Introducing the Design Systems Essentials Series

We’re kicking off a new series Design Systems Essentials where we’ll cover the basics and best practices every design system needs to get started. If you’re just beginning, untangling, or redoing your design system, this is the series for you! Figuring out where to begin with or improve a design system can be intimidating for sure. Our series will walk you through three main design system pillars to set you up for success:

Illustration of a building with three pillars each in a different color

• Product – how to manage the design system as a tangible product
• People – how to organize people and teams who create, contribute, and maintain the design system
• Process – how to operationalize your team to create and maintain the design system in a manageable and scalable way

Each month, we’ll focus on one design system pillar. In July, we’ll cover product and provide best practices from setting up your design files to documentation organization to understanding design tokens. For August, we’ll focus on people and talk about roles, team models, and how to build teams. We’ll wrap up in September by discussing process, including governance models, and finding what works best for you.

In addition to helpful articles, we’re hosting discussions on zheroes (our zeroheight Slack community) and webinars with industry experts on the topic. When you join the webinar, you can ask our panelists questions in real-time!

Illustration of three clipboards each in a different color

As we move through the series, you’ll be able to vet your design system and see where you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement. If you have topics or questions within each of these pillars that you’d like to have addressed, please ask us on the #topic-ds-essentials Slack channel on zheroes (our zeroheight Slack community). We look forward to helping you navigate this journey!