Figma on YouTube · Open on YouTube
Systems and research depth · Proficient · Lesson 72 of 99 · 54 min video, then about 2 hours of practice
Owning a design system: governance, contribution and adoption
After this you can design a contribution and governance process for a design system, decide when a new pattern is justified, and measure adoption.
Why it matters
Using a system is a junior skill; owning part of one is a senior one, and the hard part is social rather than visual. A system needs a contribution model (how teams propose and add patterns), a decision process (who says yes and on what grounds), versioning and deprecation, and a way to know whether it is being used. Focus on governance as service to product teams, not policing. Trap: a system team that builds what it finds interesting and then wonders why product teams detach components and build their own.
How to use this resource
A Config 2025 session from Figma on building and maintaining design systems collaboratively across teams. Recent, on the current tooling, and focused on the shared-ownership problem rather than component construction.