Who This Is For
Designers who have been handed a design system and felt like they were missing context. Designers who are about to build a new one and don't know where to start. Designers who want to understand why design systems fail.
Curriculum
Part 1: Foundation (3 hours)
- What design systems are and what they are not
- The business case for a design system (how to get buy-in)
- Audit your current product: find patterns, anti-patterns, and gaps
- Define scope: which components to build first and why
Part 2: Tokens & Primitives (3 hours)
- Token architecture: naming conventions, hierarchy, aliasing
- Building a complete color system: primitive + semantic + component layers
- Typography scale design: mathematical ratios vs. optical scales
- Spacing system: base units, naming, and density variants
Part 3: Component Architecture (4 hours)
- What makes a component "system-ready"
- Slot-based composition: building flexible, unopinionated components
- Variant taxonomy: when to use variants vs. separate components
- Interactive state documentation: hover, focus, active, disabled, loading, error
- Accessibility as a first-class spec (not a checklist item)
Part 4: Documentation (2 hours)
- Writing component documentation that engineers actually read
- Usage guidelines: do / don't with reasoning
- Storybook integration strategy
- Changelog and versioning discipline
Part 5: Governance & Scale (2 hours)
- Contribution model: who can propose, who decides
- Version lifecycle: how to deprecate without breaking things
- Adoption metrics: how to know if your system is working
- Common failure modes and how to avoid them