Earlier to this, back around 2013-14, I had experimented with conversion of design files (PSD/AI/PDF etc.) to style-guide ( with conversion of design files (PSD/AI/PDF etc.) to PDF specs documents) through prototypes like Specstra as an early attempt to bring automation into design process to reduce the manual intervention around drafting style guides. through prototypes like Specstra as an early attempt to bring automation into design process to reduce the manual intervention around drafting style guides.

After my time at IBM, joining Red Hat marked a significant new chapter of learning. On my joining day, I received Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst's book, The Open Organization, which I still keep close to this day. The book's emphasis on how horizontal organizations can thrive sparked the idea of democratizing design operations through the principles of the DevOps mindset—what I later coined as DesOps.

Earlier to this, back around 2013-14, the design automation journey I had started at Samsung with Specstra, which focused on design handoff, began to evolve into something bigger. My deep dive into Agile and Design Thinking at IBM also played a crucial role, allowing me to see the design process from a fresh, more holistic perspective.

In June 2018, I published an article on Red Hat Developers' blog titled DesOps is "DevOps 2.0," where I introduced a new approach to design operations that I had been conceptualizing for some time. I called this mindset "DesOps," drawing inspiration from the DevOps philosophy to create a more efficient, modular approach to design. This article marked the beginning of a deeper exploration into how design processes could be made more fluid and integrated across teams, tools, and workflows.

One of the key ideas I developed during this period was the concept of modular process blocks within an end-to-end design process.

I began advocating for the idea of atomic process blocks as the building blocks of design operations, believing that breaking down complex workflows into smaller, manageable units would streamline the overall process. This approach allowed for greater flexibility and adaptability, enabling teams to work more effectively across various stages of design.

As my understanding of DesOps evolved, I realized that the existing Atomic Model, while effective, could be further enhanced to create a more semantic and open design system. This new model would enable design systems to translate more easily across different platforms and tools, offering a universal approach to design that could be applied in a variety of contexts. This vision ultimately shaped my continued work in design operations and the development of more adaptable, scalable design systems.

To ensure the model was truly semantic, I explored the possibility of using ontologies to build a foundational design system structure. By incorporating frameworks like OWL (Web Ontology Language) and RDFs (Resource Description Framework), I aimed to create a more meaningful and structured approach to design systems. This allowed the system to not only define elements and components but also capture their relationships and interactions in a machine-readable format.

With OWL and RDFs, the goal was to move beyond traditional atomic design principles and create a system that could understand context and semantics, allowing for more intelligent design decisions across platforms. This structure helped ensure that design elements could be consistently reused and translated, preserving their meaning in different applications or environments.

I eventually hosted the semantic model on PURL (Persistent Uniform Resource Locator), making it accessible and open to others who might want to build upon or integrate it into their own design systems. This however I left it after a time realizing GenAI being capable of understanding the semantics without the need of such ontologies and the same can be managed using tuning of LLM and GPT type models. You can read about the process in my book "DesOps Enterprise" and the slides shared on this page.

Semantic Design System - Examples of Nuclear Design Model

Slides: DevConf 2018 DesOps ... (2018)

3 Steps for building design eco-systems ... (2019)

Slides Semantic Design System (2018)