New article and Figma resources from Spotify Design: “If we only design for speedy devices, we also risk finding out late in the development process that our feature performs poorly on devices used in emerging markets — and at this point, it can be costly and painful to make significant changes. When designing for a global audience, we have to do better, which is why we developed Performance Context Cards and Performance Action Cards: tools for our teams (and yours) to use during certain stages of the product design process.”

The design team at Spotify discusses balancing conflicting goals of creating a playful space for experimentation and fostering interdisciplinary team collaboration in the Figma files. The key to achieving both is balancing the exploratory nature of design with a logical organization in your shared work. “A chaotic mess of brilliant designs is incomprehensible without a helpful file structure but too much structure early on might stifle your team's inspiration.”

Nice write-up on how Spotify updated their icon system and streamlined the contribution flow with Figma. Shaun Bent shares a few more details in his Twitter thread.

Another example from Spotify. Here, they moved from 36 to 4 track row components.

In this example, they replaced 105 button components with just 3. (Sounds like they’ve been using Variants for a while, as Dylan Field used Spotify design system Encore to present the feature in his Config keynote.)

Backstage is Spotify’s homegrown developer portal. This article shows how to design for it using a combination of Figma and Storybook.

Spotify Design shares how they have shaped Figma to their needs and culture. This post focuses on file structure: “Allowing multiple people into the same file doesn’t automatically lead to better collaboration. Our files would need to be organised in a way that is visible and discoverable by everyone. After all, you can’t collaborate on work that you can’t find.” See also: Spotify Ways of Working.