Summary
In this talk, Rebecca explains her unique perspective on design systems from a sociological standpoint, having never directly used one but deeply studying people's interactions with technology at Salesforce. She describes Salesforce's evolution from a CRM to a broad customer success platform and how their Lightning Design System was born amid a company-wide UI overhaul called Lightning. Instead of a top-down directive, the design system emerged from a scrappy, grassroots team addressing concrete problems faced by customers, partners, engineers, and designers. Rebecca emphasizes the core themes that led to success: solving real people’s problems (like reducing the CSS friction for engineers and maintaining design fidelity), cultivating trust across disciplines using shared design principles and transparent communication, and relentless sharing through various means like brown bags, documentation, and Salesforce’s Trailhead learning platform. She highlights that the design system helped UX gain a stronger organizational voice within Salesforce. Looking ahead, Rebecca notes challenges in scaling adoption and experimenting with user research to improve the system further. The talk underscores the importance of relationships, trust, and communication over just technology when implementing a design system.
Key Insights
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Salesforce's Lightning Design System was not a top-down initiative but grew organically from a scrappy grassroots team effort.
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Addressing concrete user problems — such as reducing the CSS workload for engineers — was key to the design system's adoption.
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The biggest internal challenge before SLDS was the gap between what designers created and what developers actually built.
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Trust was cultivated through shared design principles like clarity, efficiency, consistency, and beauty, facilitating better cross-team communication.
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Design tokens built initially for the Salesforce mobile app (S1) helped establish trust and consistency in the design system.
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Demonstrating working living components early accelerated buy-in more effectively than just documentation or talking.
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Relentless sharing using internal tools (Slack, town halls), external tools (Trailhead), and open source enabled both internal and external engagement.
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Salesforce’s culture of transparency and willingness to receive, respond to, and integrate feedback was crucial to the system's refinement.
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The design system empowered the UX team to have a meaningful seat at the organizational decision-making table.
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Scaling adoption across a rapidly growing company requires partner experts in different product areas contributing back to the design system.
Notable Quotes
"I’m exceptionally qualified to talk about design systems because I never used one before."
"The success of the Lightning Design System was about people and relationships, not just technology."
"The biggest internal problem was the gap between what designers designed and what actually got built."
"Engineers want to write back-end code, not mess with CSS — CSS is a bear."
"It was the easiest win-win: take away what engineers don’t want to deal with and make their life easier."
"We built living components fast to show, not tell, and that accelerated conversation and buy-in."
"We learned that customers and partners were reverse engineering our CSS to make their products look like Salesforce."
"Trust comes from having design principles that give us a way to have less ‘I want it this way’ arguments and more about user experience."
"Making the design system open source put Salesforce’s UX team on the map representing our company."
"The design system helped UX get a seat at the table — not right next to the CEO, but definitely in the room."
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