Roadmap

This is the roadmap of Nord Design System, based on our planned design and development path. Subject to change based on user needs and feedback. Full backlog can be found from Linear.

Q4 2020 #

• Background and user research.
• Overall planning and defining scope.
• Conducting interviews with makers, users and stakeholders.
• Figuring out organizational challenges.
• Overall Design System API Design.
• Design principles for the system.

Q1 2021 #

• Ways of working for design system.
• Public documentation platform for Design System.
• Drafting Type, Color & Spacing rules for design system.
• Work on design principles for the system continues.
• Establishing new workflows for the team.
• Design Tokens package work starts.
• Theming package work starts.
• Content and documentation creation work starts.
• Publishing Font package v1.0.0
• Name for the design system.
• Versioning model and public releases page for design system.
• Naming and coding conventions for design system.
• Automated frontend tooling.
• Publishing Theming package 1.0.
• New marketing website work starts.
• Corporate brand refresh and planning.

Q2 2021 #

• New marketing website ready.
• Brand refresh ready.
• Team building for design system.
• Starting to provide support for design system users.
• Public release of the Design System.
• Bringing Nordhealth fonts into font package.
• Recategorization of themes and bringing in Nordhealth theme.
• Documenting the new Nordhealth brand.
• Rethinking naming and categorization of design tokens.
• Onboarding new team members.
• Design work for refreshed user interface components starts.
• Content and documentation creation work continues.

Q3 2021 #

• Starting work on Figma designer toolkit.
• Design work for refreshed UI elements continues.
• Onboarding new team members.
• Introducing “Design System Academy” that provides opportunities for the designers and product people to improve their skills and learn new ones.
• Validating different frameworks and build tools for Web Components.
• Migrate from Stencil to Lit.
• Setting up storage container and CDN distribution for design system.
• Icon library work starts.
• Core component system work starts.
• Automated frontend tooling work continues.
• Prototyping and gathering feedback about the new components.
• Content and documentation creation work continues.
• Improved communication via "Monthly updates" and weekly office hours.

Q4 2021 #

• CSS Framework planning and work starts.
• Accessibility testing ramps up.
• Publishing Design Tokens package v1.0.
• Publishing Themes package v2.0.
• Publishing CSS Framework package v1.0.
• Publishing Webfonts package v2.0.
• Updated color design tokens for Healthcare and Veterinary apps.
• Visual regression tests for design system components.
• Deployment and publish automation for NPM packages.
• Publishing Icon library package v1.0.
• Beta Components package for testing.
• Starting to organize wider sessions about design system inside the org.
• Design work for refreshed UI elements continues.
• Figma designer toolkit work continues.
• Core Component System work continues.
• Content and documentation creation work continues.
• Dog fooding product teams and ourselves to get feedback.

Q1 2022 #

• Core Component System work continues.
• Dog fooding product teams and ourselves to get feedback.
• UX and UI rework for our applications continue.
• Bug reporting capabilities and enhanced support for design system.
• Internal and external design system research.
• Creating content guidelines for components.
• Moving focus onto usage patterns.
• Publishing Components package v1.0.

Q2 2022 #

• Starting to provide tutorials and more guidelines for the users.
• Internal promotion of the system starts more widely.
• Optimizing bundle sizes of all packages.
• Developing more complex components and improving the existing ones.
• Component work shifts to templates and patterns as well.
• Dog fooding product teams and ourselves to get feedback.
• Internal and external design system research.
• Creating content guidelines for components.
• Moving focus onto usage patterns.
• Nord Command Line Interface is published.

Q3-Q4 2022 #

• Work on templates and more complex patterns continues.
• Work on improving the existing components continues.
• Focusing on contribution and adoption from different product teams.
• Creating automated tools to measure adoption and usage.
• SSR (Server Side Rendering) support for Web Components.
• Wider public release of the Design System.