Playbook

Edition 01 - August 2026 · prepared for icare

Notes on building a design system that people actually use.

Five short chapters for the design leads standing this up: what to decide first, what to defer, and the traps that quietly cost a year. Each chapter ends with the files you'll need.

01 Governance & ownership Who decides, how a change gets approved, and what to escalate. 6 min 02 Design tokens & theming Naming tiers that survive a rebrand, and where to stop abstracting. 9 min 03 Documentation practices Write for the person copying a component at 4pm on a Friday. 7 min 04 Adoption & change management Make the system the path of least resistance, not a mandate. 8 min 05 Roadmap & versioning Ship on boundaries, deprecate loudly, keep a public changelog. 6 min

Everything in one place

Figma libraries, token exports, workshop decks and the standards index.

Resources