Patterns

We Want You To Contribute!

Canvas is Workday’s central design system and we regularly release centralized code, assets, components, patterns and guidelines for product teams to use. At the same time, we need people working on product teams to contribute their app-level knowledge and solutions back into the central design system, so that our releases are designed with both system and real-world product needs included.

In design system terminology this is called a Hybrid system; which is a combination of Central system content (tools and artifacts created by the central design system team and released to product teams) + Federated system content (tools and artifacts created by product teams and contributed back to the central design system). This is considered to be the most robust design system model for scaling growth, adoption and cohesion across products, and ultimately for making things easier for everyone making design decisions. Visually a Hybrid system model looks something like this:

Understanding Canvas Contribution

There are various ways to contribute to Canvas, but contribution broadly falls into the areas of:

• Code
• Assets
• Components
• Patterns
• Guidelines

Code, Asset, Component and Product Example contribution will typically be in the form of tactical solutions and documentation that you and your team have either already created and want to share for others to use, or solutions that your team would like to Canvas to release and that you and your team want to collaborate with us on creating.

Pattern and Guideline contribution will typically be in the form of design guidance and information that provides a best practice design point-of-view for others to apply.

The contribution workflow is not a one-size-fits-all process. Some forms of contribution, such as Product Examples, are a light lift for the contributor; conversely, writing a Guideline article can be a lengthy process with several incremental quality checks along the way. Ultimately, Canvas wants to make the contribution process as streamlined and easy as possible, whatever it is you’re contributing. That’s why in this section you’ll find self-guided templates, how-to videos, FAQs and support contacts. We understand the importance of federated contribution and want to make it as exciting and barrier free as possible for you to do.

Types of Pattern Contribution

There are 4 types of pattern contribution that you can get involved with. We’ve broken them down below by effort-level.

Low effort (1-2 hrs in total)

• Reviewing iterations of a newly documented Pattern.
• Documenting a Product Example pattern from your team.

Medium effort (~5 hrs per week)

• Collaborating with Canvas on writing a newly documented pattern.

Medium-High effort (~5 hrs per week)

• Writing a newly documented pattern with reviewing iterations from Canvas.

Getting Started

In order for Canvas to be a living, evolving hybrid design system that represents all of our product organization, we need community participation. Contributing pattern knowledge to Canvas is a way to connect your product area expertise improving outcomes for users across all of Workday. There are two ways to begin contributing pattern knowledge to Canvas: The Canvas team regularly updates a list of patterns that they are planning to document in the coming months. The pattern team will call for volunteer contributors from product teams to get involved in documenting these patterns at Design System Council live sessions, or via the Council Slack channel. The current list of priority patterns can be accessed through #design-system-council on Slack. If you or your team have other pattern knowledge that you think would be helpful to others to be documented, you can reach out to the Canvas design team with a documentation request on #ask-canvas-design.

When you or your team identifies a pattern that you consider should be contributed, be sure to review Canvas Patterns to ensure that your pattern doesn’t currently exist in the system. If you find this is the case you may have additional knowledge to contribute to the pattern, in which case it’s treated as a pattern update rather than new pattern documentation.

Self Guided Templates

The creation of a new documented pattern will involve varying levels of collaboration between product teams and Canvas. No two documented patterns will be the same, but we can ensure that the format and structure of the documentation follows a standard layout. To facilitate this and make it easier and more intuitive for product teams to create pattern documentation, the Canvas team provides a Self-Guided Pattern Template. This template includes an introduction to the pattern documentation process, a formatted structure, support links and line-level help for each of the sections to be completed.

The Quality Check Process

The time it takes to document a pattern will vary depending on the complexity of the subject matter and the number of collaborators involved. In order to ensure that each new pattern meets a quality standard in keeping with existing Canvas documentation, the Canvas team has implemented a quality check process for all pattern contributors to follow. This is outlined below:

FAQs & Support

FAQs for contributors are an ongoing work in progress. We will continually update and scale these FAQs as Federated Contribution to the design system increases. For now you can view existing FAQs here: [For Pattern Contributors FAQs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6GEnM1JyW7XQ72RkXknJhKSZhfJALlBo-tlWaCibf0/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.ivzf272e214z.

Getting Started

In order for Canvas to be a living, evolving hybrid design system that represents all of our product organization, we need community participation. Contributing pattern knowledge to Canvas through product examples allows you to leverage your expertise to enhance user outcomes across all of Workday. When you or your team identifies product examples that you consider should be contributed to Canvas Patterns, review the information below to help you get started.

Self Guided Templates

The contribution of a new product example will typically be a low level of effort for product teams, unless multiple product examples are being contributed at the one time, in which case time commitment will rise. There is a light review process conducted by the Canvas team, after which the product example will be tagged with relevant pattern tags and will then display within Canvas/Product-Examples. To support product example contribution and to make it as easy and intuitive for product teams to contribute, the Canvas team provides a Self Guided Product Example Template. This template includes an introduction to the contribution process, a formatted structure, support links and line-level help for each of the sections to be completed.

FAQs & Support

FAQs for contributors are an ongoing work in progress. We will continually update and scale these FAQs as Federated Contribution to the design system increases. For now you can view existing FAQs here: For Pattern Example Contributors FAQs.