Don't Make Design Systems Just for Developers
summary
A company-wide design system strategy called Palette was built for all employees (not just designers or engineers) and includes concrete artifacts: Figma-managed color tokens and alias tokens, a cross-functional system, and voice-and-tone guidelines developed through workshops and Slack-driven naming. The program generated 130 ideas from 65 participants, achieved 93% name recall but only 27% reported active use, and the team is measuring whether tokens reduce design–dev communication overhead and reveal new pain points to address.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Inclusive design systems
- 1:06All employees target
- 2:29Project challenges
- 3:32Notion multi-touchpoint
- 5:18Role scope
- 6:02Team structure
- 6:46Design token fixes
- 9:36Voice and tone
- 13:48Beyond immediate needs
- 14:52Naming Palette
- 16:39Employee naming input
- 18:25Measuring Palette adoption
- 19:49Key insights
- 21:15Conclusion
