Design System Team/Vision

Vision Statement edit

To provide a comprehensive, reusable, extensible way to design and build front ends on Wikimedia platforms, by following a universal style guide and a shared development kit that codifies the visual and experience principles and guidelines in a library of user-interface (UI) components.


Mission edit

Our mission is to develop an overarching strategy for front-end design and engineering across Wikimedia. This includes building and maintaining a design system that provides tools and guidelines for building user interfaces in an efficient, scalable, and equitable way. This work supports audiences that are critical to developing new knowledge experiences by ensuring that they are successful in creating, maintaining, and extending front-end features across Wikimedia with consistency and ease.


Current vs. Future edit

Current state of front-end development edit

  • Many user-interface libraries used by different teams and projects
  • Redundant effort for designers and engineers
  • Inconsistent designs
  • Inconsistent standards for contribution
  • Challenging to onboard
  • UIs depend on coupled backend logic
 

Ideal future-state of front-end development

  • Less feature redundancy
  • Consistent user experience across all Wikimedia projects
  • Accessible and multilingual by default
  • Standardized browser and device support
  • Faster onboarding
  • Faster software upgrades
  • Systems thinking: teams make an impact outside of immediate focus area