4 Lessons I Learned While Building a Design System With Engineers

A UX Designer’s Reflection after building her first Design System.

What I have noticed from my discussions with beginner UXer’s is that a design system seems to be a term of mystery to many. Although it seems as though many have a broad understanding of how to define the term, many stop short at understanding how to design and implement one. That is why I was inspired to write this article to reflect on my lessons learned of building my first design system.

However, just to makes sure we are indeed on the same page about what a design system is let’s stop here for a second to define it. To quote from the Nielsen Norman Group a design system is

“ A set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels.”

In other words, a design system is not just a style guide. Instead, it is the over all set of standards from typography, to components, to pieces within a style guide. It is the langauge you as a UX Designer, use to create consistency with the other members of your product teams.

Now that I am confident we are talking about the same deliverable, we can dive into my 4 key takeaways to think about when building a design system.