Improving contribution

People wanted to contribute to our design system. We said, “Go for it!” Why didn’t they?

Don’t be a bottleneck

During Shopify's rapid growth from 2020 to 2022, the Polaris design system struggled to keep up 
with the expanding needs of the product and teams. We needed teams to contribute their solutions back to the system. Otherwise, Polaris would become a blocker to growth.

We sent out satisfaction surveys and hosted user interviews across the company. Teams were eager and willing to contribute, and we had encouraged them to do so, but they didn’t. Because they didn’t know how.

Oops! We had never been clear about how to contribute. There was no official process. Each contribution was handled ad hoc—and only if the contributor was persistent.

Get out of the way

Once we identified the blocker, we started gathering disparate sources and writing new documentation about how to contribute.

Along with the written documentation, we hosted workshops and shared education materials on why contribution matters.

People care

After publishing our new contribution guidance, we saw:

  • 46% increase in external PRs to the Polaris repo

  • 325% surge in commits to our UI kit

What we learned: if you want people to participate, make it easy, and make it welcoming.