The Design Systems Graveyard
summary
Two of Norway’s largest public-sector IT environments and the country’s second-largest bank leave earlier design systems on the graveyard after trying common patterns. The talk shows that teams create 36 button variants by default, but a 3×3 exercise finds the real nine pages and three components to start. A hybrid centralized‑community model with core maintainers and product advocates works best. Practical fixes include token APIs from Figma to code, automated visual‑regression tests, CI releases triggered by git tags, semantic versioning and planned end‑of‑life.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction to graveyard
- 1:15Design system challenges
- 2:38Personal analogy with inheritance
- 3:45Button proliferation problem
- 4:46Analysis and planning
- 5:29Design system as infrastructure
- 6:12Token naming and automation
- 6:54Team organization model
- 7:39Collaboration and testing
- 8:23Automated deployment
- 9:07Versioning and changelogs
- 9:51Documentation and AI
- 10:13End-of-life planning
- 11:17Conclusion and takeaways
related talks
20mDesign Systems for the Rest of Us
46mBuilding & Managing Design Systems
18mDesign Systems in Practice
32mWe’re Not Doing Design Systems Properly and That’s Okay
27mAdvanced Design System Considerations
38mDesign systems panel discussion
23mDesign systems are flawed
01h 03mDesign System Pitfalls & How to Escape Them