Design Systems: Team- 2023 Agenda

[allthatyazz]

Overview

This issue tracks the agenda for the design systems all-team meetings. This will help us stay focused on the goal and document the discussions. Weekly meetings occur on Mondays at 5:30 pm PST.

Template

# Month Day
**[ROLL CALL](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JtJGxSpVQR3t3wN8P5iHtLZ-QEk-NtewGurNTikw1t0/edit#gid=1199107562)**
Attendees @ @ @ @ @

**RECURRING ITEMS**
- [ ] Standup:  Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
- [ ] Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any
# Agenda 
**FYI** <summary of the general plan for this meeting>
- [ ] Agenda item
# Meeting Notes and Highlights
- Decisions made
### MOVING FORWARD 
- [ ] Tasks for next week 

Meeting Links

• 1/9/2023
• 1/23/2023
• 1/30/2023
• 2/6/2023
• 2/13/2023 : Mock User test within our own team to improve the research script.
• 2/27/2023 : Research team shares the preliminary findings and interesting observations from the first 4 user tests with the team.
• 3/6/2023 : Discussing the Universal Design Systems template

Resources/Instructions

• Previous Agenda DS: All-Hands Meetings (2022) #263

[allthatyazz]

1/9

Attendees : Yas, Wataru, Sandra, Rachel, Khanh, Faezeh, Eva + New Joiners

• This was the first meeting of 2023. The team received a lot of interest from the new volunteers to join the team.
• Team members and new joiners introduced themselves.
• We talked about the Figma Kit and the roadmap for 2023.

MOVING FORWARD

• Team Leads to meet regularly to make sure the pods are in sync.
• New joiners to follow up with their team leads and start the onboarding

[allthatyazz]

1/23

ROLL CALL
Attendees @allthatyazz @khanhcao17 @liz-zheng @TobyShanti @rachelita2 @EvaKw @fuzjan81 @GalaStojnic @zeaslan @elimarietta

RECURRING ITEMS

• Updates from each lead regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board and assignments

Agenda

FYI : This is a workshop session for UXRs and UXDs to collaborate on the research design for the upcoming user tests.

• A quick demo of Figma Kit as the end users would experience it (10 mins)
• Researchers present their work (20 mins)
• Open mic for questions and thoughts (20 mins)

Meeting Notes and Highlights

We have discussed the high-level tasks/scenarios that the user will be provided during the test session:

• There is this concern that users would become hesitant to make changes to their project Figma file because they might think that they do not have permission to do so or they might fear that they would mess with the team's file. So for the tasks that require users to make a new page in their file and copy-paste a template, we can instruct them to create a new draft in their own Figma space and create a cover page/ or a start page in the new file.
• For the "organize your pages" section of the kit, the scenario would ask the user to open their HfLA's project and evaluate their own pages sidebar based on the Figma Kit's guidance.
• Researchers would first allow users to express their thoughts and complete the tasks, then if needed, follow-up questings or sub-tasks would be brought up during the interview.

MOVING FORWARD

• Researchers to continue working on their draft for Wednesday
• Designers to work on their assignments as specified in Design Systems: Design - 2023 Agenda #464 (comment)

[allthatyazz]

1/30

ROLL CALL

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI: After an initial 10-15 min team standup, there would be an active work session for each pod to work/design with their teammates.

• Short announcement: Plan for mock user tests with Asad, Michael, or Liz in the week of 2/6-2/10.
• Create breakout rooms for DESIGN+CONTENT and RESEARCH.
• RESEARCH breakout room:
  • Pick up work from the last research meeting: work on the rest of the questions/parts that the team did not have time to get to.
  • Focus on the parts that are currently missing in the research plan.
• DESIGN+ breakout room:
  • Collaborate on wireframes or mockups with your teammates based on action items from Design Systems: Design - 2023 Agenda #464 (comment)
  • Recieve feedback from CONTENT

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Each team worked in the designated breakout room.

MOVING FORWARD

• Do the mock interview with Asad in the next team meeting.

[allthatyazz]

2/6

ROLL CALL
Attendees Asad, Eli, Eva, Faezeh, Gala, Liz, Khanh, Yas

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI The research team is done with their questions. We would conduct a mock user test with Asad to test the research plan before conducting the actual interviews.

• PM Updates the team after the stakeholder meeting
• Mock Interview

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Due to an unforeseen emergency for the research lead, the team collectively decide to postpone the mock user testing.
• We used the breakout rooms for Research and design. In the design room, Khanh clarified some questions for the designers. In the research room, we worked on a list of tasks to execute the research.
• A new PM, Josh is about to onboard.

MOVING FORWARD

• Introducing the New PM
• Mock user test

[allthatyazz]

2/13

ROLL CALL
Attendees @TobyShanti @ryayyychel and the rest of the team members as documented in the Roll Call.

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI At tonight's meeting, we will have our very first "dogfooding". Our dogfooding experience might be a little different than conventional UX dogfooding where product or dev teams test a product or feature internally. Asad will help researchers in a role-playing exercise to evaluate their research plan and script. So the goal is not really to test the usability of our product, the Figma Kit, but the usability of the research plan.

• Mock User testing (30 mins)
• Introduction: Welcome Josh to the team
• The project roadmap and the workflow for the team

Meeting Overview and Minutes

We recorded the meeting ( Watch the recording here). Rachel Newcomb moderated the mock. It was a very informative session and the following points were discussed:

• Khanh: If we ask them to open their own file, have them be prepared for that task ahead of time. Let them know we’re going to ask them to do that. (Khanh)

• Sandra: Our “start here” page doesn’t adequately instruct them what to do with the kit, this may not be the right study for that, but what happens if someone is given the kit and asked to use it? Concerned when they get to Start Here page, we aren’t giving enough context. How can we make the Start Here page clearer, or the first page?

• Yas: Task 0 could be going through the kit and expressing thoughts, structure it more as a task so they know they have to go through it page by page and then by the time they go to start page, they will be better able to make sense of it and we can get good feedback.

• Khanh: when we ask them to interact, we want to see whether they go through it page by page or jump around.

• Faezeh: give them a minute or two to browse through the kit and give initial thoughts? It’s challenging to ask people to talk out loud. Then they do the tasks. Then ask later for them to go through the kit and discuss it after they’ve done the tasks.

• Sandra: what about creating a scenario a designer would actually have if asked to use this kit? “So your PM has just told you to use this kit that was designed by Hack for LA… you’re not being tested, we’re just testing to see if it makes sense.” [Real world scenario]

• Khanh’s version: “Your PM has told you to go through this kit before your meeting in 2 minutes. Give us your impression about it.”

• Eva: time constraints might make it challenging to get multiple sets of impressions. Could we give it to them ahead of time so they can look at it?

• Faezeh: but do we want to see what they look at first, how do they interact with the kit without guidance?

• Gala: What if we tell them “spend the first 2-5 minutes just browsing through the Kit” and after 5 minutes, we stop them and proceed with the rest of the interview? And then we ask for first impressions? Quick impressions…

• Sandra: content test where you show the page for just a few seconds and then take it away, it would be interesting to observe their faces and ask “is there anything that pops into your head right away?”

MOVING FORWARD

• Research team to address the findings from tonight's interview in the next research meeting on 2/15.

[allthatyazz]

2/27

ROLL CALL
Attendees Yas, Josh, Sandra, Rachel Newcomb, Rachel Chang, Eli, Zeyneb, Eva, Gala, Faezeh, Asad

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI In this session, the Research team shares the preliminary findings and interesting observations from the first 4 user tests with the rest of the team.

• Greetings and Standup (10 mins)
  • PM
  • Content Lead
  • Design Leads
  • Research Leads
• Research shares insights (20-35 mins)
• Q/A and Open discussion (15-20 mins)
• Wrap up (5 mins)

Meeting Highlights

• The research team presented their Slide deck. Watch the recording here.

MOVING FORWARD

• Josh will review the Stakeholder's request.
• Research team communicates their timeline for preparing the final insight report.
• Design and Content team will continue their assignments as discussed.

[allthatyazz]

3/6

ROLL CALL
Attendees Yas, Josh, Wataru,Khanh,Sandra, Zeynep,Gala,Eli,Faezeh,Eva,Rachel

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
  • PM
  • Design
  • Reseacrh
  • Content
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Other Agenda Items

• Address a question from Eli regarding Affinity Mapping
• Address the communication gap
• Timeline for assignments

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Yas and Josh met with Bonnie to record a session about the Universal Design Systems template. Yas showed everyone where the recorded Zoom sessions are located on Google Drive.
• The team discussed the first note from the previous design meeting. Despite having detailed meeting notes & clarifications from the stakeholder, a product requirements document (PRD), and even the original stakeholder interview that's part of the onboarding process, there still seems to be a communication gap that needs to be addressed.
  • Khanh pointed out that the designers' concerns are due to the team's lack of a developer. Josh offered to help where a developer's feedback is required.
  • Josh is a developer and he can provide developer feedback where needed.
• Sandra listened carefully to the original stakeholder interview and noted that the current request from the stakeholder to update the Universal Design System template is consistent with everything that was asked for in the original interview. Sandra was surprised that all of the slide decks or insight reports produced by the previous team missed the key requirements and needs.
  • Yas hypothesized that because the design systems subject matter is complex and understanding it requires technical UX design skills, the researchers, whose backgrounds were in social sciences and psychology, could not capture all the nuances of the design systems. So they only extracted the insights that were easy for them to understand.
• Sandra asked if the team built the wrong product with Figma Kit, if it was not aligned with the needs of the organizations.
  • Wataru pointed out that the Figma Kit (previously called Figma Foundations) was supposed to be the prerequisite for the larger design systems project. Wataru also mentioned that building a components library is the most important part of any design system.
  • Yas also confirmed that the stakeholder was fully onboard with the vision of the Figma kit when the team pivoted to that direction but the team underestimated the amount of time needed to complete this project.
• We discussed the previous affinity mapping that was done for the research analysis and Yas showed the resources DS team used/created and where everything is located on the drive.
  • Tutorials→Affinity mapping sessions in the Design Systems Google Drive
  • Interviews - Affinity Diagram in the Design Systems Team Folder in Figma
  • Usability test analysis FigJam in the Design Systems Team Folder in Figma

MOVING FORWARD

• Khanh to guide the designers to watch the recording of the session with Bonnie about the Universal Design Systems template to clarify the requirements with the stakeholder and address the communication gap.
• Researchers to prepare the user insight report by 3/27.
• Content team to work on the alignment document after the research team presents their report on 3/27. Content designers will then work on the content of the Figma Kit.
• UX Designers to pause their assignments related to Figma Kit and focus on improving the Universal Design System template.

[allthatyazz]

3/13

ROLL CALL
Attendees @ @ @ @ @

Pre Work

• Read the previous meeting notes

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
  • Design Lead
  • Content Lead
  • Research Leads
  • PMs
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

• Standup (20-30 mins)
• Q/A (10 mins)

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Decisions made

MOVING FORWARD

• Tasks for next week

[allthatyazz]

3/27

ROLL CALL
Attendees: Full Research team: Gala, Zeynep, Eli, Eva, Faezeh + Sandra. Asad, Yas

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI The research team presents the final insights report.

• Research Presentation (25 min)
• Q and A (10 min)
• Standup (15 min)

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• This is a recorded session where the research team presents their final insights. Watch the recording and read the Google Doc report and view the presentation slide deck.
• Yas explained the new look for the kanban board with added columns of New Issue approval, Icebox, and prioritized backlog.

[allthatyazz]

4/3

ROLL CALL
Attendees: Sandra, Zeynep, Eli, Khanh, Asad, Yas

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

• Standup (20-30 min, each team ~ 10 min)
  • Design
    • Review the progress for Create a list of components for Universal Design Systems  #507
  • Content
  • Research
• Plan for stakeholder meeting on 4/17
• Review the Kanban Project Board
  • Brief explanation of the board for none present people
  • Demo ways to insure the documentation is complete before closing an issue.

Standup Notes

• Design team: The design lead shared the latest updates with the team. After a meeting with Bonnie, they shifted their focus from a Universal DS template to a DS Starter Kit/template ( We discussed this change in vision at the end of the meeting too). The most recent iteration has been set up in a way that different columns can be easily copied and pasted into a new Figma file and each column can be moved separately (excellent use of Figma's grouping functionality).
  • Create a list of components for Universal Design Systems  #507 Asad and Natalie have audited different teams' Figma files and live websites. The goal has been to set up a baseline for the component library to give the priority to the components that are mostly used across HfLA. Sandra raised the concern that if we only focus on the existing components, we might miss the opportunity for more complex components that teams might not be using right now because those are difficult to build. Khanh and Asad were explaining that the audit is meant to create a baseline for prioritization. Also, Asad was going through each team's Figma pages one by one to identify UI components that are not necessarily included as a component on each team's DS (that is also explaining why the task is so time-consuming than originally expected.)
• Content team: They are right now focusing on 3 initiatives: 1) creating an alignment document to create a shared understanding of the product 2) Watching the research team's presentation and redesign of the Figma Kit 3)Helping the design team with the component library and working on the glossary of the terms
• Research team Gala and Zeynep has met to decide on the direction of the next assignments and discussed the options (Design Systems: Research - 2023 Agenda #479 (comment)) for the research team. They lean toward pursuing option C and other options can be individual assignments for the researchers who are interested to gain more experience in those areas.
  • Designers would be able to provide a demo of the component library in two weeks. The research team would like to know how the template/ DS starter is supposed to work. Also, researchers like to know the needs of the designers or the questions they hope to find answers to with user studies. Yas suggested the team pursue focus group studies with Developers CoP rather than individual user interviews to eliminate the risk of a person from a more established team skewing the results by giving strong opinions of the process.

Discussions on the naming of the Universal DS template and Figma Kit

• Clarification from PM: We have two separate products that are separate files and as they become mature, they can both grow in tandem. Both products should be designed to be used and adopted by new and existing HfLA teams. It is ok if we start our design by focusing on the new teams and the process they would follow to use our products. But, we have to also consider that our long-term vision is to standardize the whole HfLA, not just the new teams.
  • There have been discussions about the redundancy of the word "template" in our naming (DS: PM and Stakeholder Meetings #89 (comment)). It is not uncommon for large organizations to have a core DS and smaller sub-DS for separate teams so the HfLA DS project is not really that different from other enterprises.
• Clarifications from the Design Lead: Figma Kit provides general guidance on best practices to build a design system. The other product ( DS template) might include guidelines as well but those guidelines would be more along the lines of "How to use this template" with quick and short blurbs.
  • The unique aspects of our DS is that (1) we are not after inforcing the branding, colors, and unified look for other projects and (2) our template has both designer and developer-friendly parts which usually exist on separate platforms.
• Recommendations from Content Lead:
  • We can consider two working titles for now: Figma Guides (How to build your Design Systems) and Components Template (Build Your Design Systems).
  • Have a namestorming session collaboratively as the team to compile a list of names
  • If the research team does not have a set deadline for other assignments, they can ask people what each name means to them.

MOVING FORWARD

• Dedicate a portion of 4/7 all-hand
• Team members add their thoughts here Re-naming of Figma Kit #509
• Team members add their thoughts here Re-naming of Design Systems Template #510

[allthatyazz]

4/10

ROLL CALL
Attendees Eli, Zeynep, Khanh, Asad, Michael, Michelle, Sandra, Jiyon, Josh, and Yas

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI This is going to be a namestorming session to choose consistent naming for our products.

• Standup (15 mins)
  • Design
  • Content
  • Research
• Namestorming session (30 mins)
  • Re-naming of Figma Kit #509
  • Re-naming of Design Systems Template #510
• Q/A and Warp ups

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Sandra (the content lead) made a presentation on best practices for naming products.
  • Good product names start with understanding the user's mental models.
  • Before the naming exercise, we have to set some principles for the naming and create criteria.
• After Sandra's presentation, the team agreed on postponing the namestorming to follow the right standards suggested by Sandra.
• Sandra will take a lead on setting a timeline for our naming initiatives. Some of the tasks can be done async.
• The latest working titles suggested by the content team for our internal use are Figma Guide and Design Systems Starter Kit.

MOVING FORWARD

• Yas is making an issue for bug and other quick fixes in v1.0 of the Figma Kit/Guide and making the Kit ready for v1.1
• Khanh and Sandra will help with v1.1 .

[allthatyazz]

4/17

ROLL CALL
Attendees Khanh, Asad, Liz, Gala, Zeynep, Eli, Faezeh

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI Content team will lead a name-storming on 4/24!

• Content Updates
  • Sandra talks about some of the desk research that needs to be done.
  • Discuss if anyone on the research team is interested in being involved
• Research Updates
  • Research asks the Design team to familiarize them with the DS Starter.
• Design Updates
  • The roadmap for components Create a list of components for Universal Design Systems  #507
  • Liz' update on Menu component

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Research- The research team is waiting for a demo of components the design team is working on. Once the demo is available, the research team will better understand what direction they need to go in for questions that need to be asked.
• Design- The design team is working on solidifying the components demo for the research team. Presently, color has been completed, they are working on typography and finishing the buttons. Asad and Natalie also working on individual components. Liz presented her menu components as well as the research she conducted. The design team is hoping to have at least 5 components in a couple of weeks for the demo.
• Content- Sandra was unable to attend the meeting.

MOVING FORWARD

• Tasks for next week

[allthatyazz]

4/24

ROLL CALL
Attendees Yas, Sandra, Michelle, Zeynep, Eli, Faezeh, Asad, Khanh, Michael, Jiyon

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI : This is a Namestorming session led by the content team.

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• The team collaborated on a FigJam for naming of the two products Re-naming of Figma Kit #509 and Re-naming of Design Systems Template #510.

MOVING FORWARD

• Content team to assess the stickies generated through this session and share their expert opinion with the team

[allthatyazz]

5/8

ROLL CALL
Attendees Zeynep, Eli, Khanh, Michelle, Asad, Sandra

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

FYI The theme would be planning and roadmap for the rest of 2023. The meeting will be divided into sections; the first half: the current stage and 2nd half: the future tasks. We may cut sharp right in the middle to make sure we have time to discuss all the agenda items.

• Greetings and celebrating team members' recent accomplishments ( ~0-5 mins)
  • Sandra's graduation from the team and Michelle's promotion to the lead role
  • Khanh's new position and competition
  • Yas to share a few tips about effective use of GitHub issues ( ~ 3- 5 mins)
• Standup ( ~15 -20 mins): we will do standup in a new format. As a team, we will go through the project board together and look at each pod's issues and address the questions.
  • Research
  • Content
  • Design
• Roadmap planning discussion ( 30 mins)

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Few tips regarding the use of GitHub have been shared (e.g how to filter based on milestones/labels, work on existing issues, vs creating new ones and avoid creating too many similar issues). PM encouraged everyone to explore GitHub.
• The project board has been reviewed in the traditional HfLA way ( We discussed issues by filtering based on each team's labels.)
• The planning FigJam was shared with the team. The idea was for the team member to collaborate. Team members shared concerns and tried to find common ground.
• PM has confirmed that she is not a project manager and does not focus on project management but more on product strategy and ensuring all the roles within the team are working towards the shared vision and helping the product and organization.

MOVING FORWARD

• Tasks for next week

[allthatyazz]

5/15

ROLL CALL
Attendees @ @ @ @ @

RECURRING ITEMS

• Standup: Updates from each lead/ or team member regarding the tasks that have been done in the last week
• Review project board, assignments, or blockers if any

Agenda

• PM Talks about HfLA's code of conduct (5 mins)
• PMs show the new GitHub milestones (10 mins)
• Standup
  • Content: Ask the content team to share their process on the naming activity
    • Q/A to address the researcher's questions

Meeting Notes and Highlights

• Decisions made

MOVING FORWARD

• Tasks for next week