Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Empowering Gaming at Scale: How Xbox Builds Powerful, Automated, and Distributed Design Systems with Sketch
Gold
Thursday, September 30, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
Empowering Gaming at Scale: How Xbox Builds Powerful, Automated, and Distributed Design Systems with Sketch
Speakers: Luca Rager
Link:

Summary

An essential part of creating a Design System is to make distribution and content flow sustainable. When the task is bringing the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet, the challenge gets massive! How can DesignOps and Automation become a facilitator for this challenge? Join Senior Software Engineer & Designer Luca Rager from Xbox as he takes us through their innovative take on design systems. Luca will illustrate how Sketch’s flexibility and modern DesignOps automation has allowed Xbox to package, theme and easily distribute component libraries. Furthermore, how their system bridges the gap between the Xbox Design System team and the wider product teams at Xbox.

Key Insights

  • Xbox Design System supports four themes including high contrast to ensure broad accessibility.

  • The component library needed to work across multiple platforms: TV, desktop, and mobile.

  • Theme customization is achieved by swapping foundational Sketch libraries rather than relying on overrides.

  • Every component and foundation (theme file) exists as its own Sketch file to support clarity and easy iteration.

  • Clyde, an internal automated tool, packages components into Sketch libraries and generates design tokens for engineers.

  • The design system team focused on creating easy-to-adopt kits for product designers to reduce complexity and improve uptake.

  • Multidisciplinary team members, including designers with engineering skills, help bridge gaps between disciplines.

  • Accessibility experts are embedded in the design process, enriching documentation and audits within the system.

  • Governance balances flexibility for product teams to propose and customize components with ensuring consistency from the core team.

  • Integration with Microsoft tools like Azure and Teams allows realtime notifications and seamless collaboration around design system updates.

Notable Quotes

"Gaming is for everyone anywhere, and Xbox has evolved way beyond the box under your TV."

"Our mission required us to build something fast, flexible, and scalable across many different product needs."

"A button is just a rectangle with some text, but our magic is in how we theme and customize it using foundations."

"Instead of overrides, we swap out entire theme files to customize components for different product teams."

"We realized the real problem was a people problem, not just tooling complexity."

"Sketch’s open file format allowed us to build custom tooling that shapes the design data to our needs."

"Clyde runs every time there’s a change, generating libraries and tokens to keep everyone up to date."

"Engineers love having individual components in files because it makes implementation much easier."

"Design system adoption exploded when we focused on the needs of everyone who builds, extends, or uses it."

"Accessibility and research are part of our org, not just consultants, which makes a huge difference in quality."

Ask the Rosenbot
Kyle Godbey
Non-linear service design for complex adaptive systems
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Fatimah Richmond
The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Jake Burghardt
Stop wasting research: Create new value with insight summaries
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Boon Yew Chew
Making Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Frances Yllana
The Big Question about Impact: A Panel Discussion
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Stephen Anderson
Puzzled? How to Coordinate Humans for Complex Challenges
2021 • Enterprise Community
Pippa Lomas
Paving the Path for Neurodiversity in Design
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Dr. Jamika D. Burge
Theme 3 Intro
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Aiyana Bodi
Three Key Climate Initiatives and How You Can Help
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Dana Bishop
2022: The Year UX Demonstrates its Business Impact
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
How to Identify and Increase your "Experience Quotient"
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Tamara Kartoziia
Think global, adapt local: how service design accelerated B2B market entry by 6 months
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Conference
Phil Hesketh
Designing Accessible Research Workflows
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Aletheia Delivre
New Shapes and Emerging Identities for Design Ops
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Sheri Byrne-Haber
The Importance of Accessible Design Systems
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Jilanna Wilson
Distributed Design Operations Management
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold

More Videos

Justin Entzminger

"Embedding community members to lead design sessions helps shift power dynamics and surfaces authentic voices."

Justin Entzminger Terrance Smith Tracy M. Colunga Mai-Ling Garcia

Risk and Reward: How to Diversify the Field of Civic Innovators and Designers

November 17, 2022

Louis Rosenfeld

"The sponsor sessions are equal in quality and quantity as our main programming and completely free for anyone to attend."

Louis Rosenfeld Bria Alexander

Day 1 Welcome

September 23, 2024

Brenna Fallon

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is just to be able to say the children are now working as if I did not exist."

Brenna Fallon

Learning Over Outcomes

October 24, 2019

Josh Clark

"LLMs talk the talk but don’t understand the meaning. They’re master impersonators without true knowledge."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)

January 15, 2025

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

"Workshop content is equivalent to a one-day in-person event spread over 10 virtual hours with coaching and support."

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Victor Udoewa Jennifer Strickland

Everything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations

May 17, 2022

Changying (Z) Zheng

"Good parenting involves guiding, allowing exploration, making mistakes — we can think of nurturing AI similarly."

Changying (Z) Zheng

Navigating Innovation with Integrity

September 25, 2024

Max Gadney

"Check the people on the board and the advisors because that tells you a lot about the company’s true values."

Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah Wickes

Assessing UX jobs for impact in climate

August 14, 2024

Sam Proulx

"Reddit recently fixed their upvote button so it announces toggle states, something many sites neglect."

Sam Proulx

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Screen Readers

June 11, 2021

Kit Unger

"In our desire to see the big table, we often forget that sometimes it’s more important not to seek validation at the table but to offer it to someone else."

Kit Unger Lada Gorlenko

Theme 3 Intro

June 10, 2022