Community

Everyone can help improve the Design System by joining our community discussions, events and co-design collaborations.

We depend on a strong cross-government community to ensure the Design System includes the latest research, design and development to represent and be relevant for its users. Read our community principles.

Sign up to our mailing list

Find out when we announce new events, workshops and ask for help from our community.


Join the conversation

Here’s a few places to join the discussions that help shape the Design System.

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Chat with us on Slack

If you work in government, find us on the #govuk-design-system Slack channel to get support, give us feedback or share your work with us.

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Discuss and give feedback

Tell us your experience using our components and patterns. Look for the ‘Help improve this page’ section at the end of each page to see its issue discussion, or see a list of all discussions.

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Share your examples and research

Upcoming components and patterns’ shows what we’re working on, and how you can help us develop and publish them. Any examples, use cases and research you can share would be very valuable to us.

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Propose a change to pages

Anyone can suggest an improvement, report a bug or correct an error on our pages. Look for the ‘Help improve this page’ section at the end of each page to propose a change using GitHub.


Attend our events

Join one of our regular events where we share ideas and work together to solve common problems affecting service teams.

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Design systems catchup

We regularly host informal chats with our community.

We’ve currently paused our usual fortnightly catchup call whilst we work on improving the way we have these conversations with our community.

We’re keen to hear what you’d like to see and encourage you to take our survey.

Table with post-it notes, pens and paper.

Join a Workshop

We often organise workshops to gather ideas and feedback about work we’re doing, particularly when we know it will affect service teams. If you’d like to help the next time we do, sign up to our mailing list.

Design System Day 2023 Logo.

Design System Day

Every year, we host an online conference to collaborate and share knowledge about design systems with like-minded people, covering topics like accessibility, community and decision-making.

Design System Day 2023 will take place on 10 and 11 October. Find out about the speakers and sessions at Design System Day 2023.

View the videos, slides and notes for Design System Day 2022.


Collaborate and co-design

We’ve also formed cross-government groups to co-design new additions to the Design System. They’re open to everyone that’s interested in working with us.

Maps community call screenshot.

Maps in services

Help us explore best practices for the use of maps across the public sector so we can make them more accessible and consistent.

Join the Maps Slack group.

Task list component

Share your experience, research and skills to help us reiterate the Task list pages pattern into a component.

Join the Task list Slack group.


Propose and help build a component or pattern

If you’d like to take a bigger role to bring a new component or pattern into the Design System, the Design System team can support you. The team can also work with you to ‘upstream’ something you’ve already built into the Design System.

Find out:

Learn how the Design System working group reviews and approves components and patterns to confirm they meet the contribution criteria.