It’s a common misconception that Design Systems are for designers. While this is true, they are just as much, if not more for developers. Design Systems are a collaboration tool to increase communication and reduce the time to market for your products. We will talk about what Design Systems are and how you can begin using them today.

Burton Smith has been building software and applications for over 10 years and focuses primarily on web and mobile software engineering. At his current company, he works with internal business stakeholders and external customers to build digital products.

In his free time, he loves spending time with his wife and three daughters, practicing martial arts, jamming on his ukulele, and learning new things (usually about software engineering).

People can reach him on Twitter @stuffbreaker or email directly at burton@breakstuff.io.

We’re still looking for a speaker for April. Are you interested? We’d love to have ya! Just drop us a line and we’ll get ya scheduled.

Software development is a relatively young field. What is considered “beautiful code” one day can be an anti-pattern the next. What if there was a way to write software that is easier to maintain, quicker to write, and more reusable by taking some timeless inspiration from the more established, culinary world?

In this talk we’ll take a look at the cooking term “Mise en place” (dealing with planning and preparation that goes into a meal) and how we can apply this concept to shared component libraries or design systems in our front end applications. We will examine how this strategy can help everyone on the team utilize these same ingredients to build, discuss, and design ultimately better software. While the examples are React-based, the concepts apply to other paradigms as well.

Ryan is a developer based out of Ann Arbor who programs in many languages. He is the author of Griddle and other various open source projects.