— Nathan Curtis / Source (Medium)

— Nathan Curtis / Source (Medium)

The decision whether the design system is a project or a product influences whether a real team is behind it or not. It influences how important the design system will be in the future (= if it will be accepted) and how long it will live.

Team setup

Consider the whole ecosystem

A design system is a product. It has users, roadmaps, releases, features, maintenance, bugs, documentation and support.

— Inayaili de León, Microsoft Azure / Source (YouTube)

Design systems isn’t just product design and development. There’s product management and marketing too. We’re not good at that, nor do we want to be.

— Nathan Curtis / Source (Medium)

https://twitter.com/nathanacurtis/status/656829204235972608

We are mostly refactoring our system – think about the design system as a spiral instead of a linear workflow. It’s not point A to point B. It’s circling and revisiting.

— Jina Anne, Asana / Source (YouTube)

Really, … don’t handle it like a project

Our design system was not a product. It was a by-product of the project »New Brand Design«. Our design system project had no regular meetings, no ticket system and no roadmap. As the New Brand Design project was »completed« after 2.5 years, the maintenance of the design system was then handed over to all internal product teams.

<aside> 🕵🏻 Real life check Without the elements of a product team, it is not possible to meet important factors of a design system which build trust and increase the acceptance.

</aside>

— Anna Stumpf, SinnerSchrader

Collaboration

Contribution

Document everything

(Beta) states