Carbon Design System

Company IBM
Year 2024
DisciplinesDesign Systems, Figma
PlatformsMobile, Web

Overview

As the Figma implementation lead for IBM’s Carbon Design System, I drive strategies to enhance usability and quality, focusing on component variants, auto layout, variables, and interactivity. My work supports over 2,100 designers across 100+ product teams, ensuring Carbon remains a leading design resource for creating exceptional digital experiences.

Background

Carbon is IBM’s open source design system for products and digital experiences. With the IBM Design Language as its foundation, the system consists of working code, design tools and resources, human interface guidelines, and a vibrant community of contributors.

Approach

Create and document best practices, techniques, and guidelines Create training sessions Establish a review process

Challenges

Skill gap, upskilling, training, mentoring, coaching standardization and consistency of implementation Ensuring usability and best practices to build performant components 4 themes Migration from v10 to v11 - breaking changes to tokens Implementing variables

Outcome

4 Carbon themes were delivered to more than 2000 IBMers.