Content design in design systems

Background

Content designers who work in design systems are at a powerful intersection. Their mind for consistency and terminology meets a bird's-eye-view of the system. If empowered, content can bring really amazing things to the table. 

Working on M&T's Currency Design System, I used content strategy and design principles to propose and implement changes to our CSS class names. Ultimately, this created a more predictable and intuitive experience for our dev users.

Our naming conventions were as follows:

1. Blocks represent a component that can exist independently

2. Elements represent a part of a component that can't exist independently

3. Modifiers represent a change to a block or element, like a different appearance or state

Then, I digitized the problem and my proposal, along with a rationale, to share with the lead engineer.

Separately, I also recommended renaming the text field component to text input. The design system already had an input field pattern. Creating more of a distinction between a text input and an input field would allow people to navigate the system more quickly.

The result was an adoption of both proposals for a more seamless and intuitive implementation of the design system.