Mark Reynolds, Design System Consultant
Transcript:
Chris Strahl: Hi, and welcome to the Design Systems podcast. This podcast is about the place where design and development overlap. We talk with experts to get their point of view about trends in design, code and how it relates to the world around us. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Knapsack. Check us out at knapsack.cloud.
If you want to get in touch with the show, ask some questions, or generally tell us what you think, go ahead and tweet us at the DS pod. We'd love to hear from you. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Design System podcast. I'm your host, Chris Strahl.
Today, I'm here with Mark Reynolds. Mark, you do a bunch of work with Knapsack. But also, you've worked with lots of other organizations as a design system consultant. So, you've seen firsthand how design systems change all of these different big enterprises from the ground up. So, welcome to the program.
Mark Reynolds: Thanks for having me.
Chris Strahl: So, today we're going to talk about how design systems affect our day-to-day jobs. We haven't had a conversation for a while about what it really means to adopt and use these systems as a practitioner. And so, today's all about practitioners.
We're going to talk a little bit about how these systems change our culture. We're going to talk about how these systems look at deeply what it means to work in design or engineering, and then we're also going to touch on AI and how this may also affect the future of the way we work.
So, without further ado, Mark. Oftentimes, when people are first getting started with design systems, there's this idea of this suspicion, this notion that the system is going to maybe replace them, maybe take their job away, maybe take away something that they used to hold fundamentally dear.
And in particular for designers, this is something where a lot of the design system is about constraints and it's about constraining the choices you have in design, and that can oftentimes feel like we're taking away something that people used to do with their hands.
And so, Dan Mall famously said on this podcast, when you tell somebody that you're taking something away, the immediate response is always like, "Okay, what do I do with my hands?" So, in your experience when you're first seeing these design systems, what does that reaction and what does that look like?
Mark Reynolds: Well, first of all, I truly and honestly believe that design systems are an enabler for any type of IC practitioner involved in the space as a whole. But I think one thing to think about and one thing to understand is that design systems need a change.
They need to come in and basically form a change in the organization to enable the design system itself to have the reaction that we're all looking for, which is, we all look at ROI. We always look at efficiency, time saved, money saved, all the rest of those things.
But it takes a lot of effort, a lot of understanding to actually pull something like that off. The magnitude of this thing, this design system that's meant to be put in place is a lot bigger and has a lot of positivity around it more than people think. And I think at IC level, we get scared that some processes and systems take over opportunity.
But in essence, it actually enables us to focus on what I believe is the right things, and that is the customers and the users themselves. So, I actually think it's the opposite of what people think of the [inaudible].
Chris Strahl: So, do you feel like these things are sold through to managers and teams as a false flag? Are folks basically saying, "Hey, this is a tool. Let's go buy a tool." And then really using that as an agent for a deeper culture change? Because the way you talked about it just then is it was about buy-in and shifts some ways of working.
And all that tends to be really scary for organizations and for people because it disrupts the status quo. Somebody that's been working in designer engineering for 10, 15, 20 years, even a recent grad looks at things with one worldview and you're asking them to look at it with another worldview.
Mark Reynolds: Yeah, but the thing is that change is inevitable. And when we get to that stage and we get to that phase, then all the organizations, all enterprises, all scale ups, take them on board with this change in this growth.
And I do believe that at this current moment in time, and maybe it has been like this for a while, the design systems are sold in as these things called tokens, components and patterns and reusable things that we can all use and we can all share.
And in reality, that's like an outcome. That's part of the solution that that's the things that eventually get into production and get in front of users, of course. But to actually get that system-wide adoption and to understand what type of team operating model is necessary to enable this to happen, that's where I think there's a bit of a gap.
And I believe, it's sold in as this solution, this tool, but really, it's the change that is required. And the tool and the deliverables and all that are part of the journey and are part of the program. And inevitably, those are the things that, like I said, end up in production.
But it's really about understanding how to make that change. And then, education, educating the organization and the members, the team members, the design system team, if you have a centralized team or everybody in terms of an engineer, a product, a designer, a manager.
Chris Strahl: So, I hear all that. I hear the idea of it needs to be about more than just the parts of the design system. And I think that we're all driving it the same idea that this creates a more efficient and ideally more effective way of building product. But with that efficiency and with that culture change, oftentimes what that's code four is redundancy or the ability to let people go, doing more with fewer folks.
And so, are we asking people to get on board with their own demise from time to time here or is this something different? How should people feel that sense of potentially existential dread related to the implementation of a system that is all about this idea of efficiency.
Especially now when we're in a time in the world of technology of more constrained budgets and in particular an end to this uncapped restraint of how we spent in design.
Mark Reynolds: Well, I mean if we can always remember back to, I'll aim this at the design side, we used to only be called graphic designers back when. And we converted from graphic designers to say, I don't know, product designers, UX, UI designers, and then we are UX researchers.
And then, we've now got things like UX writers and all this stuff. So, I actually think we are going to be just shifting what we do and how we do it, the same way as the industry and the design system architecture will be shifting.
So, for example, you might find that you are spending your time figuring out more custom centric problem solving and solutions equipped with maybe some prompt engineering or something as part of it.
Chris Strahl: No. And you can't talk about this stuff without talking about AI in the same breath. Where on the engineering side, you think about, well, is the new coding language English? What is it that we think about in terms of our expertise and our craftsmanship and our dedication of much of our lives to a craft?
And I think that's where a lot of this fear comes from, is this idea of my entire livelihood is wrapped up in being a really good engineer or really good designer or really good product person. And all the skills that come along with that are a level of craft.
And it's not unlike being a tradesperson in a certain way, like a carpenter or a woodworker or even a plumber. There's a lot of expertise and a lot of knowledge that goes into this craft that I think is difficult to let go of.
And I think what I hear you saying is that maybe it's not about letting go, maybe it's about a change in perspective. But I'd love to hear that way that you think about that perspective change.
Mark Reynolds: I think this is more of a nurturing mechanism for your career and for what you do. So, you're just going to be changing direction. You're going to be adding, let's say, to your toolkit. So, I like your analogy around like you're talking about builders, plumbers and things, they keep adding things that are tool belt.
And you're not going to let go of the things that you have already super highly skilled in. You are going to use them and utilize them, but you're just going to do it in a slightly different way.
And you're just going to use maybe a different suite of behaviors or a different suite of tooling to enable what we would class as one of the beneficial outcomes, which we are all aiming for this incredible user experience. That's what we're all doing, that's what we're here to do.
All the different IC level and practitioners and leaders are aiming for this, for the organization. We're still doing that. We are not changing what the outcome is that we are after. So, all we are changing or all we need to do is nurture our skills and understand the growth of what we can do in the space that we operate in.
And I do believe that the systems and the processes take care of the things that we don't need to be doing all the time. That's base level design system thinking anyway. We should be less scared. I do get concerned whereby everybody is worrying.
The economy versus growth in the sector, for me are slightly different. I get it. It's really dreadful and stuff. But I do believe that there is always opportunity in there. There's always going to be a space where you can learn and grow with the new technology, new architecture, the new thing that's coming out to understand.
So, I believe we need to shift our mindset to say, "Hey, what can we do?" This is happening. We're not going to stop what's happening in both the design system and AI space. So, I think we need to follow with it and we need to nurture ourselves around it and pull through.
Chris Strahl: So, if you were thinking about perhaps less grim perspective, the idea that this is all changing for the better. Our goals are the same, we just have different ways, different tools in our belt to help us achieve those goals.
The way that I sometimes think about it in the market is this boom bust cycle that inevitably exists inside of a global economy of, "Oh, hey, everybody has to value design in order to be competitive." So, there's a rush to hire all these designers. "Oh, everybody has to have high quality engineering."
There ends up being a rush in whatever segment of engineering is hot. We've seen the DevOps revolution, the Cloud revolution, all these things from the inside. But ultimately, none of those killed an industry or killed a group of workers. It all created a different shift for those people with which that goal was aligned, it was just different how we got there.
And maybe this could represent a change in the way that organizations value design inside of their portfolio. An organization thinks about spending on a pretty macro scale. If you're a big company, you think about how much am I going to spend in product?
And you probably don't even think about the division there between design and engineering and product. You just say product. And so, if I care about design, do all of a sudden, the efficiencies that I gain through systems and through AI warrant thinking about that at a more top-level idea, does that mean that we all get bigger budgets for design in the future to try to go further or farther?
I don't know. I think that there's a lot to be open about there. But I think that one thing that is critical right now is how we think about arming our folks that build with the right education and right tools to do this.
And so, if you were designing an early designer or engineer curriculum today around what do you need to be prepared with to be really, really good at what you do, if you were to be trained in the right tools, what would those tools be?
Mark Reynolds: Oh, that's a super interesting question. I would go straight to mindset and systems thinking. I wouldn't necessarily go with the classic route. So, if I was looking at that curriculum, I would be looking at how can I understand how these processes and these systems are put together and how can I think of design in a different way?
So, I would angle it more at behavior, for example, what types of behaviors can we start to gear our mindset towards and what is the future of how we actually operate? So, I would head way more into that mindset process and function space, knowing that the visual side, the visual and the beauty side of design systems, that's product and all that stuff will come with it.
There's so many actual tools like tangible, tactical tools that can produce design, that can produce even elements of code and things for us. But how are you going to actually pull them together? How are you going to think of how things are shaped up and how are you going to mold those into what would be the solution?
So, I would totally go down that route of trying to figure things out and looking for people that understand where the landscape is, where it's moving to, and how you might think of ways to solve problems.
If I'm brutally honest, not really around the tangibles, not really so much focused on, okay, but can you write this code or can you design these things and do they look nice or do they cover certain user experiences?
Chris Strahl: Do you think our focus on comps hinders this industry?
Mark Reynolds: Yeah, I'm not a fan of just throwing comps together. I think they're references. I believe they're just visual references. But I feel like personally if we haven't already, we should have broken that barrier whereby function and comps should be merged.
There is an immersion of not needing comps and being able to systematically have a suite of things we already need and have ready and we should be almost developing in a visual way. Development and production can be done more visually, more systematically, but less unreal.
Chris Strahl: Where in the case then does the role of designer shift to the role of engineer? Like where I'm leading with this is there's this creative invention of new titles that's happening now where there's design systems designer. We were at the Future Design Systems conference, and that got brought up a lot as a job title.
And I get uncomfortable personally with some of this stuff because I look at this as a bunch of gatekeeping in our industry that doesn't necessarily need to exist. But there's also some advantage to this because you need to have something to call it. And in trying to understand that ever shifting line of where design stops and where engineering begins, there is value in having some nuance to titling there.
But I'm curious what you think about this. If you were in a situation where you're thinking about five years down the line, what is our medium that we're actually doing that functional work in versus what are that medium that we're doing that exploratory work in? Where do we set intent and then where do we actually see implementation happen?
Mark Reynolds: So, to go back to the first part where we're talking about where the blurred line is, the different titles, so you're right. There, what's there now, UX engineering is a huge one, like you could be hired as a UX engineer.
Chris Strahl: Design technologist is another one.
Mark Reynolds: Design technologist.
Chris Strahl: And I actually like that one. It is interesting that we're starting to create all these titles that exist in this liminal space between design and code.
Mark Reynolds: When you said design systems designer, in essence, how much of their work is what your class as classic design or product design or UX, UI design. It's not very much. You have to understand the function of a UI designer and what UX means and what it does and what you can do with it.
But in essence, you are a systems designer but what does that mean? Is that systems design or is that systems engineering? Is design and engineering becoming very similar thing at that point? So, I understand the problem, the frustration.
But also, on that note, coming up with these titles and having great titles for them in a way allows us to hire. It says, "Oh, these are specialists in this area." We need specialists in our enterprise, in our organization, and it helps us get some potential budget to hire the right type of people.
And well, I'd say the most common thing is those that know what design is and how it can affect product and user experience, the rest of it, but also those that understand systems, having that mindset in one space is hard to find, but it does help us get the budget. So, those titles, et cetera, can be really powerful.
Chris Strahl: So, you think about this as a way of basically those craftspeople that we talked about earlier, having agency in the specialization of their role. And so, the titling for you is about how do I actually get somebody that has some corporate dashboard and KPIs that they're managing to around hiring to actually say yes to a new role that is systems focused, is we create this specialization because that specialization, it's easier to draw a box around that need.
Mark Reynolds: It's just if you can frame it, then you can sell that into wherever you need to, into the buyer's mindset. So, you can say, "Hey, could we have this budget? Here's the framework around why we need this type of person, what the function is and how it's going to be."
Like those KPIs you talked about, how it's going to help the success. So, I feel it supports that really well. And so, I think having those titles does that part super well.
Chris Strahl: So, do you think there's going to be a migration across the digital Serengeti of people with the title of product designer or product engineer into these much more specialized roles? Or do you feel like this is an addition?
And again, I'm asking, look, are we talking about the role of product design phasing out over the next decade and the role of product engineer phasing out in favor of these more specialized roles? Or are we talking about these roles in addition to the more traditional ways of viewing design and engineering?
Mark Reynolds: Well, it's always a progression and a step process. So, I think initially, there'll be what you already see today, some specialist naming like we talked about a minute ago and then you have those new titles. And then, eventually those titles will be merged in with the normal titles and there'll be something else.
So, I think there's an emergence and a growth into what they're going to be. I don't know what the answer is yet as to what that title is going to be. But as the technology moves forward and we all move forward in the industry, there's definitely I think going to be a different role to play as a whole.
So, I actually don't think there's going to be loads of specialized roles. I think that's temporary. And now, temporary might mean a few years, it might be five years. You're going to be a form of designer or form of engineer that you can cover these areas or you have merged all of these skill sets and these techniques you use into something new.
And I don't know what that new thing is yet, but I know there's going to be a new thing, a new title, a new perception of what we are and what we believe we do. And that's going to lead to the flattening, leveling out, and we all agreeing on roughly what those titles might be. Have we ever agreed on titles ever?
Chris Strahl: But I mean somebody needs to be able to rant on Glassdoor with some title that is after their name. No. But I think the interesting thing here is you strike a very hopeful tone for all this and I like that. I also am an optimist. I get to play a little bit of a devil's advocate on this show every once in a while.
But speaking of that, you're John Constantine standing against the hordes of demons from the underworld right now. And a lot of people are going to look at this as that. You're striking this very, very hopeful tone towards a world that a lot of people find really, really scary.
Is there any part of this that does worry you about the future of your career or your job or things that as an industry might be too big of a change for us to roll with?
Mark Reynolds: You know what, I'm going to answer this like this. We need to stick together and stay together and band together and be humanistic, actually support each other and support humans in this world in what we're doing.
And I say that because if I'm brutally honest, I'm not that scared now because I have an honest belief and maybe a depth of belief in us as people to bring about creativity, imagination. We still hold so much power and we can bring that to the table all the time.
It's what we've built our entire lives on. Now, whether you as an engineer or a designer or as a leader in all of those areas and all of those skill sets, you are bringing something to the table that I don't believe is massively easily replicated. And I don't mean the actual code parts.
I don't mean putting visuals and comps and all those things together. I believe that it's like you put those people in either a remote room or a real room together and different things happen. We have different parts of us. We're all made of the universe. So, the universe has these little elements. We can go into atoms and [inaudible] and all that.
Chris Strahl: That was like very Carl Sagan of you, we are all stardust.
Mark Reynolds: Yeah. That's basically I was going with stardust. I was trying to get there, but you got that for me. Thanks. I appreciate it.
Chris Strahl: Yeah, no worries.
Mark Reynolds: So, we are. We're made with the stardust. So, you put us in rooms, you do all this stuff and you want to come up with things. You want to understand what the future looks like. You can build that. You can actually focus on that stuff. And I believe that to your word of saying, feeling hopeful, it is relieving in a way. Imagine that.
Imagine your objective is to come up with amazing ways of thinking of how we can achieve things for people that we care about, and that could be our users, it could be whatever. That's what you do on a day-to-day basis.
You wake up and you go to whatever environment that enables you, whether that's VR, whether it's, I don't know, sat in the sun somewhere outside, but your role is to be creative, be imaginative, and focus on that human touch point, because we're all still creating and building things for other humans, even in this AI driven focused effort right now.
Chris Strahl: So, you brought up an interesting point with that. And by the way, I agree with you. I think that there is a part of this that people don't often bring up that is everybody really despises a small portion of their job. I know what it is for me. I'm sure that other people can think in their mind what it is for them.
What if that just went away? I mean, maybe we'd all find something else to despise. Hopefully not. Hopefully, we're a little bit less cynical than that, and we can actually focus on the stuff that we really love doing instead.
So, you take that 5% or 10% or hopefully not 15%, but maybe a percent of your job and you convert it from something that you hate into something that you love. I think that there's a promise for that in AI that is really cool. I think there's a promise for that in systems thinking that is really cool.
But you brought a power structure. And I think that that's a really interesting way to think about this. Is how in a centralized system that has very decentralized contribution, a very decentralized adoption, how does one maintain any power structure there?
Because this does feel in some ways like the consolidation of power into this ivory tower that is a system, but it also feels like democratization and that you have more control in some ways at the last mile than you've ever had before, because your individual contribution can affect so many different things inside of the organization.
What do you think about the power structures that this creates inside of organizations? How do the people that create, maintain their power in this change?
Mark Reynolds: I think the people that are doing that are the ones that are still having some of the biggest impact on the experience itself. You can't take that part away. So, I don't think you can create, like we say, this ivory tower, this system that can achieve that outcome.
And I still think the power is in the hands of, always said beholder then, like the classic quote. But no, I honestly believe that there's no way the power will be taken away. What would you function? What would you be if say, I'm going to flip it on you Chris, actually. Let's say we put that power structure in.
You've got that pillar and it's got the ivory tower. It's this huge thing and you can't do much. And you feel like you're subject to minuscule little task and there's barely any effort and not a lot of thinking.
Let's put that frame around it for a minute. Do you believe that's even possible? Is it possible to feel that way? Is it going to be that way? Does it feel out that way already?
Chris Strahl: It's really interesting when you think about this in terms of an AI enabled future, where you have the ability to create pretty much anything you could ask for as a prompt. And so, using your voice, you'd be like, "You know what? Let's pick on everybody's favorite punching bag right now."
Like, "Okay, AI, rebuild me Reddit, but make it suck less." And AI could probably do something like that in the far-flung future where it's like, all right, I've stood it up. But the thing that it'll probably never be able to really replicate is that thing that does make it about people contributing or content contributing.
I'm not really saying this the right way. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think that dead internet theory is a thing. I don't think that the internet is ultimately just going to be a bunch of robots talking to one another, all create an experience because other robots consume and then summarize for us each as individuals.
I think that that is oftentimes the future that people worry about, where we're just going to have a bunch of AI generated things that are going to be optimized to be read by other Ais and other robots. And that's a really dystopian fuckin' horror show of an idea. The idea that every website we'd see would be something that was optimized for readability by another AI.
Mark Reynolds: Oh, I do laugh, but it is true. Imagine that is the truth. But I was going to say, when you're saying that and you've got robots talking to robots and you're building websites or apps or whatever for other robots, imagine what we are doing.
We ain't going to do that. We are thinking, "Oh, right, well, they're doing that and it's boring and why would we do any of that stuff?" If you use your Reddit example like, "Hey, I spun up Reddit." Okay, so did the next person, and so did the next person, and everybody put it online within five minutes. Cool.
Nobody's going to want to go on the internet, boring as hell. So, where are you going to go? So, what are we going to do? What I was talking about earlier? You're going to come up with crazy imaginative things. I was just thinking about communication through bubbles.
I don't know why it was in my head, but we build these, I don't know, these bubble type things, and they're all connected. And somehow, they send out signals. Our minds will expand into a different place. It will allow us the time.
Chris Strahl: I think what people are really craving in this, it's like, okay, that's my Ayn Randian, who is John Gaul dystopian idea of what the internet becomes. And I fundamentally don't think that that's where it's going to be. I don't think we're going to create a bunch of milk toast, lackluster experiences that become the future of the internet.
There's this idea of consolidation that's really popular right now, but the internet for a lot of people is like eight websites. What if it was two websites? Can we further consolidate all the things that people visit on the internet? I think that's a horrible idea, and it makes me shudder to think about it as someone that fundamentally believes in the open web.
But what if we start to think about how human behavior is transitioning? We're starting to form smaller, more privatized communities that have the ability to take outside information and share it with a bunch of like-minded people. And look, for better for worse things like telegram or thing, things like big WhatsApp messages groups or Slack communities.
All these different things that were the basis of what more modern social network was founded around is this idea that we don't want anybody on the planet to be able to talk to us, we still want to keep it to a people that we actually like and want to spend time with.
What if we applied that broadly to experience? And now, all of a sudden, AI is working with us individually to create an experience that is personalized to a group or personalized to an individual?
Think about what that does for our ability to have a really rich, awesome experience that's highly tailored to the way that we consume information. I think about things differently than you do, Mark, that thinks about differently than almost anybody in the show. There's people with different accessibility needs.
There's people with different cognitive ideas of what the internet should look like and how you learn and absorb information. I think that there's a future out there that is much more Star Trek than Randian and where we all have these wonderful, amazing experiences that are hyper personalized to us.
And the world of digital looks to me very differently than it looks to you, but we're still able to communicate and do the same things in those same places together with the people that we actually care about.
And that's a cool idea that I think is brought on by something like this right now. Look, that's a very far-flung future, but I like that future a lot more than I like a bunch of robots writing sites for other robots.
Mark Reynolds: Obviously, heavily personalized experiences for yourself is always going to mean everything that I do and the way that I've set something up, not everything, but pretty much will be different to you and everyone else like you said. But what we haven't talked about is how we can actually do this all together.
So, let's think of these different technologies. Yes, including AI, including processes are actually working harmony. We never talk about harmony. We always talk about one way or the other way, and one way is going to be going to destroy us and the other way is going to be brilliant.
It's like, you know what? AI is going to exist. Processes are always going to take over stuff. Why do you think we invented different machines and stuff? We did it to take care of some crap. So, it's like, cool, "Well, why don't we wrap it up, bring humans with AI, with process, and what does that look like? What does harmony look like?
Chris Strahl: Well, I mean, are you saying that we shouldn't overreact to a perceived threat? We're humans, that's what we do.
Mark Reynolds: Maybe it's something that's broken. No, I think perceived threat, it's only a threat, these different things. Processes can be a threat. AI can be a threat. Anything can be like you say. But what I'm saying is we've got to believe that if you can bring a certain, let's say peaceful mindset to the table, what would that nurture and be like?
What does that come out like? I don't think I've ever heard anyone really talk about it in that way. So, I don't know. So, I'm like saying all the positive things and all the hopeful things I think, and that's because I see that again.
I'm just like every time we dive into the depths of what seems to be horrid and then great and then horrid, I'm like, you know what though, I can see blue skies. I can see the sunshine.
Chris Strahl: This has become a very unintentionally Buddhist conversation.
Mark Reynolds: Sorry.
Chris Strahl: The only thing constant is change. And so, picking back up that theme of change. So, look, our world's going to be vastly different in three years. This stuff with AI is just now catching fire. Who the heck knows what it's all going to look like? We have ideas at Knapsack.
There's lots of other people that have other ideas at various different places. At the end of the day, the only thing that we know is that our careers and our jobs are going to look pretty different in a few years.
And I guess if there's one thing we could leave folks listening to this with, what are the things that they should be really thinking about? What are the things that they should be learning? What are the things that they should be grabbing at to understand and know more about all this stuff?
Mark Reynolds: You can't stay away from it. Whether you're into what's happening now or not, you're going to have to do deep dive. You're going to deep dive into all these different, I'm not keep saying it, but the AI tooling or the different things that people are saying about it, you're going to have to understand it so that you know how to operate within that space.
And then you are also going to have to think of designing on a different plane. You're going to have to start understanding your belief in how you've developed or educate yourself in design is now going to shift.
And you're going to shift towards those things that we spoke about in this whole thing, which is again, process and design thinking and systems thinking with the enablement of these new tools and technologies. And then, think about how to fill that space in that gap.
So, it's less about trying to figure out maybe let's say for a designer layout and feeling of emotion with rounded corners or sharp edges and think more about how would a human react? Because the different planes of different surfaces that we are going to be catering for are going to be vastly different.
So, should be thinking about different planes of design, different surfaces, different focal points. And the way that humans actually going to wake up and operate their day is going to feel and be different. So, diving into what those things might look like. And I'm going to be a little bit on the sci-fi side on this.
Chris Strahl: Yeah, please do. I love this.
Mark Reynolds: But I recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy. I went and watched Transformers and stuff like that. And what you can see in all of these worlds are so many different facets of it. I know it sounds crazy, but different cultures, different ability levels, different surfaces, different depths, different ecosystems.
And we're not going to get to guardian of the galaxy, but we're going into a place that we don't know much about or we feel uncomfortable about the future, but we've done this before. We keep doing this like my job role. Let's go back to job roles. A quick recap of job roles.
My role is different today than it was three, five years ago, and it's the same. It's going to keep doing the same thing like three to five years, your role will be different, tiles will be different. That's like a system. It's like water. It's like a river. It's not going to change. No, if we go back to change again, Buddhist.
Chris Strahl: There we go with the Buddhist thing again.
Mark Reynolds: Sorry.
Chris Strahl: No, it's great.
Mark Reynolds: Sorry, I haven't even read the book.
Chris Strahl: Well, Mark, it's been so great to chat with you. I love the hopeful take. I love the view, whether it's sunsets and blue skies and less cyberpunk dystopia. So, thanks for taking the time to jam and this has been great.
Mark Reynolds: Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.
Chris Strahl: Awesome. Well, hey, this has been the Design System podcast. I was here with Mark Reynolds. Hope you all have a great, great rest of your summer. Talk soon. Bye. That's all for today. This has been another episode of the Design Systems podcast. Thanks for listening.
If you have any questions or a topic you'd like to know more about, find us on Twitter at the DS pod. We'd love to hear from you show ideas, recommendations, questions, or comments. As always, this pod is brought to you by Knapsack. You can check us out at knapnsack.cloud. Have a great day.
