Design Systems offer an opportunity to consolidate processes, improve collaboration and speed up product delivery. In this talk, Patrycja Rozmus, Design Systems Lead, will guide us through the journey of how a small team from Brainly sparked a design system revolution in the world of developers. The talk will also share the struggles on the way to establishing a full blown Design System for a small team that develops the product for millions of users.

1. DESIGNING FOR
DEVELOPMENT
Building a Design System at Brainly
October 2020

2. What will you learn in this talk?
● Why and how did we develop the Design System at Brainly?
● How did we push the idea to the business?
● How do we work with Design Principles?
● What do our tools contribute to the Design System
community?
● How were our teams structured?
● How did we manage to get the necessary buy-in?
● What is the secret Design System sauce?

6. 62020 / brainly.com

9. Design Team
announcement

24. DESIGN PRINCIPLES
PENCIL CARDS
- remote version

25. DESIGN PRINCIPLES
PENCIL CARDS
- remote version

27. BRAINLY DESIGN TEAM SURVEY
Design values and principles are
present in my daily work

38. 2 IN THE BOX

39. Maciek
Interaction Designer
Magda
Product Designer

42. design.brainly.com
HOW DID WE GET THE NECESSARY BUY-IN?
● One source of truth accessible to everyone
● Resources for all teams
● Employer branding
● Visible by design and dev community
After the premiere we got recognition across
the company and leadership opened two
positions for Engineers dedicated to our team
🔥

43. Our design system became a benchmark for many
EMPLOYER BRANDING THANKS TO DESIGN SYSTEM
I was looking for the tools that will bridge design and
development for months all over the world… wasn’t aware that
the solution was developed so close - in Cracow! 🤯
The story of your Design System has helped me a lot in
the fight against corporate concrete 😊
Colleague, I used to work with, send kudos for
design.brainly.com!
People are benchmarking heavily on us 😊
This is so 2025 🚀
Dominik Dudek
Crustab, UX/UI Designer
Daniel Zuba
UPC, UX/UI Designer
Bart Bobrowski
Brainly, Product Owner
Agnieszka Lewicka
Interaction Design Candidate (now Brainly!)

45. “Systems are just a reflection of your
organization's ability to decide on a single
answer across disparate groups.
Components are easy, collaboration is hard.”
GARRETT MILLER,
Head of Engineering, Slack Systems
452020 / brainly.com

48. Implementation of designs - mobile apps vs web
DESIGN SYSTEM FOR MOBILE CHALLENGES
MOBILE WEB

51. brainly.com update with SVG-Animate

55. 552020 / brainly.com

58. Key takeaways
DESIGNING FOR DEVELOPMENT
How to convince stakeholders to start making a design system?
The world is changing fast 🚀
● Today users demand products that not only work, but work better
than yesterday, users appreciate consistency and delight - design
systems help achieve that faster 🤩
● Designers & developers are also changing - today it’s important to
care not only about user experience but employee experience too -
design systems can improve it 🤩🎨🤩💻
582020 / brainly.com

59. Key takeaways
DESIGNING FOR DEVELOPMENT
If you are already developing the design system:
● Shared language between design and development is the key!
Use tools like Html-Sketchapp to make it a process ♾️
● Add gamification to your tools (like design principles cards) to align teams
to one direction - people like to play! 🤩
● Let people see what awesome things you are doing - communication is
crucial for design systems to get the necessary buy-in & adoption 💬
● Treat the design system as a thing that connects people ❤️
592020 / brainly.com

60. THANK YOU 👋
patrycja-rozmus