My friends at Sparkbox are doing a survey on design systems, as they do each year. Go ahead and fill it out if you please. Here are the results from last year. In both 2019 and 2020, the vibe was that design systems (both as an idea and as a real thing that real companies really use) are maturing. But still, it was only a quarter of folks who said their actual design system was mature. I wonder if that’ll go up this year.
In my circles, “design system” isn’t the buzzword it was a few years ago, but it doesn’t mean it’s less popular. If anything, they are more popular almost entering the territory of assumed, like responsive design is. I do feel like if you’re building a website from components, well, you’ve got a component library at least, which is how I think of design systems (as a dude who pretty much exclusively works on websites).
I’d better be careful though. I know design systems mean different things to different people. Speaking of which, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also shout out the fact that Ethan has a handful of totally free courses he’s created on design systems.
As you might have guessed from the titles, we’ve broadly organized the courses around roles: whether you’re a designer, a developer, or a product manager, we’ve got something for you. Each course focuses on what I think are the fundamentals of design systems work, so I’ve designed them to be both high-level and packed with information.
