As a passionate advocate for design systems, I was thrilled to be involved in the development of Autodesk's Weave Design System. Throughout this period, I actively participated in component reviews and provided numerous recommendations on interactions and component prioritization. The Weave system is comprehensive and includes all necessary components. However, the implementations selected by the company were not directly compatible with Windows-based desktop applications.

To achieve our division's goals of integrating Weave into our products, we identified the need for a Windows-based implementation. Leveraging my prior experience with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), I spearheaded the creation of a WPF implementation for Weave.

Collaborating closely with a software architect, I immediately engaged with the code. Over the course of a quarter, I developed the foundational styles required to demonstrate the concept. Our approach was to avoid reinventing any controls already provided by the framework, allowing us to seamlessly upgrade existing UI that utilized base WPF controls. Nevertheless, this approach presented challenges when communicating with the organization, primarily due to naming conflicts between controls. For instance, the Weave component was referred to as an Accordion, while the WPF control was called an Expander.

To validate the implementation, we developed a Test App and collaborated with four internal teams to implement their feature UI using the toolkit. Following the successful implementation, we secured funding for a small team to fully develop the design system with WPF and integrate it into our product. In this new team, I assumed the role of product manager, where I defined priorities, selected components for implementation, and worked to achieve official Weave implementation status for our toolkit.

My contributions were recognized by Autodesk leadership. I was honored with the Q3 XA MVP Award for my leadership in the development of the Weave WPF Toolkit by Senior VP of Design, Joanna Cook. Additionally, I was awarded Platform Champion by our CEO, Andrew Anagnost. He remarked, “Thank you for acting with a platform-first approach. Rather than waiting for something, going around the platform solutions, or taking a fast but inferior approach; you decided to collaborate with the steward and inner source a new solution for the Weave Design System.”