Carbon Platform v1 beta release
We’re excited to announce the first major release of the new Carbon Platform. With this release, makers can confidently discover and learn about open-source assets and libraries across the Carbon product ecosystem — all in one place.
Why a new platform?
The Carbon Design System is always evolving and adapting. For example, after the launch of Carbon v10 in 2019, local systems we called “Pattern Asset Libraries,” or PALs, began to emerge, to satisfy different user and business needs. While necessary, this created style inconsistencies and asset redundancy across the various IBM products. And with siloed workflows, it was hard for makers to contribute assets, to maintain these local systems, and to connect with other teams who were solving similar problems.
By standardizing and surfacing all assets in one place, the new Carbon Platform helps makers find assets that comply with platform requirements, are convenient to implement and are consistent with design patterns across the company. In addition, a unified discovery experience helps designers and developers find and access components, patterns, and functions across all IBM teams.
This release
Schema standardization
First we worked with teams to agree on shared definitions for four asset types across the ecosystem: components, functions, patterns and templates. Once we agreed on those, we developed a standard schema around each of these assets that enabled us to categorize and index all of the content coming out of the various local systems. The schema helps Pattern and Asset Library (PAL) maintainers manage their assets more efficiently and keep content fresh in a live index — it also allows the platform to display versioned assets automatically using existing processes. Learn more about our schema.
Content migration
All of the existing documentation on carbondesignsystem.com is available on the new platform. We also made a few improvements to existing documentation. Be sure to check out our About pages — which illustrate how we define the Carbon ecosystem, especially in terms of how the “core” system relates to the “local” systems.
PAL indexing
All open-sourced libraries are now indexed in our catalogs. We have partnered with ten teams across IBM to index their libraries. We now have over 250 assets for makers to discover in one place.
Catalogs
The catalogs allow you to search across all open source assets and apply complex filters for any scenario — so you can apply other teams’ knowledge to your work. We currently have asset catalogs for components, patterns, functions, and templates, along with a data visualization collection that includes an array of asset types and guidelines.
Next releases
Although we have come a long way with our new platform capabilities, makers can still use Carbon Design System the way they do today or choose to search across all assets in the new platform. In addition, IBMers that utilize local systems can still access documentation on their remote sites until all content from those sites is migrated to the new platform in our next major release. When content from local systems is migrated to our new platform, the new platform will replace the current Carbon website.
We have a lot planned for our next few minor releases and our major 2.0 release:
- Authentication to view internal content
- New search capabilities
- User experience improvements based on user research
- Team based experience including local system navigation and administration
- Complete content migration from local systems
- New code package and component usage analytics
- Contribution preview experience to improve markdown and MDX authoring
Check out our roadmap to learn more.
If you have any questions or feedback for this release, feel free to reach out on Slack or through GitHub Discussions!
Tracey King is a Senior Visual Designer based out of Austin, TX working on the Carbon Design System. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
Questions or comments about Carbon? Reach out at carbon@us.ibm.com or tweet us @_carbondesign.
