Varya Stepanova — a design systems architect

This talk explores how effective collaboration can transform design systems from basic tools into vital products within organizations. My colleague Irina and I are sharing insights from their research and experience, offering practical strategies for enhancing collaboration with stakeholders and across teams. We stress the importance of treating the design system as a product in its own right. The presentation is packed with real-world examples, practical advice, and innovative ideas.

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.