I led the Carbon Design System at IBM, a premier design system with global recognition for excellence, comprehensive documentation, and technical rigor.
- Efficiency savings of more than $100M/year
- Over 50% adoption across IBM product line
- Unified design and front end development practices across IBM
Inception and evolution
The component library that evolved to become the Carbon Design System was created to support IBM Cloud Design collaborate effectively with the Engineering organization.
It expanded to become the design system for IBM Cloud, and became open source with v7. In 2018 we worked with brand and marketing to align the Carbon Design System to be the primary vehicle to deliver the next version of the IBM Design Language.
- Carbon was mandated by the CEO to be the design system for all software products and applications at IBM
- We developed and executed the strategy to integrate or phase out multiple legacy systems
- Led Carbon's growth to an inclusive, collaborative ecosystem
System of systems
As we expanded to become part of IBM's overall design and development infrastructure, we needed to support Carbon’s growth into an inclusive, collaborative ecosystem.
We built a governance and maturity model that encouraged widespread adoption and contributions from the broader community.
- Created a system of systems, or hub and spoke model, which encouraged adoption while supporting business unit independence and flexibility
- Community index made available 100+ components and 30+ patterns developed, shared, and maintained by the broader Carbon community
- Expanded contributor base to over 400 people
