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Who uses Carbon?

Carbon is for each and every member of a cross-functional team—designers, developers, marketers and offering managers. Every point along a user’s journey needs to feel part of a holistic, branded experience and that’s where Carbon comes in.

Designers

Designers are passionate advocates for users, and Carbon helps them provide value to our users with accessible, fully-tested assets and guidance that designers can rely on to create cohesive experiences that are in line with other business units.

How Carbon helps designers

Carbon supports designers with the tools to build excellent experiences for our users that are consistent, delightful, and thoughtful. Designers can quickly create tailored solutions for our clients, drawing on Carbon’s reusable kit of parts. This saves valuable time that can be spent on innovating new solutions.

In addition, Carbon enables product and .com designers across the organization to explore and deliver the full potential of a design, leveraging the work of other teams where possible, avoiding redesign and duplication of efforts, keeping the focus on the distinct client use cases.

Here are some ways designers can begin engaging with Carbon.

Learn the system

Get the tools

  • Visit the Get started page to install the Figma design kits.

  • Visit the Other resources page to find other useful tools and plugins.

Connect with the team

  • Find meetups for leveling up your skills, connecting with your peers, and getting reviews on work in progress.

  • If you’re confused or if you’ve spotted an inconsistency, reach out on our IBM Slack channels. At this time, the Slack channels are for IBMers only.

  • Make a GitHub issue when you find a bug or want to request a feature.

Keep up with the latest

Contribute back to Carbon

  • Contribute component and/or pattern enhancements, or create new assets, stewarded by the Carbon team.

  • Author usage documentation for patterns and components.

  • Create tooling, especially as related to design kits in various frameworks.

  • Explore scalable system logic such as token additions or inline theming.

  • Connect with the Carbon team to share work in progress and assess its suitability for universal guidance.

Developers

Carbon provides developers with the tools they need to build more product in less time, while saving them from the mind-numbing work of creating the same base components over and over again.

How Carbon helps developers

By leveraging Carbon’s pre-built assets, developers free themselves (and their backlogs) up to do the innovative work that inspires them and ultimately elevates the user experience for our clients.

Developers can create products that are cohesive with other business units—high-quality, consistent, and robust front-end experiences that share the IBM brand.

Here are some ways developers can begin engaging with Carbon.

Learn the system

Get the tools

Connect with the team

  • Find meetups for leveling up your skills, connecting with your peers, and getting reviews on work in progress.

  • If you’re confused or if you’ve spotted an inconsistency, reach out on our IBM Slack channels. At this time, the Slack channels are for IBMers only.