Guide section 5 of 31

Design System Strategy

The recovered enterprise direction is to reuse the existing company design system rather than create a second standalone Power BI design system. The Power BI-specific layer should contain mappings, constraints, approved configurations, analytical patterns and implementation guidance.

Existing Company Design System
            ↓
     Design Tokens / Variables
        ↙             ↘
Figma BI Library      Power BI Theme
      ↓                    ↓
   Nudge BI              Power UI
        ↘                ↙
 Reusable Power BI configurations
            ↓
  PBIP / report starter templates
            ↓
          Reports

What belongs in the existing design system

  • Brand colors and semantic colors.
  • Typography roles and accessibility rules.
  • Spacing, alignment, border/effect principles and applicable radii.
  • Iconography principles and semantic meaning.
  • Core design tokens and governance.

What belongs in the Figma Power BI library

  • Power BI-feasible representations of approved visuals and controls.
  • Page archetypes, templates, section patterns and component variants.
  • Annotated interaction/state examples.
  • Handoff metadata showing the underlying Power BI component.
  • Design examples for desktop, embedded, mobile and print variants when in scope.

What belongs in Nudge BI

Design-system convention

Nudge BI is used as the Power BI-aware Figma acceleration layer. It should help designers prototype with components and layouts that resemble actual Power BI. Each Nudge component must be traceable to the underlying Power BI visual/function, supported functionality and known limitation.

What belongs in Power UI

Design-system convention / open implementation detail

Power UI was positioned as the organization-specific standardization/configuration layer: translating company styling, theme decisions, visual configuration and common report patterns into reusable implementation defaults. It must not be presented as adding Power BI runtime capabilities.

What belongs in the Power BI theme

  • Data colors and structural colors supported by theme JSON.
  • Text classes and typography defaults where supported.
  • Page/background defaults.
  • Filter pane styling where supported.
  • Visual style defaults/presets where the current theme schema supports them.

What belongs in report/page templates

  • The approved page anatomy and grid.
  • Filter regions and scope conventions.
  • KPI summary region.
  • Primary analytical region.
  • Supporting analysis/detail region.
  • Navigation/back/reset conventions.
  • Standard interaction and accessibility expectations.

What should not become a separate design system

Do not duplicate the existing company foundations into an independent 'Power BI brand system'. The BI layer should document how existing foundations map into Power BI plus the analytical patterns and implementation constraints that are specific to reporting.