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
Changying (Z) Zheng
Practical DesignOps: From Ideas to Tools That Teams Actually Use
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Peter Merholz
The Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX
2023 • Enterprise Community
Steve Sanderson
Discussion
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Zen Ren
Taking Inspiration from Instructional Design for Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Michelle Chin
The DesignOps Starter Kit
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Richard Buchanan
Creativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Bud Caddell
DesignOps Community Sensing Session
2021 • DesignOps Community
George Hinchliffe
Delivering Amazing Experiences
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Ned Gartside
Navigating accessibility and climate
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Iulia Cornigeanu
QuantQual Book Club: Small Data
2024 • QuantQual Interest Group
Jon Fukuda
Theme One Intro
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Matt Webb
Context Window: Five Futures for AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Teresa Swingler
Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace
2022 • Enterprise Community
Sarah Brooks
Fireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka
2021 • Civic Design Community
Terry Buckman
Wargaming (An Introduction)
2023 • Enterprise Community
Christian Rohrer
Research Operations at Scale
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold

More Videos

Fatimah Richmond

"Research ops folks have a bird’s eye view, seeing methods and quality across projects that others miss."

Fatimah Richmond

The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There

March 25, 2024

Erin Hoffman-John

"Emergence is a property where individual independent actions create a collective behavior like a school of fish moving together."

Erin Hoffman-John

This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World

November 6, 2017

Nicole Bergstrom

"Accessibility should be embedded in product roadmaps owned by product managers, not just in a separate accessibility roadmap."

Nicole Bergstrom Anna Cook Kate Kalcevich Saara Kamppari-Miller

AccessibilityOps: Moving beyond “nice to have”

September 19, 2024

Jane Reid

"The biggest risk is bottling up emotions until you’re about to explode."

Jane Reid Janice Hannaway

Self-care in User Research

April 2, 2020

Ivana Ng

"We essentially had to stand up a mid-size company to deliver on this contract."

Ivana Ng

Level Up Your Program with ProductOps

January 8, 2024

Sarah Rink

"Observers interrupting sessions was a weird behavior we had to manage with clear rules."

Sarah Rink

Remote User Research: Dos and Don'ts from the Virtual Field

June 11, 2020

Daniela Magaña Flores

"Our benchmarking survey includes free exploration of the entire website or app, not just the homepage."

Daniela Magaña Flores Ariane Rahn Jeff Ephraim Bander

Ahead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today

March 10, 2022

Maria Giudice

"Before you accept a mission as a changemaker, ask yourself do you have a clear directive, champion support, and the right resources?"

Maria Giudice

Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design

March 29, 2023

Sam Proulx

"Accessibility was considered kind of an inspiring hack, an inspirational rarity."

Sam Proulx

To Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility

June 10, 2022