Facebook Design System (FDS)
A unified design system built to improve speed, consistency, and quality across the Facebook app. FDS provides holistic guidance for designing product experiences and accelerates development by aligning design and engineering around shared standards.
Sector
Social Platform, Product Design
Discipline
Design System, UI/UX Design
FDS was created to unify how design decisions are made and implemented across the Facebook app. The goal was to help teams ship high-quality products faster while improving user experience at scale.
At its core, FDS maintains an up-to-date library of primitives and components for both iOS and Android platforms, ensuring alignment between design and implementation. Each component follows accessibility, scalability, and platform consistency guidelines to support cross-platform excellence.
Design Patterns extend the system into reusable task flows built from predefined FDS components. These patterns address universal interactions such as sharing, commenting, and onboarding.
By consolidating similar flows into shared implementations, FDS reduces cognitive load, improves usability, and increases design and development velocity.
The People Picker was the first unified pattern tested within Facebook. It demonstrated how high-quality, reusable components could streamline task completion, improve consistency, and establish a scalable model for future patterns.
FDS became a critical foundation for collaboration between design and engineering. It streamlined development, reduced redundant design work, and ensured that every new feature adhered to a consistent design language. By establishing repeatable UX patterns, the system improved efficiency and elevated the overall experience for billions of users worldwide.