2024-08-28 Meeting notes

Keeping Figma in sync

• [context] 2U <> Axim working together to migrate 2U-owned Figma library to Axim-owned.

• Open edX will have a published Paragon Figma UI

• In order for consumers to use the Paragon UI kit with their own theme/brands, consumers are replicating the UI kit as a duplicate Figma library.

• [question/concern] How will consumers of the UI kit keep the Figma in sync when there are upstream updates?

  • How will consumers know there are updates?

    • E.g., can you subscribe to notifications?

    • Is it automatically updated?

      • Could this be scary, too?

  • Will it require much manual effort to sync?

  • Example:

    • In the 2U Figma, in theory, 2U designers should see new “Updates” available to choose to accept.

    • Presumably, the “Updates” would show a CHANGELOG.

    • Figma help docs for publishing files to the community

• Keeping track of versions in code.

  • When code updates, how to know when the Figma UI kit needs to be updated?

• Version/deployment frequency?

  • Right now, we release per-commit; should we aggregate commits into larger releases?

    • E.g., correlate Figma versions with release versions of Paragon NPM package.

  • Some ongoing discussion:

    • Tying package versions to named Open edX releases.

      • Very much WIP/conversation (i.e., no OEP draft). Seems reasonable, within FWG.

    • “Something breaking in code is not necessarily breaking in design”

      • Not 1:1 coupling between code versions and Figma versions.

• Can we leverage tokens to mitigate the syncing issues?

  • Figma Tokens (Tokens Studio)

    • Still might be worth looking into

    • Would help with supported theme variants (e.g., dark vs. light)

    • [@Adam Stankiewicz] Was the long-term intent with design tokens project, to create (ideally) two-way syncs between Paragon repo <> Figma.

Possible next steps:

• Review Figma docs on publishing to Community

  • Figma help docs for publishing files to the community

• Create a test UI kit library to try publishing/updates flows.

  • Axim has Figma account to publish against.

  • Axim-owned library, grant Gabe admin access to test update/published.

  • Can publish based on team name, not org (e.g., openedx-community for Paragon).