— Josh Mateo and Brendon Manwaring, Spotify / Source (Spotify Blog)
Collaboration is the heart of the design system. No matter how good your design system is, as long as users cannot participate they will not understand / accept /apply it.
In general, there was no specific feedback channel from the product teams to the design system. Due to our small team setup we couldn’t have handled more topics. Teams could approach us, but we did not invite them to share their thoughts with us.
Since the project is on GitHub, there is a possibility to open GitHub issues. Getting access to the GitHub project requires a special process, so it doesn’t »happen« to designers to be on GitHub.
Your to do list is always growing. If someone wants to help, you should always be ready to give them everything that they need to help you straight away. Label your issues e.g. with good first issue so that you know at any time what newbies can work on.
— Inayaili de León, Microsoft Azure / Source (YouTube)
Failed design systems are due to a lack of a unified vision, shared language and purpose.
— Jina Anne, Salesforce / Source (YouTube)
The biggest challenge we ever face is the human ego. In the large companies it’s really hard to make your own mark. People find it really hard to show their impact to measure what they’ve achieved. It’s very natural that you would want to make something of your own and then be able to put your name to it. It is very difficult if everyone did that on a huge scale. My approach is to encourage people to put down those trivial individual ownerships and take a bigger ownership in a large endeavor like a design system: Be able to contribute and to get credit.
— Jon Reidy, HSBC / Source (YouTube)
The design system should not inform the product design. The product design should inform the design system. 🔄
— Dan Mall, SuperFriendly / Source (YouTube)
Shared ownership keeps systems alive.