Approach

Lessons in this group, roughly in build order:

• making-a-design-system — The first fork in the road: deciding how to build a design system — greenfield from first principles, or…
• making-it-from-scratch — Building a design system top-down — principles and design-language first, then tokens, then components —…
• making-it-from-existing-design — Extracting a design system out of a product that already ships — inventory the live UI, converge its…
• existing-design-analysis — The diagnostic phase of an extraction: systematically reading a shipped product’s UI and source to…
• identify-existing-design-process — Mapping how UI decisions get made today — who designs, who reviews, what tools and handoffs exist — so the…
• performing-a-visual-audit — The hands-on capture step of an extraction: screenshotting every screen and state, then extracting the…