Design Systems WTF

A podcast from zeroheight. Let’s be honest, design systems are full of choice wtf moments. Michelle and Luke, two of our resident design advocates, are attempting to combat this with a new regular series, where they answer a single question around design system troubles every two weeks.

Design Systems WTF is a business podcast hosted by zeroheight, with 57 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

zeroheight hosts Design Systems WTF, a business show with 57 episodes published.

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  Episode #61

  What is the future of agentic design systems?

  Aug 17, 202644 minS2

  Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience. Agentic is the buzz word of the moment - but what does it actually mean for design systems? Luke and Michelle have a real conversation about what's hype, what's possible, and where they see it all going. Show notes Luke's webinar on automating documentation — the session covering the facts / distilled / authored buckets TJ Pitre / Southleft — doing agentic design system work (also behind FigmaLint with Brad and Ian Frost) Sil Bormüller — founder of Into Design Systems Romina Kavčič — The Design System Guide — the knowledge-graph-to-pattern work Luke describes Design System Documentation Spec (DSDS) — what you're auditing zeroheight docs against Obsidian and Roam Research — knowledge-graph tools mentioned by Michelle The Information Architecture Conference — Michelle's conference, which usually runs a knowledge graphs workshop n8n — Luke's stacked-agents automation instance Claude Code — used in Luke's Figma-MCP-to-code component flow zeroheight MCP — for the docs-as-context part of that flow Paper — mentioned by Mark in chat for better HTML output Pencil — design-as-code tool with .pen files Penpot — the open-source, web-dev-structured design tool Get in touch Luke on Bluesky Michelle on Bluesky

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  Episode #60

  How do you get research findings back to the design system team?

  Aug 3, 202653 minS2

  Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience. We're all in agreement that UX Research and design systems should work hand in hand. But how do you actually get this to work in practice? How can UX Researchers and design systems folks work best together? What cadence should you be doing things? And should you be included research findings as part of your design system documentation? Show notes Design System Documentation Spec (DSDS) zeroheight MCP zeroheight MCP overview (help docs) Design Systems WTF #39 — Should designers know how to code? zeroheight Design Systems Report Luke on Bluesky Michelle on Bluesky

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  Episode #59

  Is Governance Just Theater?

  Jul 20, 202648 minS2

  Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience. Governance seems to be one of those fancy words that gets thrown around a lot by design system people - but what level of governance is actually worthwhile, and how much of it is theater? Michelle and Luke will dive into governance, what level is good enough, and what bits they think you should scrap. Show notes Brad Frost's governance flowchart — the component approval flow Michelle borrowed and adapted: A Design System Governance Process . Also available as a Figma community file , and his lighter-touch follow-up: Master design system governance with this one weird trick Nathan Curtis on governance and contribution — his writing on contribution models referenced in the episode: Contributions to Design Systems and Team Models for Scaling a Design System Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design by Lisa Welchman — Michelle's book recommendation for adding process in a way that isn't "gross", with a historical look at how web governance emerged: Rosenfeld Media Org Design for Design Orgs by Peter Merholz & Kristin Skinner — Luke's companion-piece recommendation on ritual and process for design teams, transferable to design systems: petermerholz.com / O'Reilly Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul — the Netflix documentary on Juul and "how not to do a startup": Netflix

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  Episode #58

  What do the Config 2026 announcements mean for design systems?

  Jul 13, 202655 minS2

  Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience. Config 2026 happened in San Francisco last week, so we got together straight after the announcements to discuss what the announcements mean for design systems folks - from code on the canvas, to agents, skills, and connectors, to Figma Motion. What will these announcements mean for the work we do day to day? Show notes Blog post - What do the Config 2026 announcements mean for design systems?

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  Episode #57

  ⁠⁠Is driving adoption just a polite way of begging

  Jul 6, 202640 minS2

  Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience. Adoption has been the perennial curse of design systems. Always a problem, never quite fixed, and loads of opinions about how to do it. But are we approaching it in the right way? Michelle and Luke talk about the problem with how adoption has been positioned, whether it's a tactical or cultural thing, and whether the goal should sit with design systems teams or the wider org. Show notes Design Systems are Dead. Long Live Design Systems

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