Establishing Effective Design Token Governance

Establishing Effective Design Token Governance

Design tokens are essential to creating scalable, consistent, and efficient design systems. They also bridge the gap between designers and developers by ensuring that design decisions are carried out systematically, with uniformity across platforms and products. However, as powerful as design tokens are, their effectiveness depends on how well they are managed or governed. Without a robust governance framework, the benefits of design tokens can quickly unravel.

In this installment of our ongoing series, we’ll explore the importance of design token governance, provide a step-by-step guide to building a governance process for your organization, and offer practical tips from our work for ensuring that your design tokens continue to serve their purpose effectively over time. If you are new to design tokens or have not already read the previous installments, check out our series overview here.

What Is Governance and Why It Matters

In this context, governance provides structure and consistency to design systems across teams and products. It ensures that design tokens are used appropriately, updated correctly, and applied consistently across all platforms. Governance helps align teams—designers, developers, and product managers—by providing clear guidelines, processes, and roles for how design tokens are created, maintained, and used.

Imagine a global retail brand operating across a mobile app, website, and in-store kiosks. If the company’s web and mobile teams independently create a promotional banner that requires brand colors, padding, and fonts, they would rely on established governance to ensure consistency. They would first consult the design system or sync with the token guardian in order to make sure their choices adhere to established guidelines. After developing the new design, they could then work with the guardian to incorporate new patterns into the system, so that all teams have access to them.

Setting Up Your Design Token Governance Process

Design token governance isn’t just about enforcing rules; it’s about creating a process that encourages best practices, aligns teams, and ensures the long-term success of your design system. Below is a step-by-step guide to establishing a governance framework for your design tokens.

Step 1: Define Roles and Responsibilities

One of the first steps in creating a governance process is to define the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved. This ensures that all stakeholders understand their part in managing design tokens, and it minimizes the risk of misunderstandings or bottlenecks.

Team Roles to Consider:

• Design System Team: Typically responsible for the creation, maintenance, and governance of the design tokens. This team ensures that all components adhere to established design principles.
• Product Teams: These teams use design tokens to build products and interfaces. They must follow the design system guidelines but may also request new tokens or updates.
• Developers: Developers play a critical role in implementing design tokens in code. They must ensure that tokens are applied correctly and work across different environments.
• Governance Lead: This role may fall to a design system manager or a UX lead who is responsible for overseeing the governance process and ensuring alignment across teams.

Individual Roles to Consider:

In practice, different individuals (or groups of individuals) take responsibility for various tasks in the workflow. The example below is from our practices here at DOOR3. Keep in mind, the above categories are general and can apply to one or more people depending on the size and complexity of your organization.

These individual roles are split up into two types:

Leadership:

• Design Language (DL) Lead - owns, establishes, maintains, and distributes the design system guidelines. They make the ultimate decisions about the design systems.
• Project Manager - coordinates resources, tasks and timelines, owns the component request backlog, and orchestrates communication.
• UX Lead - owns and is responsible for the UX of one or more products. They work with the DLS Guardian and UX Designers to define how design systems guidelines are applied.
• Dev Lead - owns the shared component repository and oversees the development and maintenance of token transformation scripts.

Production:

• Design Language System (DLS) Guardian - designs and maintains one or more product-level design systems, ensuring consistency across product-level systems.
• Token Guardian - owns and maintains the token “source of truth” and ensures all styles across the DLS remain in sync.
• UX Designer - identifies needs and gaps in the product level component library, providing functional requirements, and tests new and updated components.
• Developer - owns and maintains platform level dev libraries and infrastructure.

These roles work in tandem to preserve the continuity and stability of design systems by focusing on improving these key processes:

• Documentation through comprehensive records ensures clarity and accessibility for all product stakeholders.
• Collaboration fosters teamwork among designers, developers, and stakeholders for cohesive outcomes.
• Governance establishes guidelines and processes for sustainable maintenance and evolution.

Step 2: Establish a Clear Token Creation and Approval Process

Design tokens should not be created haphazardly. A structured process for creating, reviewing, and approving new tokens ensures that they are thoughtfully designed and align with the broader design system.

Key Aspects of Token Creation:

• Token Definition: When a new design token is needed, its purpose, usage, and relationship to other tokens should be clearly defined.
• Review and Approval: Before a token is added to the design system, it should go through a formal review process. The design system team should ensure that it meets the organization’s design standards and is necessary for scaling the system.
• Documentation: Every token should be thoroughly documented to ensure proper usage and application. This includes its purpose, usage guidelines, and examples of where it should be applied.

A common approach is to use version control systems like GitHub or Jira to track changes and approvals, ensuring transparency and accountability across teams. Let’s look at an example of a workflow approach that we’ve employed and found effective within a range of projects.

This workflow is designed so that each role serves to support the other while providing checks and balances in the process. This ensures consistency across complex teams and the entire organization. Each role not only serves to move the process forward, but also ensures visibility and collaboration.

Step 3: Implement Token Naming Conventions

Consistency in naming design tokens is critical for maintaining clarity and usability. Without a standard naming convention, it becomes difficult for designers and developers to find, use, and maintain tokens. If you haven’t read our previous installment on naming conventions, pause here to consider this topic.

Best Practices for Naming Tokens:

• Use a Hierarchical Structure: Tokens should be named in a way that reflects their relationship to each other. For example, color-primary, color-primary-dark, and color-primary-light clearly indicate the relationship between different color tokens.
• Be Descriptive: Use names that accurately describe the token’s function and purpose. Avoid vague or overly technical names.
• Keep It Simple: Avoid long, complex names. Tokens should be easy to read and understand at a glance.

Having a standardized naming convention allows teams to quickly identify the right tokens and apply them consistently.

Step 4: Establish Communication Channels for Feedback

Design tokens need to evolve over time to accommodate new features, products, or branding changes. A clear process for requesting changes or providing feedback is essential for maintaining the relevance and effectiveness of your token system.

Communication Channels to Consider:

• Slack or Microsoft Teams: Create dedicated channels for token-related discussions and questions. This ensures that all feedback and requests are centralized and easily accessible.
• Issue Tracking Systems (Jira, GitHub, etc.): Use issue tracking tools to formally submit token requests or report problems. This ensures that requests are documented and can be prioritized effectively.
• Regular Meetings: Schedule regular check-ins between the design system team and product teams to discuss token-related issues, review requests, and provide updates.

By providing clear channels for feedback and communication, you can ensure that your design tokens remain aligned with the organization’s evolving needs.

Step 5: Version Control and Change Management

As design tokens evolve, it’s essential to manage changes in a way that minimizes disruption and ensures backward compatibility. Version control allows teams to track changes to design tokens and revert to previous versions if necessary.

Key Aspects of Version Control:

• Semantic Versioning: Use semantic versioning to indicate the scope of changes to design tokens. For example, v1.0.0 could represent the initial release, while v1.1.0 indicates minor updates.
• Changelog: Maintain a changelog that tracks all updates to design tokens, including why the change was made and its impact on the design system.
• Deprecation Strategy: When tokens are updated or replaced, provide a clear deprecation strategy to ensure that old tokens are phased out gradually, without breaking existing components.

Change management is crucial for maintaining stability across the design system, especially as more teams and products rely on the tokens.

Step 6: Create a Token Review Process

To maintain the integrity of the design system, establish a regular review process for all tokens. This ensures that tokens remain relevant and are used correctly across the organization.

Steps for a Token Review Process:

• Periodic Audits: Conduct regular audits of the design system to ensure that tokens are being used appropriately and are still necessary.
• Review Metrics: Track the usage of tokens across products to identify under-used or redundant tokens.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Involve stakeholders from design, development, and product teams in the review process to get a holistic view of token usage and potential issues.

Step 7: Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Governance is not a one-time task; it requires ongoing attention and refinement. Encourage teams to adopt a mindset of continuous improvement by regularly evaluating the effectiveness of the governance process and making adjustments as needed.

Tips for Continuous Improvement:

• Gather Feedback: Regularly solicit feedback from all teams involved in using the design tokens. This can provide valuable insights into areas for improvement.
• Iterate on the Process: Based on feedback and evolving needs, continuously iterate on the governance process to ensure that it remains effective and relevant.
• Celebrate Successes: Recognize and celebrate milestones, such as the successful rollout of new tokens or the resolution of governance issues. This reinforces the value of good governance and encourages teams to continue following best practices.

Conclusion: The Long-Term Benefits of Design Token Governance

Design tokens are a powerful tool for maintaining consistency, scalability, and efficiency across a design system, but without proper governance, their potential can quickly diminish. A well-defined governance process ensures that design tokens are used correctly, updated regularly, and applied consistently across all platforms and products.

By establishing clear roles, creating a structured token creation process, implementing naming conventions, and fostering collaboration across teams, you can create a governance framework that supports the long-term success of your design system.

Moreover, governance is not static—it requires continuous improvement and iteration to remain effective. By encouraging feedback, conducting regular audits, and embracing a culture of improvement, your organization can ensure that its design tokens continue to drive success well into the future.

As you continue to develop your design system, remember that governance is the foundation upon which sustainable and scalable design systems are built. Implementing strong governance processes will not only keep your design tokens relevant but also help your teams work more efficiently, reducing friction and promoting consistency across your digital products. Ultimately, good governance leads to better design, better collaboration, and, most importantly, a better user experience.

Thank you for reading our series, and if you’re interested in learning more about design tokens, sign up for our upcoming workshop in Barcelona on November 7th.