Henry
Daggett

ABOUT ME

Hello, hello! I’m Henry — a Product Designer & Design Systems Specialist focused on helping designers and developers create together. I’ve worked for seven years in Design and for the last four I’ve led the Design System at Societe Generale while also working on an array of complex products and launching my own internal product. I’m a lover of painting, experimenting with food and more recently menswear.

WHAT I DO

I love working on complex tools and systems, while getting involved in all parts of design and devlopment — I'm happy getting stuck into anything! I have experience building a wide range of complex products and specific skills in all areas of running a Design System, from day to day component design to road-mapping and strategy. I have advanced Figma and front-end knowledge for working with Designers and Developers. I’m comfortable with complexity, project ownership and writing, editing and speaking. I also take on painting commissions in my free time!

TALKS & WRITING

• “Design Tokens: Powering your Design System”

  IxDF

  MASTERCLASS — 2024

• “Design Systems: How to Craft Successful Components”

  IxDF

  MASTERCLASS — 2024

• “He made 100s of Figma variables a day after launch”

  Paavan/Youtube

  INTERVIEW — 2024

• “Beyond Adoption — Using Data in the Design System Lifecycle”

  Omlet

  QUOTE — 2024

• “Governance Best Practices”

  Zeroheight

  PANEL — 2023

• “How to Survive Design Systems”

  Design Systems London #7

  TALK — 2023

• “Surviving Design Systems”

  SG Design

  ARTICLE — 2023

• “Future of Design Systems...into 2023”

  Zeroheight

  QUOTE — 2022

• “Taming Chaos: Design System Governance at Scale”

  SG Design

  ARTICLE — 2020

SG DESIGN SYSTEM /
DESIGN SYSTEM LEAD
2019 — PRESENT

Over the past four years I’ve lead the delivery of SG’s Design System. This has included Figma libraries, web components and bespoke documentation used in over 800 products. I’ve worked on keeping the system alive with hundreds of updates, forming a successful “Design System Council” and I've overseen the adoption of a new business line and sale of the system usage to an external provider.

Operationally I have lead our small Design System council of four people and managed all road-maps and contributions from 40+ Designers and Developers. I am an expert in managing Design Systems in Figma and contribute significantly to the front-end builds of the web libraries.

SG DESIGN LAB /
PRODUCT OWNER & DESIGNER
2019 — PRESENT

I won an internal SG Digital Innovation Award in 2023 for my work on a tool called “Design Lab”, which began as a side project to help review Design -> Code. I negotiated budget to build the tool into an official product which has since grown to over 2000 regular users and 1100 editors, with a 7 minute average visit time. Use of the tool was also included in a deal with a client.

I expanded the feature set to become a main handover tool linking Figma libraries and bespoke documentation site. Designed the complete product but also built two major features which allow component libraries to be previewed and inserted into code.

VARIOUS SG PROJECTS /
PRODUCT DESIGNER
2018 — PRESENT

I’ve also worked on around 20 other SG projects with various business lines since I joined in 2018. Project highlights include a global control risk service which saves the bank over £1m a year in vendor fees, a Prime Services platform of trading tools for Prime brokerage, an eSignature tool which all SG clients use to sign contracts and a Task aggregator that’s able to collect tasks from any SG service and manage them all in a single interface.

FREELANCE /
UX DESIGNER & PRIVATE TUTOR
2017 — 2018

With an Asset Management business I reworked the flow to client’s accounts and increased site traffic over 300%. I’ve created product strategy and websites for a recruitment startup, leading to the one of the largest student blockchain conferences.
I also worked with Tavistock Tutors as a Fine art and Design tutor, teaching students and professionals 16-50+ drawing, painting and architectural design.

BA HONS ARCHITECTURE
CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS
GRAD. 2017

I studied Architecture at Central Saint Martins, where I understood that what I loved about design was creating "experiences". Architecture has a suprisingly large overlap with Digital Product design, from user centricity all the way to Design Systems. My final thesis focused on movements in the arts, and whether post-post modernism would be possible.

ABOUT THIS SITE

When it comes to web development I’m bit of a purist, so I built this site just with HTML/CSS and minimal JS. It’s then all hosted for free on Github/Vercel. If you want to learn how then feel free to reach out! Design wise I’ve been obsessing over baseline grids recently, so if you display the grid you’ll see my lovely 16px baseline. I’m quite looking forward to leading-trim on web!

© Henry Daggett 2024

Thank you!