Design Systems Demystified: What are they and why every business should have one

In today’s digital age, almost every business has some form of online presence or digital footprint to engage with customers, sell products or deliver services. A design system is a collection of reusable components (digital building blocks such as buttons or form fields) and accompanying guidelines that help design teams create consistent digital experiences across products and platforms. It acts as a shared language for designers and developers, ensuring consistency and high quality when creating digital products, such as websites or apps.

In this article we will outline in more detail what a design system is and how it can bring value to your business.

What is a Design System?

In very simple terms a design system consists of three elements:

Tokens: they are the common ground between design and code — essentially they are the brand translated into raw values. Tokens are also generally given self-explanatory semantic names, which helps consistency and collaboration between designers and developers.

Components: they are organised groups of tokens making up the elements that are used across all digital touch points.

Documentation: they provide thorough guidelines explaining behaviour, properties and use cases of the Design System.

These elements combined are used to create a living and breathing version of the brand: an entire digital ecosystem which form the basis of all digital products.

The four key benefits of a design system are:

Consistency: A design system ensures a consistent look and feel across all digital products, reinforcing brand identity and enhancing user experience.

Efficiency: By providing reusable components (for example, buttons) and guidelines, a design system streamlines the design and development process, saving time and resources.

Collaboration: Design systems create a shared language and understanding between designers, developers, and other stakeholders, improving communication and teamwork.

Scalability: As businesses grow, a design system allows for easy updates and expansion of digital products without compromising quality or coherence.

A design system can be incredibly beneficial for creating or updating a wide range of digital products and assets such as websites, mobile apps, software applications, marketing materials, SaaS platforms, internal tools and IoT interfaces. In other words every single mark you leave in the virtual world can be led and guided by your design system, this ensures a seamless and unified user experience for every user, promoting credibility and trust in the brand.

What is the potential monetary value having a Design Systems can bring to your business?

Creating, managing and incorporating a Design System into your wider business strategy can lead to substantial financial benefits, enhancing both efficiency and profitability (don’t forget those stats mentioned at the beginning). By having a set of re-usable and standardised components, a design system reduces the time and resources needed for design and development when creating digital products, resulting in significant cost savings. Not only this, but it also accelerates the time to market, allowing businesses to launch products and updates more rapidly, thereby capturing market opportunities sooner. Consistent and quick product development fosters customer loyalty and allows designers to spend more time coming up with industry leading designs.

Three key takeaways when considering the value of a Design System adds to your business are:

Maximising Value

By getting quality products to market quickly through an efficient design system, you maximise the potential value to the business by seizing opportunities faster and ensuring products are designed and built to a high standard.

Industry Leading

To be the best in a very competitive digital field you need to have highly detailed and complex components expertly built, incorporating Figma’s latest updates. A mature and well defined Design System can help put you on the path to achieving that.

Cost Reduction

Implementing a well-structured design system significantly reduces costs by streamlining design and development processes, minimising redundancy and eliminating the need for repeated work.

Conclusion

Ultimately, investing in a design system is a strategic move that not only optimizes operational efficiency but also contributes to long-term financial success by aligning design and development efforts with business goals. Any industry leading digital business worth its salt knows its value:

Ingrid Olson, Design Manager at IBM:

“Design systems are crucial for scalability. They provide a single source of truth for the team, making sure that as we grow and evolve, our products remain consistent and cohesive, enhancing the user experience at every touchpoint.”