Design Systems at Deliveroo: Learnings and Frustrations
summary
Deliveroo builds two parallel design systems: a consumer UI and a dense tools UI, fed from a global token library holding colors, typography and icons. Teams embed docs in Figma and ship a Storybook-like component browser / storybook plus a create‑react‑app starter and enforced changelogs. Defaults like built‑in card aspect ratios and collapsed cross‑platform components speed work, and the team requires 1 designer + 1 engineer full‑time per system. Outcome: adoption improves but true cross‑platform parity and end‑to‑end spec generation remain unresolved.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Intro
- 2:00ui infrastructure team: optimise for speed of design & development
- 4:36you should build systems on top of mature products
- 6:14documentation should be built-in to the design tool
- 9:12removing platform specificity makes things more manageable
- 10:15a component library is not a design system
- 10:37design systems should be built by people with experience and authority influence
- 11:36learnings in engineering
- 12:40make sure the design side is in good shape before you start
- 13:21decide the kind of design system you need as a team
- 15:00use written down principles to manage conversations
- 15:35using the system should be 10x easier than alternatives
- 18:47cross-platform is really hard without a cross-platform team
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