A course for design leaders

BUILD DESIGN SYSTEMS THAT THRIVE.

Most design systems fail. Not because they were built wrong — because nobody figured out how to keep them alive. This course teaches the organizational side: executive buy-in, governance, adoption, and survival.

Join the interest list → See the curriculum ↓
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Course Intro
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01 — The Problem

Five forces that kill
design systems. Plan for them now.

There's no shortage of content on tokens, component architecture, and Figma workflows. What almost nobody teaches is the organizational side — the buy-in, governance, and adoption strategy that determines whether your system gets built, funded, and used at all.

01
Teams will build around your system if adoption isn't part of the plan from day one.
Adoption doesn't happen because a system exists. It happens because someone made it easier to use than to go around — before the workarounds became habits.
02
Governance models that look right on paper collapse in the org you actually work inside.
Most governance frameworks fail not because they're wrong, but because they were designed for a perfect org chart — not the messy, political one you're actually navigating.
03
If you can't make the business case before you build, leadership will make it for you — by cutting the budget.
Securing buy-in means speaking in language your CFO cares about — velocity, defect rates, time-to-ship — before you've shipped a single component.
04
Your best designers will resist a system they weren't part of building.
Winning over skeptical designers starts at the beginning — making them authors of the system, not subjects of it. That has to be designed in, not bolted on after.
05
A design system with no measurable business case is a passion project waiting to be cut.
A component library isn't a design system. If you can't tie the work to outcomes from the start, the system becomes optional — and then expendable.
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Every one of these is preventable — but only if you plan for them before they surface.
This course gives you the organizational playbook: how to earn buy-in, build governance that holds, and set the foundation for a system that actually gets used.
02 — What This Course Is
The craft side is solved.
This is the other side.

Every other course teaches you how to build the system. This one teaches you what to do after the launch — when the politics start, the budget is questioned, and the adoption isn't happening.

This is not
A Figma tutorial
A token naming guide
A component architecture breakdown
A beginners course
Theory without real case studies
This is
How to build the business case
Governance that actually holds
Driving adoption in resistant orgs
Winning over skeptical designers
Real frameworks from real work
03 — Instructor
Justin Delabar

JUSTIN
DELABAR

Design Systems Lead · Systems & Signals

I've built design systems at a Fortune 500 regional bank, a Fortune 500 national grocery retailer, and a large regional grocery distributor — actual programs, from business case through adoption, working inside the org. The banking app became JD Power's #1 rated regional banking app. The work at the retailers is still running, not because the components were great, but because the organizational infrastructure around them was built to last.

"The pattern I kept seeing wasn't bad components or messy Figma files. It was teams that couldn't get executive buy-in. Governance models that looked great on paper and collapsed in practice."
04 — Curriculum

9 modules.
Every layer of the problem.

From setting up for survival on day one through measuring ROI and positioning for the AI-native future. Each module comes with a downloadable framework you can use immediately — not templates to fill in, but working tools built from real programs.

01
Why Design Systems Fail (And How to Set Yours Up to Win)
~45 min
The real reasons systems get abandoned — it's not the components
The three failure modes: orphaned, over-engineered, under-adopted
How to audit your org's readiness before you build
Setting success criteria from day one
◈ Pre-Build Org Readiness Checklist
02
Building the Business Case
~60 min
Translating design system value into language executives care about
The cost of inconsistency: how to model operational drag
ROI framing: velocity, quality, and brand equity
Surviving budget season — how to defend against deferral
◈ Business Case Template
03
Governance That Actually Works
~50 min
Why most governance models collapse (and what they have in common)
Centralized vs. federated vs. hybrid — choosing the right model
Decision rights, contribution models, and versioning policies
Keeping the system alive when no one's watching
◈ Governance Charter Template
04
Stakeholder Alignment Across Product, Eng, and Brand
~60 min
Why Product, Engineering, and Brand all have different threat models
Running alignment sessions that produce real agreements
Managing the "we'll just build our own" faction
Bringing Brand and Creative Services into the tent
◈ Stakeholder Alignment Workshop Guide
05
Winning Over Designers — From Skeptics to Champions
~55 min
Why designers resist design systems (it's not ego)
Making designers authors, not subjects — contribution models that build ownership
The early champion strategy: identifying and co-opting enthusiasts before they become skeptics
Brand, naming, and SWAG: treating your system like a product launch, not an IT rollout
◈ Designer Onboarding + Buy-In Playbook
06
Building the System — Foundations and Architecture
~75 min
The counterintuitive case for building token architecture before finalizing visual design
Primitive vs. semantic token structure: getting this right up front
Tokens, components, patterns, and recipes — what belongs where
Multi-platform considerations: web, iOS, Android
◈ Component Taxonomy Template
07
Driving Adoption in Resistant Organizations
~60 min
Why adoption fails even when the system is good
Making it easier to use the system than to go around it
Migration strategies: the strangler-fig approach for legacy codebases
Measuring adoption and reporting it upward
◈ Adoption Scorecard
08
Measuring ROI and Communicating Impact
~45 min
The metrics that actually move executives: velocity, defect rate, time-to-ship
Building a reporting cadence that keeps leadership engaged
When to declare victory — and how to use it to get more investment
◈ Design System Impact Dashboard Template
09
The Future — Gen UI, AI, and the Evolving Role of Design Systems
~45 min
Where design systems are headed in an AI-native product world
The orchestration layer: model-driven, context-aware interfaces
How to position your system now to stay relevant in 3 years
What this means for design system practitioners' careers
BONUS
The Design System Leader's Toolkit
All tiers
Full template library — all 8 downloadables in one place
Recommended reading and reference architecture
Community access + office hours (cohort tier)
05 — What You Get

Everything you need to make it last.

9
Video Modules
~8 hours of practitioner-first video. No filler. No obvious advice. Real frameworks from real programs.
8
Downloadable Frameworks
Working tools — a business case template, governance charter, adoption scorecard, and more. Built from real work.
3
Real Case Studies
A regional bank, a national grocery retailer, a regional distributor. Not anonymized. Not hypothetical. The actual decisions, trade-offs, and outcomes.
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Live Cohort Option
4 live sessions + community access for the cohort tier. Work through the material alongside other design leaders.
06 — Pricing

Three ways
to go deeper.

All tiers include the full video curriculum and downloadable frameworks. The cohort and team tiers add live sessions, community access, and group work through the material.

SELF-PACED
$397
Full access to all video content and frameworks, on your schedule.
  • All 9 video modules (~8 hours)
  • 8 downloadable frameworks and templates
  • Bonus: Design System Leader's Toolkit
  • Lifetime access + future updates
Join interest list
Most popular
COHORT
$1,997
Everything in self-paced, plus four live sessions and community access.
  • All 9 video modules (~8 hours)
  • 8 downloadable frameworks and templates
  • 4 live group sessions with Justin
  • Private community access
  • Bonus: Design System Leader's Toolkit
  • Lifetime access + future updates
Join interest list
TEAM LICENSE
$4,997
Cohort access for up to 8 people. Train the whole design systems team at once.
  • Cohort access for up to 8 seats
  • All 9 video modules (~8 hours)
  • 8 downloadable frameworks and templates
  • 4 live group sessions with Justin
  • Private community access
  • Team onboarding call
Join interest list

Interest list members receive early access and priority enrollment when the course launches.

07 — From the Newsletter

The thinking behind the course.

These issues from Systems & Signals cover the same territory as the course — executive buy-in, governance, adoption, and the organizational dynamics that make or break a design system. Free to read.

#039
Design Systems as AI Infrastructure
When IBM and SAP independently launched design system MCP servers, it stopped being a trend. Your system's architecture is now the specification that AI tools reason from — and structure determines what they can do with it.
Read →
Bonus Issue
How Building a Design System Backwards Worked
My first meeting with the design system team was a review of YAML and JSON files. No mockups, no component audits. It turned out to be the smartest way to build a scalable, token-driven system from the ground up.
Read →
#022
When Everything's a Design Component, Nothing Is
The word "component" gets thrown around like everyone agrees on what it means. Spoiler: they don't. Imprecise naming creates ownership gaps, governance failures, and adoption problems that are entirely preventable.
Read →
#016
Collaborative Design System Prioritization That Actually Works
Before you can establish component standards, your team needs to agree on what exists, what makes one version better than another, and who gets to decide. A spreadsheet might be your most underrated design tool.
Read →
#012
Design Systems Don't Kill Creativity — They Refocus It
There's a persistent myth that design systems stifle creativity. This piece challenges that assumption and argues that constraints don't limit good design — they redirect it toward the decisions that actually matter.
Read →
#031
When Vision Stops Scaling: The Limits of the Lone Creator
Brilliance can build the vision. Only structure can sustain it. Using Manor Lords' developer as a lens, this piece examines what happens when a single creative mind hits the ceiling — and what design system leaders can learn from it.
Read →
08 — Get Early Access

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GET IN.

The course is in production. Join the interest list and you'll be the first to know when enrollment opens — and the first to get access. Interest list members also receive early pricing.

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