Sarah Chen
@sarahchen
Design Systems @ Scale AI
Design systems architect. Building the future of product design at Scale AI. Previously Figma, Stripe.
San Francisco, CAsarahchen.design
Highlights
Just shipped our new design token system at Scale AI. 400+ semantic tokens covering color, spacing, typography, and motion. The key insight: tokens aren't just variables — they're design decisions encoded as data. Here's what we learned after 6 months of iteration 🧵
#design#tokens#designsystems
Hot take: Most design systems fail not because of bad components, but because of bad governance. You need clear ownership, contribution guidelines, and a deprecation process. The code is the easy part.
#designsystems#leadership
Every junior designer needs to hear this: Your portfolio doesn't need 10 projects. It needs 3 amazing ones. Each should show: 1. The problem (with data) 2. Your process (messy is fine) 3. The outcome (with metrics) Quality > quantity. Always.
#design#portfolio#career#advice
We just open-sourced our entire design system. 200+ components, full Figma kit, and React/Vue/Svelte implementations. Used by 3 Fortune 500 companies in production. Now it's free for everyone.
#designsystems#opensource#components#figma