Beyond 1.0 - Lessons Learned and Things to Do After 1.0 Release of a Design System

A design system is a collection of reusable components, principles, constraints, and best practices governed by clear standards. It includes a component library, guidelines for color, iconography, typography, support docs, and patterns for constructing interfaces.

S&C Electric Company chose React for their design system due to its strong community support, excellent performance for large applications, and multi-platform support through tools like React Native.

The key components include over 70 components supported on four platforms, documentation for designers, developers, and testers, and a monorepo setup for seamless integration of web and mobile components.

They use unit tests to achieve over 80% code coverage, implement a monorepo for easier management, and utilize automation testing tools like Cypress in their CI/CD pipeline to prevent bugs and ensure code quality.

They evaluated tools like Docusaurus, Box, Styleguides, and Next.js, ultimately choosing Next.js to build a comprehensive and custom design system documentation site.

They developed a custom script to parse JSX files and collect data on component usage across projects, which is then reported to a dashboard for better decision-making and communication with stakeholders.

Co-locating code improves maintainability by organizing all relevant files (tests, styles, docs) for a component in a single directory, simplifying the onboarding process and daily work for developers.

They communicate releases through messages on Teams or Slack, emails, and scheduled demos, highlighting new features and changes to stakeholders effectively.

Patterns document common interface elements like login forms and navigation layouts, providing examples and code to prevent reinventing the wheel and ensuring consistency across applications.