Unboxing a Shared Language

If hardware and software can work together, so can the teams that make them

Our hardware and software teams used to meet at the end, which is to say, too late.

This year they shared one colour library, one icon set and one set of words for materials.

One library, two teams

The first product built that way arrived with the strap, the case and the watch face in the same pale lilac — on purpose, for once.

The seam between two teams always shows up in the product. Ours is finally getting smaller.

Calendar, not Figma

Shared language turned out to be a calendar problem more than a design problem.