Great conversation the other day with @ToddRoss of @FourKitchens about the design system and content architecture crossover. Touched on the idea that content and design can be analogized to script and cinematography in film. Different languages that have to work together.
I’ve mentioned @FoldableHuman’s excellent video essay on the concept of “Ludonarrative Dissonance” in video games, where the mechanics of the game convey a message that conflicts with the “story” of the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04zaTjuV60A
One of the things he emphasizes is that it can happen in film, too, not just games — it can happen in film (“This character is a strong, independent protagonist!” says the script, but “This character is eye candy” says the camera).
That dissonance doesn’t mean that one of them is bad and the other is good; it means they’re not in alignment around the story they are supposed to be telling together. Which brings us back to content modeling and design system component libraries…
The toughest, tangliest client challenges we see aren’t the result of a team doing a bad job at making a design system, or creating a bad content model. They come when different teams make models and components and tools that are trying to accomplish different goals…
As we talked through it, @ToddRoss raised an excellent question: Whose job is that in most organizations? Who, by analogy, is the “showrunner” whose job isn’t to write every script or plan every shot, but to make sure those things are telling the right story, together?
The answer of course, is that in most organization it’s no-one’s. Maintaining that kind of coherence might nominally fall under “brand strategy”, but there are plenty of ways two systems can be consistent with the brand but inconsistent with each other.