zero added sugar

Topic

Design systems

A collection of 15 issues

Design system contribution retrospective

If you set up inbound contribution model in the org, and your design system accepts changes from outside the home team, running a retrospective on such episodes is a great way to improve the process and support other teams. Meeting The format of the meeting that I found working pretty

Mistakes made when setting up contribution process for the design system

Introducing an inbound feature request and/or contribution process in the org? Betting it’ll help the core design system team make the design system and all its users more successful? I’d been there, I’d made a few mistakes, and I’d like to share them — no sugar,

Communication plan for design system teams

One thing I’ve found very valuable for platform-level teams, including design system teams, is having a communication plan. One that describes topics, preferable level of detail, frequency of push/pull updates, and people/roles involved. Such a simple document can save a lot of frustration for the people involved

Decision-making velocity and deviation in design systems

When you start building a design system, the team is new, the topic is new, people in the organization are hopeful but mostly unaware of the challenge, and it’s important to pick a strategy in the beginning. Two options are “do things right” and “do things fast”. I chose

Get past the high fan-in dependency mess

A design system team is in the organization to serve the entire organization. With this mindset, I started running a design system team and very soon found myself debugging the organization, where that team was being declared as a “dependency” or, occasionally, a “blocker” to most other teams. What happened?

Expectations and responsibilities for design system teams

Part of starting a design system team is hiring. Design system is essentially a platform team, and such team needs people with special skills to be successful. When they get on board, they need a clear set of expectations and a launchpad for their career at the company. The tool

How to staff a design system team

When setting up a brand new UI platform team back in late 2019, there were two things I wish I knew: how to staff a design system team and how to do that in the beginning of a pandemic. Let’s focus on the former today.

Always be listening

Go out and listen to what people say about your design system and what you could be doing better.

Internal onboarding for design system teams

A new person joins a design system team you’re running. What information would you need to make it a pleasant few weeks?

Design system work throughput

Design system work involves lots of people. How do you measure your team’s productivity in this chaos?