I would say sister site or whatever would be IBM.com design language. And that language is the brand, and they speak to the brand expression of IBM. You know, all of our experiences in the digital space are derived from that. So, yeah, they're interconnected and forever will be, as far as I could see.

Chris Strahl [00:22:00]:

That's awesome. I love that idea of a partnership, and it's clear that you've spent a lot of time fostering that within the various, like, different parts of the organization. Not to trivialize also the work that's been done in engineering. Right. I think that there's a tremendous and obvious connection between design, brand engineering and product. And that ability to sort of hold all of that in one giant bowl and have it not look like a mess. A lot of that's your job, right?

Scott Strubberg [00:22:31]:

Yeah, that's my job is to hide the mess. Right, right. Because it is messy. Right. It's inherently messy. And I think that that's part of the beauty, is kind of wading through the mess and then finding the gems and that's, you know, the stuff that we get to surface and bring to the users, for sure.

Chris Strahl [00:22:49]:

So if you were thinking about other program product management folks that were working in design systems, who are those people?

Scott Strubberg [00:22:55]:

I want to connect with those people.

Chris Strahl [00:22:56]:

Yeah, there are some of them.

Scott Strubberg [00:22:57]:

Yeah. We're a very finite bunch. I feel like the product managers of.

Chris Strahl [00:23:02]:

Design systems, but that is actually a really good point.

Scott Strubberg [00:23:04]:

Right.

Chris Strahl [00:23:04]:

Like, I think that there is a need for some sort of network or community around the people that manage these sorts of things, because, I mean, look, I've run big programs before with, you know, dozens of vendors and hundreds of stakeholders, and almost none of them have been as complicated and complex as, like, a mid level complexity design system. And so when I think about this as, like, a high complexity design system, that program touches hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions of people at this point. And that's a program that I think is something that bears, like, a little bit of networking.

Scott Strubberg [00:23:42]:

It might need just a little bit. A little bit of networking, yeah. Of the people networking.

Chris Strahl [00:23:48]:

But beyond that, I think that that's an interesting idea. I'm going to take that and I'm going to say, like, hey, how do we create a product managers group for design systems? Because I think that is an interesting idea.

Scott Strubberg [00:23:56]:

Totally. I mean, just look around. I mean, there's so many people that talk about design systems, and there are these amazing. And I, because I have them on my team with me, there are these amazing, like, front end engineers that are just steeped in thought and, like, around the engineering practices, and we need those people desperately. There's also these, like, design luminaries that are just all about user experience and pixel perfect design and making sure that everything is right. And then there's like, but where are those product managers that care deeply about, you know, the stakeholders and making sure that there's alignment and governance and, you know, contribution, you know, prioritization and all of that that gets brought in? You don't see as many of us out there. Honestly, that was one of the reasons, like, even connecting with you here in this moment and, like, brought me, it's like, oh, I wonder if to connect with others out there that are like me helping to kind of organize design systems. It's interesting.

Scott Strubberg [00:24:51]:

Little exercise there.

Chris Strahl [00:24:52]:

Yeah, I mean, I smell a LinkedIn group or a shared slack channel or something like that. So we can make that work. So just driving back to the core of what you do when you think about this in terms of not necessarily day to day interaction, but some of the strategies you used before the show, we were talking about how you gather feedback from users. And I think that this is really interesting because we talked about those three core things, the strategic setting of priorities, the gathering of feedback, and the fighting of the fires. When you think about that feedback aspect, where you said that most of your job is about listening, I think that one of the ways that you listen around surveys and around how you gather info from your users is really fascinating. So I'd love to touch on that.

Scott Strubberg [00:25:34]:

There's a few touch points that I make around the community. One of them was, and I think you hinted at it was around surveys. I do a yearly survey. Honestly, it was when I stepped into the role, I'm like, I want to know how people think about us, and I want to know how people use our stuff, and I want to know real concretely how that experience is going for them. And so that's kind of where the idea of it birthed out for me, was just wanting to understand where the population was. And I mean, I just did a survey, the second survey, it was even just a month or two ago, synthesized the results, and now I'm going to be playing them back internally. What's the state of the state, more or less? And where are the fires at that you, the user, are reporting to us? You know, oh, our data table needs work. Got it.

Scott Strubberg [00:26:20]:

Loud and clear. I hear you. Our UI shell needs, our docs need love. Got it. I hear you. So finding where those pain points are is absolutely clutch. So that it gives us a sense of direction. I mean, we were just talking about in refinement today, talking about the UI shell.

Scott Strubberg [00:26:36]:

It's like, okay, what's our angle here? How can we support. The community said that they want more support on the UI shell. What's our angle that we can tie this to a business need to improve the UI shell experience and make that a priority. One of the things I did that maybe product managers out there that are listening that I found to be really helpful is as I send the invitations out for people to be a part of the survey, I'm real transparent and I'm like, hey, if you want to hear the results of this survey, just reply back to this email. So I wanted to like give like an incentive to people to be a part of the reason this is an open source system. Like, be a part of the results of this and let's share in the challenges that we're all facing when using the design system so that we can all together, like, move towards that as a unit. Include yourself in the feedback loop. Stay connected to us.

Scott Strubberg [00:27:26]:

I love the survey. It bears so much good fruit, you know, for us to take a look at and be like, examine ourselves and be like, okay, the community is shouting pretty hard over here. We need to address this. And so, yeah, that's like a piece.

Chris Strahl [00:27:38]:

You very intentionally use the word community. I think that's a somewhat unique thing. When you think about carbon, right? If you look at like all the big design systems that are out there, there's Google material, there's ant, there's carbon, there's chakra, there's some open UI stuff that's out there. There's all these different pieces of the ecosystem that have built up large public design systems. I would say that yours is one of the most well adopted. When you think about that idea of community, that's an inclusive use of community to include the people within IBM and also the people without. And in that survey or in any other mechanism, how do you look at what the broader non IBM community needs and how do you balance that against? Like you said, you got to make money, right? And so the IBM business seed is likely going to come first. But how do you create that inclusive idea of, like, there's this community that's not IBM that exists externally?

Scott Strubberg [00:28:34]:

Well, I mean, like, just getting tactically. Like, we have GitHub people drum up GitHub issues, right? They'll go into our GitHub repo and they drum up issues and we examine them, take a look and by and large, a lot of the stuff externally doesn't get prioritized. I'll be just transparent about that. But there are things that come up, like, from time to time that we're looking like, oh, actually, that's a really good idea that would help this product out. You know what I mean? And so if I can find a way to tie your external need to a business priority of ibms, then we can get this thing flowing. And then there's also just around, like, the weight of something where, like, if someone's coming in, like, oh, we need this enhancement or whatever, and it's like, we got to add a prop on something. It's like a real. It's like a layup kind of thing.

Scott Strubberg [00:29:17]:

Like, yeah, sure, let's help a brother out. Let's get this thing in there. You know, the stuff that's more structural, that takes time and energy and design and all that kinds of stuff. I mean, at the end of the day, Chris, I feel like a big part of my role, I'm a community organizer. As a product manager of a design system, is being a community organizer. I feel like I need to be at the center, or I want to be at the center, rather, of every contribution that's happening to help make sure that whether you're internal, whether you're external, everyone's clear about the definition of done so, that our docs are clean, our kits are good, our code is awesome, and that everyone's aligned over. Like, okay, here's what we need to deliver against. Whether you're on the squad, delivering on using sprints, or just some person out there that just wants to be helpful and do open source initiatives or inner source initiatives, there is a community organization element to this game that's vital for its success internally and externally.

Chris Strahl [00:30:15]:

So I used to work with the Drupal project a lot, among various other open source projects. And one of the things that I was always interesting is, like, what percentage of contribution makes it into the core system. And in the Drupal project, it was, depending on the year, between two and 7%. And so there was a lot of value in that small percentage of things that came from the community that ultimately made it into the core product. And a lot of it was stuff that was kind of invisible, right? Like, how do you support internationalization or localization of content? How do you do things with accessibility? How do you do all of these different aspects that represent community needs and then the rest of it? Not that it wasn't valuable, but it oftentimes helped us set the strategic direction for where that project was headed. I think that there's also this aspect to it that is about like, how you organize around a community is really fascinating. Some of the best people I worked with in the Drupal project were like community organizers for like movements, right? Like they would go to politics and stuff like that on the weekends. The fun part about working with people like that is you get this idea of sort of understanding the social behavior of communities and what drives success inside of those ecosystems.

Chris Strahl [00:31:27]:

And it's less about like, hey, I'm this person that made a pull request and like, did that end up in the core product or not? And a lot more about making that community feel heard and listened to as a part of the overall product. And I can imagine that something that's ostensibly built for IBM but has this broader community, that balance of like, how do you make a community that isn't IBM feel heard, but still continue to advance the product strategically in the direction that the business, business needs? I can't even imagine how complicated that must feel at times.

Scott Strubberg [00:31:57]:

It's so complicated, but it's worth it. And I say that because I was just, again, I'm going back to a meeting that we just had before. We were talking here and we were talking about typescript support. And like right now, carbon. We don't have full typescript support, but from our survey last year, we found that in order to get adoption of our latest version, consumers were needing typescript support. We made a working group, and internal and external people were contributing to this working group around bringing types to the system, to our react system. So we're actually on the eve of finishing this up. We've got like, I think there's like six more issues and then we're going to be fully typed across carbon.

Scott Strubberg [00:32:36]:

And 80% of those contributions were not on my team. Another touch point I do, and we haven't had a chance to talk about yet, but when I play back our roadmap, I take a moment to celebrate, and you better believe that I'm going to be shouting from the rooftops and celebrating the men and women that 80% that made sure that carbon is now typescripted. I'm like, this is awesome that we have this and it ties to the business, because in order to get adoption of our latest version, they needed typescript support. So boom. You know, it's like finding these moments where the magic happens, where the business needs, where the people needs, and then it all connects together and then, and then that's when magic goes.

Chris Strahl [00:33:17]:

So I love that idea of how do you create value where a bunch of people that are consuming carbon get that design system, and then the contribution that they make ends up back in that core system, in this case in the form of types. But I assume that there's lots of other opportunities for IBM to be able to say, like, look, we leaned on the community to get this work done. That is not something that necessarily was work that we would have been able to do as quickly or as completely ourselves. And that is, in my opinion, like, the definition of open source value is where you're able to say, like, look, we provide a product and that product is out there and you can use it. And then we just ask if there's a need that you see that's valuable, you contribute back to it, and that's awesome.

Scott Strubberg [00:34:04]:

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing, man. I couldn't agree more.

Chris Strahl [00:34:07]:

Well, hey, Scott, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been a great conversation, and I think that we need to get this product management thing going.

Scott Strubberg [00:34:16]:

We do. I think that's the next step.

Chris Strahl [00:34:18]:

So I'm going to be in touch on that, and I'm excited to keep the conversation rolling. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Scott Strubberg [00:34:24]:

Anytime. Thanks a lot, Chris.

Chris Strahl [00:34:25]:

This has been the design Systems podcast. I'm your host, Chris Strahl. Have a great day, everybody. That's all for today.

Chris Strahl [00:34:31]:

This has been another episode of the Design Systems podcast.

Chris Strahl [00:34:33]:

Thanks for listening.

Chris Strahl [00:34:34]:

If you have any questions or a topic you'd like to know more about, find us on Twitter edspot. We'd love to hear from you. Show ideas, recommendations, questions, or comments. As always, this pod is brought to you by knapsack. You can check us out at NApsac cloud. Have a great day.