Creating and Maintaining Successful Design Systems

Design systems provide solid ground for us to stand on as we tackle the increasingly diverse and fast-moving digital landscape. In this workshop, you’ll learn everything that goes into creating and maintaining successful design systems. Brad will cover the many benefits of design systems, introduce the atomic design methodology, discuss how to establish a cross-disciplinary pattern-driven workflow, detail the creation of a rock-solid component library and reference website, and tackle how to maintain a design system so it provides lasting value to your team and organization.

What you get

This workshop will be a truly interactive experience—which means you’ll be getting the chance to ask Brad all your burning design systems questions, and get the feedback you’ve always wanted, live! Plus, if you have any questions or need clarification after the workshop, Brad is happy for you to get in touch!

As a bonus, you’ll be getting curated PDF takeaways that Brad has put together for this workshop, which you can keep and refer to. The PDFs will be packed with tools, articles, reading material and helpful resources. PLUS the workshop is going to be recorded and available for future viewing!

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for UX/UI/product/front-end designers, front-end developers, and really anyone responsible for the success of digital products.

You’ll walk away from this workshop with actionable tactics for planning, executing, and maintaining a successful design system at your organization.

What's covered in this workshop?

Selling Design Systems

We all know design systems and pattern libraries are great, but how do you get your clients, bosses, and teammates on board? Brad will make the business cases for design systems, and discuss tactics and tools for selling design systems to clients and stakeholders.

A Pattern-Based Process

Making modular interfaces requires massive shifts in our design and development process. Brad will discuss why front-end development is an essential part of the design process and demonstrate how tools like lo-fi sketches, style tiles, frontend workshop tools like Storybook and Pattern Lab, and others facilitate collaboration—and result in successful design systems.

Atomic Design Principles

Brad will cover core principles of modular UI interface design and introduce the atomic design methodology that helps connect your design system design/dev work to your actual product design/dev work.

Creating a rock-solid component library

The heart and soul of a successful design system is a component library that lives in code and directly powers an organization's software products. Brad will cover all that goes into creating a UI component library that's reusable, flexible, extensible, and easy to work with.

Anatomy of Effective Reference Website

A style guide reference website is the happy home for all a design system’s ingredients. A robust and well-presented reference site can help a design system truly take root at your organization.

Design System Maintenance

Like a fine wine, a design system should increase in value over time. Brad will discuss tactics and techniques like team structure, versioning, managing changes and additions to the system, communication strategies, and more to ensure your design system provides lasting value to your organization.