Config 2026 - Recap

I loved this talk by Lauren LoPrete. It told a great story using punk music venues to teach principles for fostering creativity within structure. Key takeaways:

• Lauren says, "I didn't go to art school to become a cop," and she's always cared more about building the conditions for great work than policing who gets to make it.
• Design systems work has drifted into compliance work — teams meant to lower barriers and raise quality have started acting like gatekeepers, adding stricter standards, more approval gates, more process.
• AI tools are democratizing production the way the Xerox machine did for punk zines and flyers — when the means of production become this accessible, the scene grows, and you can't govern it the old way.
• Her framework — "design systems anarchy": modeled on how punk scenes built infrastructure for creative chaos instead of containing it; the venues that lasted had the clearest values and the most trust.
• Conviction as a container, not a cage — hold firmly to core principles, and let everything else flex.
• Build "scenes instead of systems, venues instead of vaults."
• A design system was never supposed to be permanent. It was supposed to be alive.

Ben Shown and Megan Greco got to design with the funnest team at NASA. Some highlights:

• NASA's redesign succeeded because it grounded decisions in audience motivations, not just demographics, using an alternative to personas, they called "Thinking Styles", to identify how people approach problems differently.
• The team used a research-led, low-fi-first process: large-scale survey work, in-depth interviews, rough concept exploration, and repeated stakeholder critique to get better strategic feedback faster.
• Outcome was not just a visual refresh but a scalable system: Horizon gave NASA a consistent design foundation across thousands of sites and supported products like NASA.gov, NASA+, and the Space App Challenge platform.

BTW, it was fun to see these "Thinking Styles" illustrated using Muppets characters: Miss Piggy is the Pragmatist, Beaker is the Learner, Gonzo is the Explorer, and Kermit is the Connector.

Ryan Powell shared how Waymo is designing for legibility in autonomous vehicles.

• The goal is to make the vehicle's intentions clear to pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers.
• They are using a combination of visual signals, sounds, and vehicle behavior to communicate with the environment.
• One interesting point was how they are testing these signals in real-world scenarios to ensure they are intuitive and effective.
• It's a fascinating intersection of design, technology, and human behavior.

Of course, I had to include another Waymo ride while in SF. It was a fun experience to see the design decisions in action.