đź“ť Articles
The Design System Dream Team
Dave outlines the challenges faced by design system teams, highlighting the overwhelming number of responsibilities that often lead to deprioritisation of essential tasks. He proposes a restructured approach by dividing the team into four dedicated squads—Delivery, Documentation, Discovery, and Community—each focused on specific activities to enhance efficiency and output. This model aims to address the unique needs of design systems, recognising that while a dream team may encompass various roles, smaller teams can still thrive by prioritising key functions and maintaining a realistic workload.
Figma Branches Best Practices
Jason shares best practices for effectively managing Figma branches to enhance team collaboration and streamline the merging process. He emphasises the importance of team consensus on branching strategies, as well as the need for clear naming conventions to simplify navigation. Coordinating who works on each branch helps prevent conflicts, while timely closure of branches reduces confusion. Occhipinti also recommends using sandbox branches for experimentation and encourages involving the entire team in the merging process to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing. Ultimately, maintaining strong communication is key to leveraging Figma branches successfully.
Creating the Amenities Icon Suite for Eurostars Hotel Company
Giuliana shares the process of designing the Amenities Icon Suite for Eurostars Hotel Company, creating a cohesive, minimalistic icon family that balances consistency and usability across six distinct hotel brands. By combining thorough inventorying, iterative design, and systematic categorisation, she delivered a scalable library of 155 icons in two sizes, tailored to enhance the user experience while supporting Eurostars’ branding.
đź‘€ Interesting Reads
Top Data-Driven Design Systems To Inspire Your Metrics Tracking – Blog – Supernova.io
Nazar discusses the importance of embedding robust metrics into design systems to balance creativity with measurable results, highlighting how this approach can enhance team collaboration and efficiency. The article examines several data-driven design systems, including Hotmart, Badoo, Preply, Productboard, Twilio, and Onfido, each showcasing unique measurement strategies. By tracking metrics such as component usage, adoption rates, and team feedback, these organizations can optimize workflows and ensure their design systems evolve in response to user needs, ultimately fostering innovation and consistency.
The Future of AI-assisted Design Systems: Predictions and Use Cases
Beatriz discusses how the integration of AI in design systems is progressing slowly, with many organizations still hesitant due to privacy concerns and a lack of expertise. Despite these challenges, there is growing interest in leveraging AI for tasks such as documentation generation and automating design-to-code workflows, indicating potential for more streamlined processes and improved accessibility in the future.
The future of design systems is decentralized
Oscar discusses the potential of decentralised design systems, drawing parallels with natural and technological networks that thrive on collaboration and organic evolution. By shifting from a centralised model to a more distributed approach, design systems can better adapt to user needs, foster innovation, and enhance resilience, ultimately leading to a more inclusive and effective design process. This evolution requires rethinking roles and responsibilities, allowing teams to collaborate freely while maintaining core principles.
🧰 Tools / Resources
SCALES - Design Tokens Starter Set
Scales offers a comprehensive Design Tokens starter set featuring over 250 pre-configured tokens for seamless integration with Figma and Tokens Studio. Created by Philipp Jeroma, this free tool simplifies the setup process, providing a structured starting point for building a scalable design system.
VariablesToCode
VariablesToCode is a Figma plugin that converts design system variables into production-ready code across multiple platforms, enhancing collaboration between design and development. It supports various formats, including Android (XML), iOS (Swift), Flutter (Dart), Web (CSS), and JSON, while accommodating different variable types such as color, number, string, and boolean.