Brad Frost

The Design System Ecosystem

It's worth stepping back for a second to marvel that the design system's web component source of truth can power any web-based digital product — irrespective of tech stack. It's incredible! And because these are directly consumable components, improvements and additions can be deployed simply by pulling down the latest version of the library. iOS/Android/Non-web product codebases As we've already covered, native apps are likely written in non-web languages, which means they can't share in the web component goodness. Native app environments would pull in their own flavors of the component library as dependencies. It's that easy, folks! Whew, what a ride, huh!? We've gone deep into the weeds, so let's zoom out a bit. A mature design system ecosystem for a complex organization may not be simple, but this layer-cake approach provides a robust way to orchestrate UI for designers and developers across the company. The word "ecosystem" is apt here; these are interconnected systems that all play an important role in powering the UI of a company's digital products. It bears repeating that every piece articulated here doesn't apply to every organization. We've explained that most of these layers are optional and can be added iteratively. Start simple and iterate your way to a more complex ecosystem as real needs arise. It's People! Here's the fun part: you can craft all of these layers and assets and the whole thing can still fall to pieces. Design systems are less about assets and their relationships to one another, but more about people and their relationships to one another. What we've covered here simply defines the ingredients and relationships between the different assets of a design system ecosystem. Of course, it's human beings that hold it all together. We'll be following this article up with others that detail the human relationships and processes that make this whole Rube Goldberg machine work. Also, I'll update this post with demos we're putting together to show examples of nearly every piece of this vast ecosystem. Do you see yourself in this post? We'd love to hear about how you're defining and managing your organization's design system ecosystem. And hey! Do you need help figuring out how to make all of this work? At Big Medium, we help complex organizations plan, architect, build, evolve, and manage design systems and other aspects of big design at scale. Feel free to get in touch!