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Best Talk Finalist

What to Do When Everyone Hates You (and Your Design System)

Diane Larsen

A summary of the talk

Diane shares a candid, funny, and deeply practical story of scaling Tesco’s Digital Design System (DDS) across a 105-year-old, enterprise-scale organization. Starting from a “wild west” of inconsistent experiences, she maps the long arc from initial resistance to broad adoption: pivoting first to low-risk sites, building engineering allies (“Beans” component library), proving value with real product metrics, and weathering reorgs. She tackles the recurring critique that design systems “limit creativity” by reframing creativity as freedom within shared constraints and by opening clear contribution pathways. The talk culminates in Tesco’s governance model – Foundations → Global components → Platform components → Product components → Snowflakes – which balances autonomy with consistency and keeps the system evolving without the core team becoming a blocker.

Highlight

“I liked her breakdown of different types of components that have different levels of reach, and therefore governance, within a system:” - Converge attendee

Watch the video

Timeline

  1. Nominations will be open from Tuesday 13 May. If you have any questions about the nomination process, then check out the FAQs, or if your question isn't answered, please get in touch at community@zeroheight.com

    13 May, 2025

  2. Once the nominations are closed, we'll be collating the longlist and working through it to determine a shortlist. The shortlist will be determined by the team at zeroheight, and will be based on uniform judging criteria (which we will share in a month or two). With the shortlist creation, we aim to remove as much bias as possible and give everyone a fair chance across the board.

    22 August, 2025

  3. In September, the shortlist will be announced, including public voting! We'll notify all folks as to whether they made the shortlist. The judges will then individually judge each shortlisted entry. We'll also have public voting on each category live on the site!

    15 September, 2025

  4. Once all the judges and public votes are counted, we'll then be able to determine the winner for each category, based off a weighted compilation of votes.

    3 November, 2025

  5. In December, we'll gather the community together at an event in London to announce the winners live. We'll also be live-streaming the ceremony for those who can't make it. The live event will be invite only, but we'll offer the community a chance to apply for a ticket later in the year! We'll also post the results to the zeroheight site the day after the event.

    December 2025 (TBA)

Past Winners