Design Systems Engineer_
Design Systems Engineer_
Empowering Design Excellence at Scale: Unleashing Creativity, Enabling Collaboration, and Amplifying Impact_
Empowering Design Excellence at Scale: Unleashing Creativity, Enabling Collaboration, and Amplifying Impact_
Hello ð I'm Frank.
I'm a Design Systems Engineer. That tagline above âïļ is brought to you by ChatGPT 4 ðĪ.
I build Design Systems with Design Tokens. I love enabling the Creators, Consumers, and Contributors of Design Systems to do their best work. I also love building teams through mentoring and leadership.
Arriving at Design Systems as a profession hasn't been a straightforward journey. It's been over a decade to get to where I am. See how I got here below ð.
Work Experience_
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My professional Design Systems journey in reverse chronological order._
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The "Design Systems" Era ðē
I found my passion here. Design Systems is where I belong. It perfectly blends my Full Stack distributed systems thinking with scaling visual designs ð. There's a lot to grow into within the space. Design Tokens are what I'm diving deeper into at the moment.
The "Full Stack" Era ðŠī
I learned I wanted to be closer to the end user and create the products they interact with. This narrowed my scope to product facing Full Stack roles.
As I spent time in the Full Stack space, I gravitated towards the visual elements and building UIs that scale. This is what led me down the path of Design Systems.
Application Developer
@ Starbucks Corporation
Mar 2016 - Sep 2017
Software Developer
@ Sila Solutions Group
May 2014 - Mar 2016
Prologue: Finding My Path ðą
As a fresh grad out of University, I had no idea of the software development landscape ahead of me. Getting into contracting and consulting in this early stage allowed me to attain a wide array of project experience.
Senior Consultant
@ Booz Allen Hamilton
Sep 2012 - May 2014
Software Engineer
@ Lockheed Martin Corporation
Aug 2009 - Sep 2012
Projects_
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Design Systems passion beyond the profession._
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Lagom Design System ðŦ
I wanted a safe space to experiment with component architecture, composition, and codified, scalable design decisions. That is what sparked my creation of Lagom Design System.
Lagom UI
This is the React Component Library that I have built. I use this library in my online brands and have included theming support allowing for multi brand usage.
Lagom Tokens
This is a consolidation of the design decisions to support my brands. It provides sensible defaults and feeds into Lagom UI to keep the decisions consistent.
Multi Brand âĻ
Multi Brand implementations are fascinating. Blending DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles of Software Development with scalability in design, preventing getting boxed into a corner! Below are my multi brand experiments using Lagom Design System across my brands.
FrankCongson.dev
My Dev & Design Systems focused brand. This site that you're currently looking at. It uses Vue.js rather than React, meaning it doesn't use Lagom UI (my React Component Library). But it's still on brand due to the use of Lagom Tokens.
FrankCongson.com
My primary brand and the driving force behind the creation and growth of Lagom Design System. It uses both Lagom UI and Lagom Tokens.
HeyThereEverywhere.com
A Travel Blog focused brand that I created with my wife. I built the site using Lagom UI with custom theming to have its unique look while still fitting within the FrankCongson.com brand.
Writing_
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Articles I've written about my Design Systems journey._
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Community_
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Giving back to the Design Systems community._
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DesignSystems.media
This project began as a fun hack to gather Design Systems content. Now, it's a fully-fledged site! A curated collection of Design Systems content that will benefit the community to learn more about all that is Design Systems. I co-created this with @JoshDesignNZ and ChatGPT. We made DesignSystems.media for us, and now it's for all.
Design Systems Community Chapter New Zealand
There's a lot of growth potential for Design Systems in New Zealand, where I live. I'm one of the New Zealand Chapter Leads growing the community and creating a space for Design Systems people to share what they know and learn from each other.