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
"Documentation your team will actually use, how to define and maintain a design ops roadmap, AI as a design partner."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
October 3, 2023
"Google’s photo algorithm mistakenly tagged Black people as gorillas, which was called out by Jackie Elsene."
Nancy DouyonWe'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
June 15, 2018
"We need to break the dream and move from spectators to actors who create knowledge grounded in our reality."
Verónica Urzúa Jorge MontielThe B-side of the Research Impact
March 12, 2021
"Between February and March 2020, promoting the PTSD Coaching app led to a 65% increase in downloads."
Megan Nipe Lyndsay BoothHuman-Centered Design for Engagement: Maturing from Newsletterville to Personalized, One-to-One Messaging
December 8, 2021
"Packaging research with simple headlines brings people in, then we can layer on nuance and detail."
Gregg BernsteinOpportunistic Research with Gregg Bernstein
July 11, 2019
"Fenty Beauty launched 40 shades at once, filling a gap no major cosmetic brand had addressed before."
Joi FreemanA New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
March 30, 2020
"Financial services companies in the UK are working to make credit and loan approvals more equitable."
Lija HoganPractical Principles of Inclusive Research
March 27, 2023
"You can’t measure long-term relationship value with KPIs meant for short-term performance indicators."
John DevanneyThe Design Management Office
November 6, 2017
"You can draw a convincing dotted line between a UX improvement and a hard business outcome if you practice."
William Newton Jenny ChangHow to Lead With Data, and Without Data
June 7, 2023
