Design systems are often built, maintained, and evolved by dedicated teams, but it’s the product teams who actually use that work. These teams can, in turn, contribute back to the design system to make it more useful for everyone.
Contribution to a design system typically occurs when product teams would like to use a token, component, or pattern from the system but doesn’t quite fit their needs. In such cases, the item might need to be modified and fed back into the system.
In organisations with dedicated product teams, there are usually clear guidelines and workflows on how to contribute back to the design system. This contribution process generally involves understanding why the design system’s current offering isn’t sufficient for the product team, assessing the impact of the change, and determining how updating or adding a contribution to the system will benefit other product teams.
The contribution process typically involves understanding why the design systems current offering is not enough for the product team, understanding the impact of the change, and how updating or adding a contribution to the system will benefit other product teams.
An important part of the contribution process is working together, so to make sure that anything that is finally added to the system follows the same standards than anything else that already exists in is.
It should be noted that contribution workflows that are too restrictive may be seen as a hassle for product teams, who may prefer to design their custom implementations to go faster, impacting at the same time the consistency of the experience and the coverage of the design system.
