Murphy Trueman

I gave UI components D&D Challenge Ratings based on how dangerous they become when misused.

The Data Table is CR 8. Legendary. It has consumed entire sprints.

The summoner bears responsibility for what they've conjured.

thecomponentbestiary.com

Building for coherence, not compliance Lessons from Baldurs Gate 3 on contracts, governance, and judgment at the edges

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 most evenings this week, and somewhere between character creation and my third failed persuasion roll, I stopped thinking about the game and started thinking about design systems.

blog.murphytrueman.com/p/building-f...

PRAYING my coilovers arrive this week 😩

Thanks so much @samiamdesigns.bsky.social! 🫶 Glad you enjoyed it!

We're getting better at the workaround On Figma's code-to-canvas announcement, and why smoother translation might be making the structural problem harder to fix

We built Figma to solve the problem of sharing component code. It worked.

Then the tooling became the deliverable and we stopped asking what it was for.

Agentic tools are doing the same thing.

blog.murphytrueman.com/p/were-getti...

All I want to do is work on my car 😩😩😩

What I stole from API documentation Patterns from Stripe, GitHub, and Twilio that fixed my component architecture

New post!

blog.murphytrueman.com/p/what-i-sto...

Accessibility For Everyone by Laura Kalbag Read the book online for free.

My book, Accessibility For Everyone, is now free and online as a website.

accessibilityforeveryone.site

The book was first published by A Book Apart in 2017 but it holds up! It covers web accessibility for designers, developers, content folks, and really everyone who works in tech.

I haven’t been able to find my kindle since we moved and it’s INCREDIBLY frustrating.

Drawing explaining and depicting MCP, going into the purpose, host, protocol, and server.

✍️ Just finished another code drawing in my AI series, this one's about MCP in practice. Enjoy!

Your design system has opinions. They're just not being enforced Why validation is the missing layer between documentation and adoption

Your design system has opinions. They’re just not being enforced.

Backend teams don’t scale API quality with docs and good intentions, they scale it with validation.

UI still leans on trust: guidance, reviews, and tribal knowledge.

open.substack.com/pub/murphytr...

Thanks so much @donnavitan.bsky.social! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

You're right, it can happen in a number of different ways. The two you've mentioned above are some of the most challenging to add guardrails against.

In the case of the article, I focused on those more specific examples. But can definitely look at expanding in future!

Thanks for catching that; I've updated that URL now.

And thank you for sharing! I'll bookmark that link and give it a read through over my morning coffee ☕

It’s wild that some people consider using precise punctuation a "red flag" for AI content.

We’ve reached a truly bizarre era of literacy.

Stop policing your design system Measure health, not compliance

Manual governance can't scale. By the time you catch violations in quarterly audits, they're already shipped & expensive to fix. Production systems solved this with continuous monitoring and automated checks.

I wrote about treating design systems like production infrastructure 👇

When conversation leads: Rethinking design systems for a world where intent comes first How conversational interaction is changing what design systems are actually for

Most design systems assume interaction starts with a component. Conversation breaks that immediately.

In my latest article, I wrote about the building blocks conversational systems actually need 👇
murphytrueman.substack.com/p/when-conve...

The timing problem in design systems How perfectionism kills component adoption faster than bad code

Also available on Medium: murphytrueman.medium.com/the-timing-p...

The timing problem in design systems How perfectionism kills component adoption faster than bad code

New post alert! #DesignSystems

blog.murphytrueman.com/p/the-timing...

The AI feedback loop: When design systems train the models that critique them AI is learning from our design systems, and quietly reshaping them in return. Here’s what that feedback loop means for consistency, drift…

AI learns from your design system, generates new components, those get used, AI learns from those.

Each iteration pulls your system closer to what AI thinks is "correct", smoothing away what made it yours.

✍️ On the feedback loop & monoculture risk:
murphytrueman.medium.com/the-ai-feedb...

Your Tokens Have Become Infrastructure, by @murphytrueman.bsky.social:

https://archive.ph/3nnSA

#designtokens #designsystems

Thankyou for sharing!

Simplifying APIs: A designer’s guide to better collaboration A practical guide for designers to demystify APIs, navigate documentation, and create smarter, more connected experiences.

APIs shape the product experience long before UI work begins.

In this article, Thinkmill designer @murphytrueman.bsky.social shares how designers can collaborate on API design using systems thinking.

👉 blog.murphytrueman.com/p/simplifyin...

🎉 Happy article day!
My latest post explores the control paradox in design systems

open.substack.com/pub/murphytr...

The world feels awfully empty once baseball season ends.

The bidirectional design system: When code talks back to design How AI is shifting design systems from one-way handoffs to continuous, two-way sync – and what that means for how we build products

Figma’s Schema 2025 quietly set the stage for something big – design systems that talk back.

The groundwork for bidirectional systems: ones that learn from code instead of just dictating to it.

👉 Check out the my latest article: open.substack.com/pub/murphytr...

#DesignSystems

Design System Audit | Improve product velocity and alignment – Thinkmill Understand how your design system supports – or slows – product delivery. Thinkmill’s Design System Audits reveal gaps between design and engineering, helping teams align, scale, and deliver faster wi...

Like any other product, design systems need testing and iteration.

Our Design System Audit help your team see whether your system is accelerating delivery, or quietly slowing it down.

💡 Find out more: www.thinkmill.com.au/services/des...

#DesignSystems

Your tokens have become infrastructure How to build systems that survive scale, governance, and AI

I also cross-post my articles on Medium, if that's more your thing. Check out the article here:

murphytrueman.medium.com/your-tokens-...

Your tokens have become infrastructure How to build systems that survive scale, governance, and AI

If changing a token feels scary, you’ve already built infrastructure.

My latest post breaks down what that means – and how to make it safe again.

Your tokens have become infrastructure →
open.substack.com/pub/murphytr...

Accessibility problems are often system problems. Fixing them means understanding where they start – in patterns, components, and process.

This is how we help teams make accessibility scale at @thinkmill.com.au

If that’s what you’re aiming for, let’s talk about how to get there 🫶