Bridging the Gap, One Token at a Time - Smashing Conference Talk
Spoiler alert: the talk isn't really about Tokens. I roast my past self and share a series of failures that led me to be a better Design Systems teammate through learning Design Tokens.
Confession time, there are few things more terrifying than being asked to give the closing talk a web development conference as a systems designer who doesn't code. But when Vitaly Friedman and the Smashing team sent me the invitation for this opportunity, how could I say no?
The Smashing Team encourages speakers to share real-world examples and mistakes along the way, so I took the opportunity to roast my past self while telling how I became a better designer through a series of failures while working with Design Tokens for the first time.
In researching my talk called Bridging the Gap, one Token at a Time, I wanted to be sure my personal experience, primarily working in small teams, was relatable to a broader audience.
It turns out that we are all dealing with the same challenges of this idea of "the gap," regardless of how big the team is, how experienced you are, or what tools you use.
"The Gap" is the difference between our expectations and reality.
Regardless of where the gap exists in an organization, the effects are felt cross-functionally, and it becomes a very costly problem to deal with. It almost always ends up in a lack of trust between the folks on either side of the gap, and that lack of trust leads to the gap getting wider.
In my talk, I share my personal experiences with a gap between design and development and how working with Design Tokens allowed me to take ownership of my part in this problem and work toward the solution of meeting my teammates where they were at.
I'm already dreaming and scheming with Smashing Conference about our next collaboration! If you are interested in taking a hands-on workshop (online) with me hosted by Smashing Media, the details for Future Friendly Theming will be released very soon!
🔗 I have a workshop waitlist started here, if you want to join!
Ready to watch the full talk? If not, there’s a review of my experience at Smashing Conferences below.
A Smashing good time
If you've never been to a Smashing Conference, I highly recommend it! Their team does a fantastic job of curating the lineup to be a mix of technical, inspirational, and relatable subject matter experts.
Of course, I was inspired by the talks on sustainable design, UX research, and those by Design Systems legends I look up to. But what surprised me was how inspired I was listening to the technical talks about code, and I don't write code.
I also never expected that roasting myself onstage in front of 300 engineers would go over as well as it did, but it turns out we all have something to learn from each other.
If you attend in person, Smashing organizes events outside of the conference talks so you can connect with other attendees. If a conference after-party isn't your thing, you can join a morning run or yoga session, take a gondola up a mountain, evening walk through a haunted town or visit the planetarium with other folks, enjoying a smashing good time.
During the conference, there are areas to relax, play vintage video games, chat with sponsors, or listen to Smashing's own DJ Tobi rock it out.
If you listen closely, you might notice DJ Tobi has captured key phrases from the last speaker and remixed them live into the music played between talks.
As a DJ for the last 17 years myself, I can't even begin to tell you how impressive this tiny detail was to me! As a speaker about to talk about my failures, it's a bit nerve-racking.
I can't image what "I was a self-centred, inconsiderate designer with unrealistic expectations" would sound like in my voice, immortalized in a Techno track forever...
For both online and in-person participants, there is a shared Google doc where you can ask questions to the speakers, which Vitaly may ask in the interview part following each talk.
If someone doesn’t capture a ridiculous face I make while answering a question, did the interview even happen?
A big thank you to Artem Pendiurin of ERSketch for sharing his Visual Note of my talk in the Smashing Slack channels. Because the Smashing Conferences are hybrid, the Slack channel allows everyone to connect. 🫶
The venues are incredible. The Freiburg, Germany, venue looks like a castle, set right next to the black forest and gives off haunted yet charming European vibes.
In New York, the off-Broadway venue was a dream come true for me. This year, our stage was Smashing Conference by Day, and Drag the Musical by Night. To give a talk where I roast myself on a Drag Race set between racks of wigs, boas, and a striptease pole had me living my Werk Room Fantasy.
In the spirit of an honest review, there were a few things I didn't love.
Like most conferences, I struggled to find a less busy space to sit and collect my thoughts to settle my inner introvert, but I combatted that with quiet lunches off-site.
I wish there was a way to determine which attendees are working in Design Systems or Design Tokens or were from Canada.
The online networking maps Into Design Systems has for their events are a beautiful and introvert-friendly solution to this problem that I think any in-person event could benefit from.
I also have mixed feelings about the conference "after party" happening on Day 1 instead of Day 2.
On the plus side, you can make some connections, so you have more friendly faces on Day 2. On the downside, attendees often aren't able to connect with speakers who present on Day 2 in the same meaningful way. Perhaps an "unofficial after party" or meetup for those folks who are still craving connection could be organized by attendees.
Coming up next
This year, you can expect a lot more educational content from me on my socials, here on Substack, and on my YouTube channel. I’ll also be teaching hands-on workshops for designers who want a more guided approach to learning.
And I'm very excited to announce I'll be speaking and co-hosting the Into Design Systems Conference (IDS online) May 28-30, 2025.
I'm not sure how I'll top the workshop I gave with Romina Kavcic on Naming Design Tokens at the 2024 IDS conference because she made it so easy.
If you want to be notified if/when the workshop recording gets released from the IDS vault to the public, subscribe to my Substack. (:
As always, feel free to reach out if you want to share your thoughts and questions about my work, design tokens, or design systems!
🔗 https://bento.me/samiam links to all the things…
Excellent job explaining such a complex and abstract subject. We can further close the gap by ensuring everyone understands the medium and is working in live style guides. But there's still a big technical gap as far as what tools like Figma currently accept.
Well done, my design tokens sister 👏👏👏