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
"Mirroring engineering’s career ladder for researchers stops weird conversations about titles and pay differences."
Mike DavidsonFireside Chat
March 11, 2022
"Every thousand people enrolled in healthcare on healthcare.gov was roughly equivalent to a life that might have been saved down the line."
Sha HwangThe Lost Year
June 11, 2021
"Managing sideways means meeting people where they are and speaking their language — especially when working with doctors and psychologists."
Wendy JohanssonBe a Product Boss!
December 6, 2022
"No s**t designers burnout more than any other function."
Peter MerholzThe 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health
November 12, 2025
"Not knowing what something is called or what a newly inflated word means introduces confusion and causes people to talk across purposes."
Shan ShenTranslating UX Terms into Business Contexts
November 29, 2023
"Scheduling syncs with your Google or Outlook calendar so you only book participants at times that work for you."
Lily Aduana Savannah Hobbs Brittany Rutherford5 Reasons to Bring Your Recruiting in-House (and How To Do It)
March 12, 2021
"Compliance is everyone's concern but no one's responsibility."
Patrizia BertiniThe (r)evolution of designOps: It’s Time to Think (really) BIG
September 11, 2025
"Sometimes you need to connect the people before you can connect the parts in a design system."
Dan Mall“Ask Me Anything” with Dan Mall, Author of Upcoming Rosenfeld Title, Design that Scales
October 2, 2023
"Failing to design for disabilities means failing to design for our future selves."
Samuel ProulxDesigning beyond caricatures: Embracing real, diverse user needs
December 4, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What evidence exists that service design contributes to business outcomes such as customer retention and digital transformation success?
What are common negative design leadership archetypes and their impacts?
How can organizations create a democratization charter that fits their regulatory and organizational needs?