“Why Design Systems Fail” by Una Kravets

Design systems are hot right now, and for good reason. They support a modular approach to building a product, promote organizational unity, and ensure stability via reusable code snippets and utility styles. They make prototyping a breeze, and provide a common language for both designers and developers. But sometimes design systems are underutilized within organizations. Why is that, when they’re so darn useful?

In this 60-minute presentation from An Event Apart Orlando 2018, Una Kravets draws on years of experience to explore what makes design systems successful, analyze real examples of success and failure, and show how to make sure your design system has the building blocks it needs to grow into a successful product.

Una Kravets is a Developer Advocate at Google. She’s also a technical writer, and has written for A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, and Sitepoint. Una co-hosts the Toolsday podcast, started both the Washington DC and Austin Sass Meetups, and is involved in the open source community as a design advocate and the maintainer of the CSSgram project.

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