Published on: June 16, 2020
3 min read
At GitLab, we want to help organizations build successful design systems. In order to do that, we are looking for your feedback.
Over the last few years, GitLab has invested in the creation of Pajamas, our living design system. We believe that a design system can help us scale more efficiently by creating a shared vision and language that is used across departments and teams.
Now, we're interested in hearing from our community: How can GitLab help you build a successful design system in your own organization?
A design system is a series of documentation that includes both design practices, as well as frontend guidelines. Live coded demos are included to allow cross-functional teams to easily reuse styles and components in several instances across your product. The underlying principles and guidelines that you develop are what set your design system apart from others.
Design systems provide many benefits to organizations including:
Efficiency
Consistency
Improved communication
Although the benefits of a design system may be clear to many, most organizations struggle with integrating a design system workflow into their organization. Building a design system takes more upfront planning and gaining buy-in from your organization’s executive team can be difficult.
At GitLab, we recognize the benefits a design system can bring to an organization, and we're exploring whether we can support other organizations with this experience. For this reason, we’ve begun drafting a design system direction page that focuses on providing a foundation for your organization to begin building and implementing your own design system.
We’d love to know more about whether your organization has begun building its own design system:
If you have thoughts, suggestions, or feedback, please contribute to our Design System MVC and Roadmap Discussion issue.