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FALLING INTO THE FUTURE: AI AND DESIGN SYSTEMS
Transforming sketches into design system-powered experiences, and announcing Sentient Design workshops
Hey all! Brad here. The whole Big Medium crew are back in the swing of things after recovering from our epic Frostapalooza experience. Photos, while awesome, don’t begin to do it justice. It truly was a magical weekend celebrating togetherness, positivity, music, and creativity. Oh, and design systems! At Symmetry, leaders in the design system world got together with attendees to tackle the existential challenges design system teams face. We’re all still buzzing from it all!
Meanwhile, our team has been hard at work helping our clients bring the worlds of design systems and AI together to produce some genuinely impressive results. In this article, Josh demonstrates the many ways AI can go beyond translation and create truly transformative experiences. We’ve been helping our clients transform sketches into design system-powered designs, designs into design systems-powered code, and a whole lot more. But like all things, it’s not really about tooling, it’s about helping people adapt their thinking and adopt these new paradigms and tools into their design process. It always come back to people.
Josh and Veronika are currently in India talking and giving a workshop about Sentient Design at DesignUp. But good news for those who aren’t in that region: Big Medium is now offering Sentient Design Workshops to help product & design teams to imagine, design, and deliver AI-powered features and products. Reach out to set up a workshop or engagement with your team!
As the seasons change, we’re keeping an open mind and leaning into the changing design and technology landscape. And we’ll be sharing our thoughts and ideas along the way. As always, thanks so much for coming along for the ride.
Onward,
—Brad Frost and the Big Medium team
OUR LATEST IDEAS
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DATA WHISPERERS, PINOCCHIOS, AND SENTIENT DESIGN
Josh Clark outlines how the new AI-powered design patterns that liberate content from frozen formats—and create new experience paradigms.
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YOUR SPARKLES ARE FIZZLING
Josh Clark explains why it’s time to retire the sparkle emoji, purple hues, and rainbow gradients for AI-powered features.
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THE ALREADY-HERE FUTURE OF PROTOTYPING
Brad demonstrates how it’s easier than ever for anyone — including and perhaps especially non-developers — to develop ideas in code.
WHAT WE’RE READING
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Brian Muenzenmeyer released a fantastic book on navigating the world of open source software. While you might expect a book on this topic to be dry and mechanical, it’s full of heart and humanity! As Brad Frost writes in the foreword, Brian reminds us that behind all of our commits, hashes, messages, issues, patches, releases, dependencies, and packages—are people!
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Every webpage deserves to be a place
Multi-player cursors on a blog?! This by Matt Webb is a phenomenal reminder that great design blends the technical opportunities of the medium with a UX mindset.
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Web Components for Framework Developers
Tony Ward breaks down some of the unique qualities of Web Components for developers who are used to working with frameworks like React and Angular.
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Ethan Mollick shares striking visual reminders of how far generative AI has come in just 21 months.
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Still Trying to Sound Smart About AI? The Boss Is, Too.
Execs feel pressure to move on AI, even though most admit they don’t have confidence in how to use it.
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AI Is Confusing–Here’s Your Cheat Sheet
A helpful glossary of fundamental AI terms from The Verge.
🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS
JOSH CLARK & VERONIKA KINDRED @ DESIGNUP
Bangalore, India: October 2-4, 2024
Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred will give a workshop on Sentient Design and Josh Clark will hit the main stage with his talk on the same subject.
BRAD FROST @ SMASHING CONF
New York City: October 7-10, 2024
Brad Frost will talk kick off the conference with his talk, Is Atomic Design Dead? and will be also present a full-day workshop about creating and maintaining successful design systems and host a music jam session with attendees!
JOSH CLARK & VERONIKA KINDRED @ WEB DIRECTIONS NEXT
Sydney, Australia: November 29, 2024
Josh Clark will hit the main stage with his talk on Sentient Design, and Josh and Veronika Kindred will give a full-day Sentient Design workshop.
