Announcing Schema, Figma’s design systems conference

Today, we’re opening registration for Schema, Figma’s user conference on all things design systems. Check out speakers and the agenda, and read on to learn more about what to expect.

Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of interest, technology, and communities built around design systems. As organizations of all sizes scale their design operations, systems play a critical role in enabling product teams to move faster, more consistently, and adapt to evolving business needs.

Back when I first learned about systems as a designer, everything was much more static and linear. Designers built and shared PDF style guides, which served as documentation for reusable design decisions. Developers interpreted those guides into a stylesheet that closely resembled decisions in code. These workflows were often siloed across tools and teams, making alignment challenging—particularly amongst design adjacent collaborators. (If you’ve ever received mockups of rectangles in a slide deck, you know what I’m talking about!)

We have come a long way since then. Today, the landscape is built around collaboration, visibility, and flexible tooling—all in the name of creating shared understanding. During my time at Figma, I’ve have had the opportunity to meet so many amazing design systems practitioners, from those working on smaller teams where their design system is a grassroots effort, to others at large organizations with dedicated design systems and operations teams.

Above all, they’re deeply motivated by helping others. They take great pride in building systems that allow teams to spend less time thinking about organization and processes, and more on solving tough problems. And what’s even more encouraging is that cross-functional contributors, who may have never found themselves in a design tool five years ago, are now more integrated into the design process.

At Figma, we think a lot about these challenges through the lens of the product. Libraries, components and styles are part of it, but we also know how important communication, measurement, and contribution are to the people creating resources to help others. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, everyone—regardless of their organization’s scale—is still figuring it out!

That's why we’ve created a space to do just that. Introducing: Schema, a conference focused on building, scaling, and contributing to design systems.

Here is everything you need to know:

When: October 7, 2021 at 8:30am PT

Where: Virtual

Who should apply

This event is for you if you’re:

• A design systems or design ops leader
• Formalizing your first design system or working on design systems at scale
• On a team looking to expand and customize your workflows with tooling on Figma APIs

How to attend

We are aiming to create a conference where meaningful conversations can happen. To that end, we're limiting the number of live attendees and asking that those interested apply to attend. We are accepting applications on a rolling basis and will get back to you within three business days. The last day to apply is Monday, October 4th, 2021.

If you’re unable to join us live, we’ll post the talks from Schema online—they will be available for free to everyone in the Figma Community.

What to expect

You will hear from practitioners at companies big and small. The sessions will assume an intermediate level of understanding about design systems and fall into one of three categories:

• Build: Practical tips for building design systems of all sizes
• Scale: Learnings on driving adoption, measuring ROI, and extending operability with plugins and tools
• Contribute: Best practices on how to build an internal community so that teams feel empowered to improve the design system

For all the details, including more about the topics and speakers, head to schema.figma.com. We hope to see you there!