Into Design Systems Meetup at SURF Incubator - Seattle, USA
Into Design Systems Meetup in Seattle, WA! 🇺🇸 🥳 Join our casual, friendly in-person DS event at SURF Incubator in Seattle, generously sponsored by our friends at Knapsack!
👩🏻💻👨🏾💻🧑🏼💻 Who is this for?
EVERYONE is welcome: designers, developers, POs, PMs, managers, researchers, accessibility specialists, freelancers, founders, professionals, students - anybody! 🤗
🚨 Please note that there is limited seating/registration for this event - please only register if you are able to attend this meetup in-person in Seattle, WA. 💗
✨ For this event, our topic is AI!✨ We are featuring a talk by one of our very own local DS voices Pegah Ahmadi, and also an interactive workshop & presentation by the amazing TJ Pitre!
Agenda:
12:00 PM - Doors, check-in & lunch (pizza!)
12:30 PM - Welcome & Introduction
12:40 PM - 1:00 PM - "System Gaze: Seeing Bias, Shaping Trust" - talk & presentation by featured speaker Pegah Ahmadi - past Design Systems at Nike, Grubhub & Morningstar
When we design systems, whether AI systems powered by algorithms and data or design systems powered by tokens and components, we are also designing perception. These systems quietly decide what’s visible, what’s hidden, and what feels trustworthy. I call this the System Gaze: the lens through which systems shape what we see and believe. In this talk, we’ll explore how bias enters invisibly, why trust is so fragile, and how stories can guide our ethical choices. Walk away with language and frameworks to help their teams see bias more clearly and design for trust in an age of intelligent tools.
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM - "Context-Based Design Systems in the Age of AI" - Interactive AI Workshop by featured speaker & instructor TJ Pitre - Founder & CEO at Southleft
Design systems are shifting from static component libraries to intelligent, context-aware ecosystems. In this workshop with TJ, you’ll start with a presentation on the concept of Context-Based Design Systems and why context matters more than components alone.
From there, TJ will demonstrate the full lifecycle - from enhancing your existing Figma project, to analyzing and adjusting component metadata and properties, to generating production-ready components with the Figma MCP. You’ll also see how Knapsack’s MCP fits into the picture, alongside Story UI and other AI-powered tools.
After the demo, participants will have the opportunity to jump in hands-on with a shared boilerplate repo and Figma file. We’ll build components together, experiment with MCP workflows, and even handle the inevitable “things breaking” moments, because improving design systems is about responding to real-world friction, not chasing perfection.
We’ll wrap with a discussion and Q&A to ground these ideas in practical implementation.
Presentation (15 min): Intro to context-based design systems slide deck
Live demo (45–50 min):
Figma project → components → metadata adjustments
Figma MCP in action
Tools overview: FigmaLint, Knapsack & Design Systems Assistant MCPs
Story UI demo
Hands-on (45–60 min):
Guided component build
Open exploration with prompts and AI-powered component development
Q&A / Discussion (20–30 min)
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM - Networking & Fun 🧃🍕👫
🥤🍽️ Food & beverages will be provided.
👋 Your friendly hosts & IDS Seattle Chapter Team:
❖ Amy Ogg - Senior Product Designer, Design Systems @Ensora Health & Seattle Chapter Lead for Into Design Systems USA
❖ Dale Sande - Principal Engineer & Accessibility Specialist @Alaska Airlines
❖ Jesse Clark - Senior Technical Lead - Design Systems @Cisco
❖ Feng Tien - UX Designer @Costco Wholesale
We can't wait to see you there!
💖 Your Design System Friends
Parking & Venue
SURF Incubator is located on the 7th floor of the Wells Fargo Building/DocuSign Tower. Elevators are marked per the floors that they access, so you will need to choose the elevators marked in the range for the 7th floor.
If you are driving, nearby paid parking is available in the Wells Fargo Parking Garage or the 4th & Madison Parking Garage.
Our Sponsor
💠 Knapsack
Knapsack is the infrastructure that powers how enterprises build, deliver, and govern digital products at scale. By connecting design and code into a real-time system of record, product teams move faster today and are ready for AI-native production tomorrow.