Converge Manchester Round Up!

What a way to kick off conference season, with the third instance of Converge, this time we headed to Manchester for a day full of design system knowledge sharing and networking.

To kick the talks off we had Jina Anne start the day with their talk, “Pursuing Design Quality” sharing why it’s important to create a design quality criteria and gave an example from their recent work. After a quick coffee break we had our very own Michelle Chin with “Decolonizing Your Design System” dissecting the flawed foundations of design systems and unveil the consequences of overlooking diverse perspectives.

We then had Kevin Coyle grace the stage with “Bridging the Communication Gap in Web Development: Can AI Be the Solution?” investigating whether AI could be the missing link that not only streamlines our workflows but also fosters more effective human-to-human communication.
After a lovely lunch, where some of the attendees took advantage of our organised lunch groups we had Henrique Gusso continued with the theme of AI with “Designed by Robots” talking about how smart tooling can leverage the efficiency of automation and the creativity of people to raise the bar for quality.

Morgane Peng then entered the stage with “We’re Not Doing Design Systems Properly and That’s Okay” sharing lessons she learned on prioritising impacts over grip.
And we ended the day with Amy Hupe‘s Burn Baby Burnout talk exploring the relationship between design systems and disillusionment.

A big thank you to everyone who came along and enjoyed some IRL chats, and a big shoutout to the zeroheight team who worked super hard in the background getting their third Converge into reality.