governance & contribution

Planet operates at the intersection of high-velocity product development and strict platform needs (scalability, performance, scientific visualization). I led the design system governance initiative to balance speed and quality: a clear contribution path, quality gates (accessibility, token usage), and a lightweight stewarding body to drive system decisions.

Problem

• Designers and Engineers regularly requested new components/patterns without an established intake or triage process.
• System debt accumulated due to ad-hoc variations, and no one team owned long-term maintenance.
• Drift in multiple products for searching satellite imagery and analytics were represented across UIs.

Roles

• Lead designer for governance: mapped workflows, created templates, and facilitated cross-functional councils.
• Set up a core steward team with engineering, product, and design team

Solution

• Designed a federated governance model: Core Stewards (responsible for stability), Advisory Contributors (product teams), and Community Contributors (designers/engineers).
• Implemented a contribution workflow.
• Created triage/decision templates, component proposal forms, and service level agreements for maintenance.
• Introduced quarterly design system roadmaps and retrospective reviews.

Process

• Mapped current pain points and interviewed 12 stakeholders.
• Trialed the workflow on a high-impact component.
• Ran governance workshops and set SLAs for triage and release.

Impact

• Reduced ad-hoc component creation by ~70% and lowered system debt items flagged in retrospectives.
• Faster, predictable design system releases (monthly cadence) with clear owners.
• Increased cross-team contributions with higher quality proposals and fewer rollbacks.

Lessons

• Governance needs transparent metrics (time to triage, time to publish).
• Next Steps: integrate automated checks (token usage, accessibility, visual diffs) into the contribution pipeline.