Fieldnotes #05
Design system governance discussions, a great a11yMCR meetup, and too much coffee.
Work
Heavy governance week. We’re working through how to structure contribution to the design system — who can raise issues, how proposals get reviewed, when things get merged vs. documented as patterns. It’s the kind of work that feels slow in the moment but pays massive dividends later.
Had a good conversation about the distinction between components and patterns — a component is a UI building block, a pattern is a documented solution to a recurring design problem. Sometimes they overlap, but conflating them leads to a component library that grows without purpose.
a11yMCR
We had a meetup this week and it was one of the better ones. Two brilliant speakers — one on cognitive accessibility in forms (endlessly underappreciated topic), one on automated testing tooling and its limitations. The Q&A after both was lively.
If you’re in the Manchester area and care about accessibility, come along. It’s free, friendly, and full of people who want to make the web better.
Too Much Coffee
Not a section header I expected to write, but here we are. The festive season brings with it an unreasonable number of coffee meetings and I have accepted my fate.