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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The goal is not to take notes; the goal is to think effectively, as Andy Matus says."
Jorge ArangoThe Best of Both Worlds: How to Integrate Paper and Digital Notes (1st of 3 seminars)
April 5, 2024
"Design ops people need to be seasoned for the role. There’s experience you can’t learn in college or a bootcamp."
Angelos ArnisState of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report
October 1, 2021
"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 GorlenkoTheme 3 Intro
June 10, 2022
"We ended up piloting a group in Tokyo for non-English speakers, which was key to testing the language challenge."
Wyatt HaymanGlobal Research Panels
August 8, 2020
"Horizon one investments are about running the business today, horizon two about reinforcing growth, horizon three about long-term bets."
Harry MaxPriority Zero: Some Things are More Equal than Others
June 9, 2016
"Sponsor sessions are incredibly high quality but completely optional; there’s no sales pitch."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
June 10, 2021
"Empathy is an impossibility when there is inherent power imbalance between researcher and participant."
Victor UdoewaRadical Participatory Research: Decolonizing Participatory Processes
March 9, 2022
"Empathy walls emerged at DTA because teams needed a visceral way to bring stories back from the field."
Leisa ReicheltOpening Keynote: Operating in Context
November 7, 2018
"Research produces so much data, but synthesizing it and choosing what to act on is a real challenge."
Anna AvrekhUser Research, Design, and Product - A Love Story
March 11, 2021
