In this episode of Principled, Jason Nako talks about his team’s journey of implementing a unified design system solutions in Cisco products in Security and Networking. Jason shares how moving fast, constantly improving, and obsessing over the customer versus the competitor has shaped the development of the Magnetic design system.
“We know that evolving Magnetic from product-specific to portfolio-friendly is going to take a lot of work.” says Cisco Director of SBG Design Systems Jason Nako. “We’re going to hit bumps in the road; we’re going to be learning and constantly improving.” After auditing more than twenty Cisco products and weighing house of brands versus branded house approaches, Magnetic became the clear choice for a unifying design system. “It was a big decision, but we did it because it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing for our teams; it was the right thing for Cisco.”
While a design system is never complete, Jason shares how his team is tackling a prime user pain point, navigation pain point, with a workshop with design leaders that looked at consumer product goods to source navigation inspiration. Looking forward, Jason and his team are working to scale the design system to a common design system with the creation of a Common Council, a group of designers tasked with ensuring design components are flexible and scalable.
Listen to Jason’s complete conversation (15 minutes) on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Audible, and Soundcloud, where you’ll also find other Principled podcasts and can access episode transcripts.
