Design System Documentation

What if documentation wasn't a chore but something teams actually enjoyed using? That's what eBay’s design team achieved with their new design system, Evo. Rather than settling for scattered files and siloed information, they reimagined what documentation could be. We recently spent time with Tyler Moore, Ryan Tinsley, and Cordelia McGee-Tubb to understand how they rethought their approach. Instead of maintaining separate resources for designers, developers, and accessibility, they built a unified Playbook that brings everything together. The magic lies in their custom Figma plugin. Updates that once took days now happen in minutes. Components track their implementation status across platforms automatically. Accessibility requirements are woven directly into the documentation process. "Our previous setup buried critical information in different places," explains Cordelia. By connecting these dots, they've created something more valuable than just visual guidelines. The results are tangible. Office hours have evolved from basic troubleshooting to deeper discussions about patterns and principles. Teams reference the documentation without prompting. The system has become a living part of how eBay works. There's a lesson here for any organization building tools for internal use: When you make documentation a delight rather than a burden, consistency naturally follows. https://lnkd.in/eCfjQuN6

🍱 How To Organize Your Design System At Scale (https://lnkd.in/e9343uqv), a fantastic case study on how to set up a design system with 900 shared components and 25 designers — with product-specific domain components and shared ownership between the design system guild and product designers. Written by Jérôme Benoit ↓ Key takeaways: ✅ 1 design system, 8 design libraries, 1 library serves 1 goal. ✅ Each library has owners, editors (edit/publish), users (view-only). ✅ All designers have access to all resources from all files. ✅ Product team has domains, each domain has feature teams. ✅ Foundations + Core components are owned by design system team. ✅ Domain components are product-specific, owned by product designers. ✅ Each feature team has its own frame (not a page!) on a Domain page. ✅ Domain components are structured [Instance name] 💠 [Core name]. ✅ The work by product teams can move up to the Core level, too. In many products, different feature teams often have very different needs, and that’s why secondary design systems emerge. With this set-up, all teams are still working within 1 single design system, pulling and pushing components between levels and having search across all design work in all domains at once — without an organizational overhead! 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 Useful resources: How To Organize 1250+ Design Screens in Figma (+ File examples), by Lorenzo Palacios Venin https://lnkd.in/e7X4fKcj Booking.com: Multi-Platform Design System (+ Figma), by Nicole Saidy https://lnkd.in/edueYQPG Frog: Building A Global Design System, by Anthony Nguyen https://lnkd.in/etkiTxfB Doctolib Figma Files Organization Tips, by Jérôme Benoit https://lnkd.in/eK7bhQeS Multi-Brand Design System, by Pavel Kiselev https://lnkd.in/eShgnPnW Design System Structure for Teams, Projects and Files, by Luis Ouriach https://lnkd.in/eFZUjUCU How to Organize Your Figma Files For Design System, by Jules Mahé https://lnkd.in/eeHG2VzU Organizing Design System For Scalability, by Allie Paschal https://lnkd.in/eeAtakGs Design That Scales (Book), by Dan Mall https://lnkd.in/eeFrqFfP And kudos to the wonderful design team at Doctolib and all the wonderful designers above for sharing their insights for everyone to learn from!👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 #ux #design #designsystems

Good morning! Today, I want to share some design documentation for my level design project, The Cosmic Vale. In these documents, I cover the top/down concept map, original prototype, refined map, quest design, Factions & NPCs, and the player hub. Each document contains a brief description, image references, and expected gameplay elements. Why is design documentation important? Well, design documentation serves as a blueprint and creates a shared vision, allowing the rest of your team - from artists to programmers - to align with the original concept and its execution. It ensures that the team visualizes the same version of the game world. Having a shared understanding is essential for collaboration and for creating a more unified gameplay experience for players! Furthermore, design documentation lays a foundation for the rest of the project. Acting as a guide for each phase of development, such as: asset creation, system & technical design, environmental story telling, and much more. By establishing a clear and organized framework, design documentation helps streamline communication and decision-making, contributing to smoother project management. Moreover, the value of design documentation extends beyond level design. It informs system design by establishing gameplay mechanics, narrative design by mapping out key story beats and storytelling through the game environment, and 3D modeling by providing visual cues for in-game assets. Even programming is influenced by the documentation process, as it defines technical requirements and player interactions that need to be implemented. In summary, design documentation is a comprehensive guide that unifies the vision of a project, ensuring every department works towards the same creative and technical goals. #leveldesign #designdocumentation

I was recently tasked with taking over an in-progress design system in Figma (with zero handover). Here was my approach ⬇️ ❓ First, I identified key questions I wanted to answer: ↳ What is the current status of the design system? ↳ How are designers meant to use this system? ↳ How are developers meant to use this system? ↳ What steps need to be taken to bring this system from its current state to its desired state? Next, I evaluated the system by its various aspects: 🧱 What variables/tokens have been created? ↳ How are they organized/structured? ↳ How have they been assigned? ↳ Are any variables is missing? 🧩 What components have been created? ↳ How are they organized/constructed? ↳ How can they be made more efficient? ↳ What components still need to be created? 🎨 What styles have been created? ↳ How do they utilize/reference variables? ↳ How have they been applied? ↳ How can they be made more efficient? 🗂️ What’s the file structure? ↳ Is navigating the file intuitive? ↳ What pages are complete vs. in-progress? ↳ How are the documentation practices? 💡 Finally, I made recommendations: ↳ Defined the end goal of the design system ↳ Defined the immediate next steps In this particular instance, the file was decently set up with variables but lacked internal documentation and the robustness of a full component library. Without that internal documentation, the big picture vision and usage of the system were unclear, so I recommended collaborative workshops with both the designers and developers to further define the “why” and “how” of the system before building out the “what.” What are your thoughts on this approach? What would you have done differently? - - - - - If you found this post helpful, I share UX and design insights just like it every day! #design #UX