Contribute to the NYS Design System

Whether you're building an app, designing or updating a website, or just exploring our components, there's a dedicated design system team here to support you. Your ideas, questions, and suggestions will help us make our design system more efficient. So whether you're just starting out or already deep in your build, we'd love to hear from you. We're working together to build better user-centered digital experiences for New York State.

Below are ways you can help improve the New York State design system by sharing feedback and contributing:

Have an idea?

Sometimes a component doesn't exist or an existing component doesn't currently do what you need it to. For situations like that, we have a robust component proposal process where you can suggest your idea openly through GitHub discussions. Everyone's encouraged to participate following our code of conduct to ensure a respectful constructive environment.

When you submit a component request, we ask questions like:

• Why should this be added to the design system?
• How do you expect it to work?
• Do you have examples of similar components?

New proposals are announced in the design system teams channel. Once a proposal is accepted, the design system team will go through a UX design review and accessibility review, development, and finally testing. When that's done, it will be released to the reference site and our Figma libraries.

Propose a component

Search through the existing list of component proposals and if you don't find a component that meets your needs, feel free to create a new proposal for a specific component.

Found a Bug?

If you find something that's not working, our design system team uses GitHub issues to track bugs, accessibility problems, or technical errors. We welcome feedback from all, but we do prioritize the needs of New York State government applications and sites.

Report a bug on GitHub

Spotted an issue or a visual glitch? Open a GitHub ticket with a clear description and reproduction steps so we can squash it.

Join the design system troubleshooting channel

You can join us on Microsoft Teams. If you work for New York State, you can join our design system teams channel and drop your questions or feedback in the threads. We have dedicated spaces for general questions, release notes, and troubleshooting. It's an easy way to learn from each other and help shape the future of the design system.

Every two weeks, our team hosts a design system office hours event on our team's channel. It's an informal online chat with our designers and engineers to troubleshoot together, ask about best practices, or see what's coming next.

NYS Design System Teams channel

Have a quick question or need immediate guidance? Jump into our Microsoft Teams channel to chat with the team in real-time.

Contact us directly

If you've been through the reference site and still have questions about the design system, you can always email us directly at designsystem@its.ny.gov. Our dedicated team checks it regularly and it's a great way to start a conversation, send screenshots with issues, ask a question, or share an idea.