118. Reusability, Collaboration, and Empathy: Catalina Manea on Bridging Design and Development to Build Applications with Design Systems"

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On today's episode of the Design Systems Podcast, we hear from Catalina Manea, Senior Designer at Spelunk, about the crucial intersection of design and development. Catalina shares her journey from graphic design to product and systems design, providing insights into the importance of reusability, cross-functional collaboration, and empathy in building scalable and adaptable design systems. Catalina emphasizes that design systems go beyond UI and consistency—they are powerful tools for enhancing teamwork and agility in fast-paced environments.

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Guest
Catalina Manea has been a system designer since the early stages of her career as a product designer, working with both emerging and established design systems. She has collaborated with cross-functional teams to launch new systems from scratch and has contributed to refining and evolving well-established ones across multiple industries. Throughout Catalina’s career, she has enjoyed mentoring junior designers and sharing insights at industry conferences.

Host
Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, host of @TheDSPod, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter as @chrisstrahl and on LinkedIn.

Sponsor
Sponsored by Knapsack, the design system platform that brings teams together. Learn more at knapsack.cloud.