Design Systems

Emmet discusses how most products degrade over time due to a lack of adherence to a solid design system. It advocates for a "full stack" design system approach that embodies product concepts at every level, from conceptual models and shared language to design resources and code components. This helps create consistent products rather than just consistent UIs. Emmet explains how Intercom uses this approach through examples of their "Conversation" object. Their design system allows them to keep products simple and flexible even as new capabilities are added. This helps prevent products from falling into a "Pit of Complexity" as is common without such a unified design approach.

Jeremy discusses the best practices that his team followed when creating and maintaining the Product Language attributes and component libraries at Lyft.

Jeroen shares his experience bootstrapping a design system and driving adoption within Segment. He shares the technical process and how his team continuse to drive and track adoption of their design system, Evergreen.

Brad outlines the process of establishing a crystal-clear governance process to prevent entropy from taking over your design system.

Kyle discusses his experience, lessons learned, and challenges faced while building Shopify’s design system, Polaris. He emphasizes that the tools are not the system, but the shared language you have with your team.

Karri explains his team’s process for creating the Design System Language for Airbnb. The efforts were in service of creating a more beautiful and accessible design language and driving greater efficiency through well-defined and reusable components.

Ryan explores the topic of what it’s like to support and invest in a design system from the perspective of design management.