Varya Stepanova — a design systems architect

Design systems can help bridge the gap between designers and developers, communicate shared practices across an organization, and reduce production costs. But how do you actually implement a design system in practice? In this article I provide a practical guide to building your design system infrastructure using open source tools from the React ecosystem. With these tools, you can automate your development process, create high-level interactive documentation for the libraries in your system, and support collaboration within your organization.

Design systems are a powerful tool for standardizing and simplifying the process of interface design and development. They bring new approaches and form their own ecosystem, but there is often confusion about the concepts and terms used in the field. In order to address this issue and provide a more structured and professional language, this article will review the vocabulary used in the design systems domain. We will draw from a range of materials, including academic and popular sources, to provide a comprehensive overview of the key terms and concepts.