Summary of Why Design Systems are still disconnected - DesignOps Global Conference

00:00:00 - 00:25:00

Design systems have been popular for a while, but there is a disconnect between multiple sources of truth within them. This problem is called the "disconnect between multiple sources of truth" and it is a major challenge for designers and developers. Around the same time that fireworks (an earlier tool for UI designers) was discontinued, Adobe introduced symbols, which helped with reusability and allowed for more customization of components. However, fireworks' story has a sad ending - it was discontinued due to low popularity.

• 00:00:00 Design Systems have been popular for a while, but there is a disconnect between multiple sources of truth within them. This problem is called the "disconnect between multiple sources of truth" and it is a major challenge for designers and developers. Around the same time that fireworks (an earlier tool for UI designers) was discontinued, Adobe introduced symbols, which helped with reusability and allowed for more customization of components. However, fireworks' story has a sad ending - it was discontinued due to low popularity.
• 00:05:00 Design systems are a way of making it easier for designers and developers to work together, by sharing reusable components and Symbols. In this 1-minute video, Adobe's former design system manager discusses the history of design systems and their importance in modern design workflow.
• 00:10:00 Design systems are disconnected, with components that are built and maintained by designers on the right and code components built and maintained by developers, but there is no connection between them. The problem is that there is no source of Truth in the setup, with different parts of the system either being out of date or maintained manually. A solution may be to have a separate design system entity that is shared across all of these sources.
• 00:15:00 Design systems are disconnected because designers and developers work in different tools and the design tokens are a standard format that tools can rely on. However, eventually all the tools will be connected and design tokens will not be necessary.
• 00:20:00 Design systems are disconnected because design tools do not store design tokens outside of the tool, but instead rely on the user to input tokens into the tool. A work-around to this is to use the design tool as the tokens, and then store the tokens in a separate location. Zeppelin supports design tokens, which store colors, textiles, spacing, and components. To make this work, developers need to maintain an explicit connection between components in design and code.
• 00:25:00 In his talk, the speaker discussed how Design Systems have evolved in the last 10 years, and how this has been driven by the tools we use. He went on to say that although some of these issues will not be fixed overnight, we are making progress and are on the road to becoming more ideal. He also mentioned that if you have any questions or thoughts, you can reach him on Twitter.