Design System Tokenization

Tokenizing enterprise design systems for futureproof evolution

(Client)
IPG Mediabrands
(Year)
2024-2025
(Services)
UI/UX

Design system tokenization strategy and approach to transform maintenance, evolution and redesign processes

Role: Director of Product Design
‍Team: Product Design Team
‍Timeline: 2024-2025

Development of team's tokenization strategy to future-proof our design system to be scalable, maintainable, and adaptable for evolving product needs.

Team

Selected and led designers working on this effort

  • Sara Birchard, Senior Product Designer
  • Piotr Brzezinski, Product Designer

Discovery

To develop an effective tokenization strategy, we conducted:

  • Research on design tokens used in industry-leading design systems
  • Comparative analysis of multi-brand, multi-platform systems
  • Team workshops to align on terminology, structure, and governance
  • Stakeholder interviews to understand engineering, brand, and accessibility needs
  • Audit of existing design assets to identify inconsistencies and opportunities

Process

Resourcing

  • Worked with leadership and finance to secure an unlimited Figma Enterprise contract to access built-in workflows to sync token collections directly from Figma to repositories

Research & Strategy Development

  • Mapped out token types (global/primitives, semantic, component-specific)
  • Benchmarked against industry leaders like Google’s Material and IBM’s Carbon

Framework Definition & Structuring

  • Created a multi-tier token architecture to ensure adaptability
  • Discussion of governance rules for token creation, updates, and deprecation

Prototyping & Feedback

  • Developed a proof-of-concept system to showcase (see below)
  • Discussed potential impact on workflows across designers, engineers, and product teams

Feedback & Iteration

  • Ran usability testing with designers and engineers
  • Adjusted hierarchy and naming conventions based on real-world use cases

Adoption & Rollout

  • Created documentation and initial training sessions
  • Currently discussing the potential for aligning token usage across teams for long-term scalability

Proof of Concept Example

Example of proof of concept shared to discuss potential impact on workflows and usage