Backpack. Owned by you, for the traveller
Backpack is built and owned by all of us at Skyscanner. We rely on our product teams’ contributions to improve and evolve our design system to facilitate quicker, scalable design.
If you have a new idea, or if you’re working on a feature that calls for a change to Backpack, get in touch — we’re here to help make it happen.
So you’ve created a new design concept…
And you're on the path to creating a much-needed feature. That’s ace! This is where we can help.
Let's chat
Before you get started with any detailed design work, drop us a message in #backpack-design-chat about your new concept. We’ll gauge whether your team needs to contribute any changes to Backpack to deliver the feature.
If you do need to make any changes, your Engineers will need to add the Backpack contribution to their roadmap. Remember, getting us involved early means we can give you the support you need.
What contributing looks like
Check out our Backpack contribution flow. It shows the usual delivery process with any extra Backpack activities when contributing – it’s pretty straightforward.
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Standard feature delivery process |
Extra activities with Backpack contribution |
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You’ve designed a new concept As soon as you’ve finished ideating, chat with us and we’ll help you to understand if Backpack needs updating |
Contribution kick-off If changes to Backpack are needed, the contribution process starts here. We’ll be here to guide you through the process |
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Polish your designs Finish off adding detail to your new creation |
Collaborate with the Backpack team We’ll support you to make sure the components are ‘design-system ready’ |
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Align with Backpack standards Whether you’re contributing or not, talk to the Backpack team to check your designs meet Backpack standards |
Start component API discussion The API translates your design into an exact specification of what your component can and can’t do. It’s a core activity with any contribution. Designers and Engineers work on this together |
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Finalise design specs This is the usual handover process with Engineering when your design is ready for build |
Finalise API documentation The Backpack component API is locked down at the same time |
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It’s build time The Engineering squad builds the feature |
And build time in Backpack codebase Components are also built in Backpack |
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Test, learn, refine Learn and iterate from any insight, feedback or experiments |
Component-level experimentation The Backpack codebase is set up so you can run experiments with components |
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Finalise component in Figma library We’ll help finalise components in Figma so they’re well-constructed with clean layers, variants and properties |
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Product release The feature is ready to be released into the world |
Backpack release The component is released into Figma and code libraries and is available for the whole team to use – you’re a Skyscanner hero |
Got a question?
We're here to chat. Drop us a message in #backpack-design-chat and we can help guide you through how contributing works.