Contribute design
Design contributions can involve anything from creating design specs for feature requests to mainting Figma libraries. Below you’ll find tips and best practices to get started.
Step 1: Find a project to work on
New issues submitted by the community are initially triaged by Carbon team members. Any issue that the Carbon team accepts, but can not fit in their roadmap, is open for community contribution.
Volunteer for existing work
The best way to volunteer is to look through
existing GitHub issues
labeled with community contribution. Any issue labeled with
design contribution needed is fair game! Put a comment in the issue saying
you’d like to help.
The most common design requests are related to feature enhancements: researching UX, creating visual solutions, and crafting a design spec are often required before a feature enhancement can be put into code.
If you want to join an issue that is already assigned to someone or has a specific milestone, please discuss with the assignee of the issue or with the Carbo team to coordinate. Often contributors work in groups of 2-3.
We also have many ongoing projects to create and update reusable components in Figma. This work is not currently tracked in GitHub, so check out the status of design kits and get involved by reaching out to the contacts listed.
The Carbon team is also happy to help you find a get started. Just stop by our office hours or send us a slack message.
Submit an idea
Have a new idea that you think would benefit Carbon? Or do you need to report a bug? First, be sure to look through the issue backlog to make sure it is a novel idea or bug. Then, file your proposal on GitHub using the issue templates. If you’re willing to work on this idea yourself, be sure to let is know in your issue! Your idea will then go through a triage process by the Carbon team.
If you’ve submitted a GitHub issue and it has been labeled proposal: accepted,
you can volunteer to take on the work. Simply leave a comment in the GitHub
issue.
Step 2: Refine the issue
Whereas code contributions tend to be well defined, design contributions can be a little more ambiguous. We recommend you try writing a rough task list of what you believe your contribution will entail, and post it in the GitHub issue comments. In most cases, we recommend you then reach out to the Carbon team or come to office hours. We’ll help you further refine your issue, clarify the scope of work, and connect you to other collaborators. Some good questions to ask yourself are:
- Am I clear on the scope of this work?
- Is this task list feasible for me to do?
- Do I need to collaborate with anyone else?
- Do I have a clear definition of done or plan to pass this to a developer?
Step 3: Iterate and get feedback
Most contributors work in groups of 2-3 and either set up weekly sessions or join meetups such as the Data Viz Guild or office hours. In these sessions, it is common to share work in progress and ask lots of questions. As you make progress, update your GitHub issue.
Bring any work-in-progress to the following guilds and meet-ups. Here you’ll get candid feedback and help—we all want to see your design deliverable published!
DSAG - Design System Adoption Guild
This is an expansive group of designers and developers all aligned on the mission of delivering amazing experiences in the IBM Products organization. You can learn more about the guild here.
CAG - Carbon Accessibility Guild.
A once a sprint meeting where the Carbon team gets together with the Accessibility team. Our components and patterns are reviewed and made more accessible.
Data Viz Guild
Description
Design Crit
A once a sprint meeting led by Carbon designers to review patterns and artifacts with the intent of eliciting feedback.
Office Hours
A once a sprint meeting hosted by the Carbon team to answer questions, debug, problem-solve, and learn from the community. Link to add to your calendar.