João Conceição
Design System Team Lead in Lisbon, Portugal
About
I'm a design leader and manager with over a decade of experience in building products. I specialize in design systems, where I lead the design, development, and adoption of these systems. My responsibilities include creating design foundations, design tokens, and component libraries, as well as forming teams to maintain, grow, and promote design systems.
Contact
Work Experience
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Lead the vision, product management, and execution for the design system.
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Manage the design system team.
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Lead a core team within a group of approximately 70 designers.
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Establish and track design system metrics.
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Manage stakeholder relationships.
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Cultivate a dynamic team culture with initiatives like “Sprint Demo” and “Design System Release Party.”
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Enhance internal adoption of the design system through targeted training.
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Implement design tokens for multi-platform applications, reducing inconsistencies.
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Document and standardize design system processes, improving team efficiency.
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Optimize design ops, workflows, and documentation for smoother project execution.
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Lead projects and mentor designers, enhancing team productivity.
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Organize and facilitate design workshops, fostering innovation and collaboration.
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Conduct user interviews and testing, market research, and competitor analysis to inform design decisions.
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Redesign product iconography and establish a new icon system.
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Revamp product UI, typography, color scheme, and components to improve accessibility, developing the first dark theme on the product.
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Create and maintain comprehensive Figma libraries, improving design efficiency.
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Prioritize accessibility and documentation, ensuring industry compliance.
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Provide resources including patterns, best practices, and templates to streamline processes and reduce times.
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User research with internal and external users, driving data-informed decisions.
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Utilize advanced prototyping tools to create high-fidelity prototypes.
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Deliver high-quality products rapidly within cross-functional teams.
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Design responsive web apps, websites, and e-commerce experiences, enhancing clients' digital presence.
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Establish comprehensive design documentation, improving client processes.
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Create and develop UI Kits, streamlining client workflows and increasing efficiency.
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Branding and design pitch decks, enhancing presentations and winning business.
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Utilize HTML, CSS, Webflow, and WordPress, delivering high-quality web solutions.
Speaking
This session guided participants through the basics of design tokens, using easy-to-understand explanations and step-by-step instructions. It showed how to create tokens for common design elements like colors, text styles, and spacing. The session also covered simple strategies for naming and organizing these tokens with a Figma Variables, ensuring that design decisions remained easy to manage, scale, and adapt.
Hear from Luís de Sousa, myself, and Cátia Neves about all the technology and tools used for Design Ops, Design System, and Product Design disciplines, and you can better use them.
As part of World Usability Day and in partnership with Tangível and OutSystems, I developed and facilitated an exclusive workshop released during the conference.
"Design Systems: Plan, Maintain, Measure" guides you through the step-by-step development of a Design System's features, setting goals, and addressing product consistency and coherence
Writing
Certifications
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Maturing Design Systems – Ben Callahan
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Designing Innovative Products and Services – Zuzana Peskova
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Psychology to Build Better Products – Jon Yablonski
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Design Debt – Alicja Suska
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Accessibility for Designers – Stéphanie Walter