Conference Agenda March 2026

Complete schedule for Into Design Systems Conference 2026. March 19-20 online. 14+ sessions on AI Design Systems, Vibe Coding, MCP integrations. Speakers from WhatsApp, Miro, Indeed, Adobe, GitHub, Figma.

Day 1 - March 19, 2026

• Prototyping for the unknown by Nate Baldwin (5:00 PM - 6:00 PM)
• WhatsApp Web: Reclaiming UI Excellence through Vibe Coding by Sebastian Rousseau (6:00 PM - 7:00 PM)
• Product Primitives: The New Material of Design System by Yesenia Perez-Cruz (7:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
• The path to an AI enabled design system: Our approach and lessons learned by Andressa Lombardo & Eddie Machado (8:00 PM - 9:00 PM)
• Agentic Design Systems by Romina Kavcic (9:30 PM - 10:30 PM)
• I'm not an engineer but I ship code: How designers can ship production code and work like an engineer by Freya Stockman (10:30 PM - 11:30 PM)
• Context > Probability: Design systems as AI infrastructure by Jesse Gardner (11:30 PM - 12:30 AM)
• Encoding governance on agentic design systems by Cristian Morales Achiardi (12:30 AM - 1:30 AM)

Day 2 - March 20, 2026

• Building real design systems with agents by Jan Six (5:00 PM - 6:00 PM)
• Vibe coding with zero drift: from Figma to Storybook to Production by Shuaiqi (Mr.Biscuit) Sun (6:00 PM - 7:00 PM)
• Machine-Readable Design Systems for MCP and LLMs by Diana Wolosin (7:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
• From falling for markdown to solving real problems with scripts by Laura Fehre (8:00 PM - 9:00 PM)
• Ship It! Vibe Coding Your First Figma Plugin by Davy Fung (9:30 PM - 10:30 PM)
• Designers Who Ship: Building a Real Plugin in 48 Hours with AI by Casandra Sandu, Christoph Hellmuth & Raquel Pereira (10:30 PM - 11:30 PM)
• AI Without the Chaos: Context-Based Design Systems to the Rescue by Brad Frost, Ian Frost & TJ Pitre (11:30 PM - 12:30 AM)

Context > Probability: Design systems as AI infrastructure

In large organizations, small differences add up. Teams solve the same problems in slightly different ways: different constraints, budgets, skill sets, vendors. This leads to tech debt and a fragmented experience for users. And AI may just make things worse by speeding up that fragmentation.

AI doesn't know what's _right_. It only knows what's _likely_. Probability isn't enough when you're building for millions of people who need consistent, reliable access to services like healthcare, housing, or help.

But a well-structured design system gives AI something it can't get from training data: your design and engineering decisions, encoded as infrastructure. Instead of making slop design and engineering decisions, AI relies on your guidance to wire together pieces you've already built and tested.

We'll look at real examples from the New York State Design System, like quickly turning a 5-page PDF form into an accessible web application. And we'll go through how Figma, Code Connect, and MCP servers provide layers of guidance that keep designers in the loop while giving AI guardrails that scale.

This isn't about limiting creativity. It's about coordinating work across dozens of agencies to create a consistent experience for the people depending on it (and for the people who have to build and maintain it).

Key Learnings

• How to make AI speed work with consistency and accessibility
• How to turn your design decisions into infrastructure AI can follow
• What designers should actually be learning right now

Who is this for

Designers wondering what skills actually matter in an AI-assisted future. Design system folks and engineers figuring out how to make AI workflows scale. Product leads thinking about governance, sustainability, and unifying systems. No deep AI or coding background required.

Speaker

Jesse Gardner, Director, User Research at New York State. Jesse oversees the New York State Design System and Accessibility teams, supporting 45+ agencies serving 20 million residents. He spends his days supporting state teams by turning design decisions into infrastructure. Lately, he's been figuring out how to get AI to do more reliable building and less guessing.

Tags: Design Systems, AI