How to choose the right messaging component — Product designers and engineers frequently ask our team to add features to our messaging components. They say something like: “I want to use this component, but I need you to add a button to it.” In the beginning this caused a lot of frustration on both sides and frequently resulted…

Systemizing interactive labels for maps — Systemizing a map component has remarkably more constraints than your average button. These seemingly simple interactive labels must stand out against all terrains, densities and fixed buttons. Can combined with regions, exact locations, objects or stand on their own. Are required to be big enough to meet accessibility and tap…

A scalable color system for digital products — On the surface color seems simple, but getting 100+ designers and engineers to follow guidelines that are a part of literally everything they make is a huge undertaking. To put it in perspective: over 50% of Lyft’s design system team’s office hours, high visibility projects and inner team disagreements are…

How to maximize acceptance & adoption of your design system — Most design systems teams are lean and the expectations placed upon them are disproportionately large. Does improve the quality of all of the company’s 70+ products sound familiar? When we first started our system, our conversation with leadership around ownership felt a bit like the Lion King:

An interview with Jordan from Abstract — I’m taking a momentary break from my Summer Social Media Sabbatical to re-post this article from Jordan Staniscia & the Abstract team. My interview answers may sound familiar to you, but I’m too excited not to share this collab! I promise to be back with fresh articles in the Fall…

A crafted balance of brand essence and science Too often digital designers are required to move fast and details are forgotten. Hopefully we can all agree that handing off a text box centered within a rounded rectangle is not quality button, so what is? …

How we got (and continue to push for) buy-in at Lyft — I fell into this role following my passion to learn, create, and educate. You can’t exactly study design systems in school, so to be successful in this field you are constantly reaching out to learn from others. Make no mistake, there are no right answers and every company is different…

7 soft skills toward a successful design system — I began developing design systems on the agency side at the beginning of responsive web. The work tripled, while our resources and time didn’t. A templated, modular system was the only way to accomplish large site redesigns. I lovingly built these systems out, each with robust documentation, and handed it…