Building Design Systems in React

Design systems are everywhere in 2019. It might be tempting to whip up a component library, say it’s your “design system” and call it a day - but careful consideration must be taken to make sure that what you build is flexible, sustainable and maintainable. In fact, design systems can’t just be a React component library on its own. This talk will cover the who, what & why of design systems as well as our approach building a React component library to accompany GitHub’s design system, Primer. Attendees will walk away with a deeper knowledge of how to design a public API for components, how theming works, and common pitfalls one might come across when trying to scale a design system across an organization.

About the speaker:

Emily Plummer is a Design Systems Engineer at GitHub. Emily is currently working on building an open source component library to accompany GitHub’s design system, Primer. She’s interested in all things, JavaScript, CSS, and the intersection of the two. Emily resides in Portland, Oregon with her wolf pup Avila and enjoys exploring the Cascade mountains when not working away on pixels.