Podcast · Arts & Books
by Davy Fung + PJ Onori · English · Arts & Books
Davy and PJ, design system practitioners talk about design-led product ownership, scaling and adoption, community and engagement, design system team models, and much more.
21 Sep 2026 · 29 min
Davy and PJ dig into the messy state of software quality in 2026… from visual regression tests that look wrong to the growing need for shared skills, layered checks, and actual human judgment when everyone is shipping faster than they can review.
1 Sep 2026 · 30 min
Are designers working in code, or directing agents that write it for them? Davy and PJ dig into the shifting role of Figma, the skills designers need to guide AI-assisted work, and why changing one color token can turn into an afternoon of CI, docs, and downstream consequences.
11 Aug 2026 · 34 min
We discuss, you guess it, whatever ai-native means in the world of design systems, including that start of a new phase of PJ and Davy's design system spec that originated from this episode!
22 Jul 2026 · 35 min
Davy and PJ debate how automation, visible chaos, and human judgment can help teams move fast without turning the design system into an expensive junk drawer.
9 Jul 2026 · 37 min
Davy returns from Config with a backpack full of new Figma features. Also our annual discussion of were these releases for us?
9 Jun 2026 · 36 min
From the comical wizard prompts of 2024 to the heavy-lifting reality of Figma MCP, Davy and PJ chart the compressed timeline of design system and canvas automation.
26 May 2026 · 37 min
Why do we build in public when corporate nature tells us to hoard our work? Davy and PJ break down the unglamorous reality of sharing open-source tools, micro-contributions, and why 90s music is a hill worth dying on.
7 May 2026 · 36 min
We hit the Centennial! In our 100th episode, Davy and PJ look back on 4 years of our design systems chatter, before diving deep into the future of design systems: a community-driven, machine-readable schema that moves us past the "Figma-as-Source-of-Truth" era.
24 Apr 2026 · 36 min
Davy talks about trading a week of manual Figma updates for a "code-to-canvas" workflow that gets us "close enough" while PJ talks about running multiple worker-based agents to do production and qa work in tandem. Are these burner tasks?
3 Apr 2026 · 36 min
Davy and PJ dive into the Zeroheight's 2026 Design Systems Survey to figure out why 61% of teams are drowning in work while a third of them still have "no plans" to automate—plus, Davy forces PJ to listen to some truly questionable AI-generated design jokes.
18 Mar 2026 · 31 min
Davy and PJ dive into the future of design tokens , exploring how to "tokenize everything" from complex color transformations (OKLCH) to utility tokens for motion and content strings.
24 Feb 2026 · 29 min
Davy and PJ discuss why the future of design workflow isn't just better handoff—it’s starting with the code itself.
11 Feb 2026 · 38 min
Davy and PJ discuss the "liability" of stale documentation and why AI still needs human oversight. They explore using Figma’s API to automate visual updates and kill the "pain in the butt" of manual maintenance.
23 Jan 2026 · 30 min
Building vs. Inheriting: Davy and PJ discuss the performance cost of design system dependencies. Learn how to choose the right framework without bloating your system or losing control of your architecture.
5 Jan 2026 · 30 min
Davy and PJ celebrate four years of Design System Office Hours by looking ahead at the shifting landscape of 2026. They explore how interoperability, open-source tooling, and AI-driven documentation being major themes to uplevel design system practices.
18 Dec 2025 · 24 min
Davy and PJ tackle the notorious difficulty of naming in design systems, advocating for human-readable, descriptive language over "cute" metaphors and discussing how AI is making file cleanliness more critical than ever.
4 Dec 2025 · 27 min
Davy and PJ discuss a potential trend of major design systems going from public to internal only, stressing that public documentation is the ultimate forcing function for quality and a huge win for the community.
13 Nov 2025 · 31 min
Davy and PJ talk about the term "craft," emphasizing that high-quality design work requires designers to understand engineering constraints and that a good design system needs to provide education, not just components and prototypes.
30 Oct 2025 · 40 min
Davy talks to PJ about his trip to see Figma's slots conference, formerly known as Schema. We talk about the releases and rejoice on a focus on the main editor again.
15 Oct 2025 · 27 min
Davy talks to friend of the program, Ben Callahan from Sparkbox about his series The Question, which brings together design system designers bi-weekly to share and learn collaboratively in a 60-min workshop.
30 Sep 2025 · 28 min
Davy and PJ talk about how amongst many good engineering traits, the rigor, and ways they work should be more adopted by product designers and specially us, maintainers. If we can track, version, and test our work as rigorously as engineers, we would be in a higher quality bar.
18 Sep 2025 · 36 min
Davy talks special co-host, Guy Segal, about his first month at his new design systems job at Atlassian, and the fun of being a newbie after the first 30 days, when the going really starts getting tough.
4 Sep 2025 · 38 min
Davy and PJ talk about the role of our designers on the ground, we call them our ambassadors. These good eggs not only inform our day-to-day product improvements, but help keep up informed across the org.
15 Aug 2025 · 47 min
Davy with friend of the program, Chela Giraldo talk about their recent experiences looking for a new design systems, and the struggles with developing the "design system portfolio" that can tell our unique stories. Chela has a recent post about it, which you should check out on Design System Collective.
28 Jul 2025 · 36 min
Davy and PJ discuss the challenges and strategies for design system training, especially when it comes to Figma. We explore the line between providing direct tool training and focusing on how the design system integrates with those tools.
10 Jul 2025 · 37 min
Davy talks about what he's seen with the popularity around (local) product systems and how you can may want to adoption via providing just some design system team support. PJ ends the convo with the lighter weight approach of supporting templates in code and design.
19 Jun 2025 · 31 min
Another takeaway from our cross-functional discussions, how do design system team members handle disagreements with consumers, or even our own teammates?
4 Jun 2025 · 34 min
Davy and PJ talk dive into designers building helpers and plugins to support more specialized design system maintainer workflows, and the beauty of unblocking ourselves.
22 May 2025 · 36 min
Davy and PJ talk about how to plan to best support inbound product design work, in addition to the differences between product-led work vs design system team-led initiatives.
9 May 2025 · 40 min
Because it was PJ's first Config, we decided to record a live, IRL episode, recap our first thoughts about the new product releases and a thread that we started about who Figma is designing for, dating back from last year's event.
Davy and PJ, design system practitioners talk about design-led product ownership, scaling and adoption, community and engagement, design system team models, and much more.
Design System Office Hours is a English arts & books podcast from Davy Fung + PJ Onori. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
