S03E04: Heydon Pickering

Being a Design Systems Engineer

Whether you call them a front-ender, dev, engineer, or programmer*, the people who write the code in your design system make a design system a reality. However, engineering for design systems differs from standard product engineering, from building community, to understanding the front-of-the-front-end, to being obsessive about accessibility and standards.

For episode 4, I sat down with Heydon Pickering, a recommendation from our previous guest, Amy. Heydon is a design and engineering consultant, who has worked with Springer Nature, The Paciello Group, BBC, Smashing Mag, and Bulb. We talk to Heydon about being a front-end engineer on design systems — what the challenges are from an engineering point of view with design systems, what makes a sound engineer on design systems, and where we need to be heading.

* How’s the back pain?