When is The Right Time to Start a Design System?
Getting started with Diana Mounter at GitHub, Kim Williams of Indeed and Bob Calvano from A+E Networks
Design systems are a critical part of scaling design at a growing company. They provide product designers and developers with reusable, interchangeable components that make the product-design process more efficient and repeatable.
It’s not a new concept, according to Diana Mounter, who leads the design systems team at GitHub. She points out that companies have had style guides and standards manuals for years. But as design has matured, design systems have become a kind of bridge, allowing designers and developers to collaborate on digital products with greater efficiency and velocity.
“For an engineer, they can get pretty far in building out a prototype or a first pass at a new feature, without design help. So that’s one of the big benefits of having a design system,” Diana explained on the Design Better Podcast. “It doesn’t mean they don’t need a designer, it’s just that they’ll be able to get further than they previously could without you.”
She added that from the designer’s perspective, a big advantage of design systems is being able to solve a challenge one time — instead of every time it comes up — and make the answer available to anyone who needs it.
Glueing the Seams Together
A comprehensive design system also enables a better user experience — especially for large companies that have numerous products and/or a presence on multiple platforms.
Kim Williams was head of brand design systems at eBay before taking her current role as Group Manager of the UX Core team at Indeed. As a guest on the podcast, she said a design systems team is uniquely positioned to create value. “The team works horizontally, becoming the glue within the organization,” she explained. “It connects the dots between the different products to make sure that holistically there is cohesiveness within the experience — that it feels like one, even though it’s made of many.”
Naturally, this is easier said than done. Implementing design systems at scale requires dedicated planning and effort. Bob Calvano, who has worked to create a design system to serve numerous brands at A&E spoke to the challenge. “It’s been harder than I ever imagined to create a system that can go across brands as well as across platforms, and take into consideration the two-foot view on a phone and the 10-foot view on an Apple TV — and have typography actually work in a system across all of those different screens.”
Making Design Systems That Work
The design challenges Bob refers to are a big part of the lift. But implementing a design system also involves technical and organizational challenges. Here are some best practices for sorting it all out.
- Get Executive Buy-in — Like most things in business, design systems are easier to roll out when you’ve got support from the higher-ups. Executives are more easily persuaded when they can see the scope and impact of the problems arising from the lack of a design system. Creating an interface inventory (as suggested by Brad Frost) is a good way to help people see the inefficiencies of your status quo.
- Build It Like a Product — Bob Calvano’s team at A&E treats the design system like a product, with dedicated staff, a backlog and tracking. Even if your organization isn’t as large as A&E, this level of commitment is recommended.
- Address the Legacy — Kim Williams suggests first working to codify any systems already in place before introducing something new. For example, at Indeed they found 20 different buttons being used. So they chose one to document as a standard component for engineers to deploy.
- Advocate for Adoption — So what if you build it, and nobody comes? Diana Mounter suggests finding as many opportunities as possible to let people know the system exists and there’s a team ready to assist with it. Developing a small group of early-adopting champions is also a good idea. “Help them really learn the ins and outs of how to use the design system so that they become the people who then advocate for it elsewhere,” she said.
- Commit to Staffing — The size of your design systems team will depend on the size of your company and its needs. But regardless, Diana recommends that the team include full-time people for three reasons. First, the development timelines are longer than typical feature work and require a different perspective. Second, without a dedicated headcount, the design system would inevitably get prioritized below a never-ending line of short-term projects. Lastly, a serious staffing commitment will send the right signal to others in the company that the design system is legit.
- Allow for Nuance — A design system needs to take into account the nuances of different product teams that have unique perspectives and needs. Kim says it’s important “to have tools, not rules.” She says the aim is to power people to make choices that converge rather than trying to police instances of divergence.
- Protect the System — Nuance is one thing, but disruption is another. You want designers and developers to feel invested in the design system and able to contribute. But you also want to be sure to establish some processes or technological barriers to keep people from making changes to the system that have unintended consequences.
Practicing the Art of Humility
Ultimately, a design system is only as good as the people who use it. And like the practice of design itself, the design system and team do their job best when they’re in service to the whole.
“Being a part of this team is about being in service to a variety of different partners that think about design systems in a different way, that think about the company in a different way, that think about what’s required in a different way,” Kim said. “Sometimes it can be challenging — trying to collaborate at different levels, different ways of working, different goals, and just fundamentally different points of view.”
For her, the key is to focus not just on putting out standards, but in creating a “tight connective loop” between the design system team and the product teams. To do her best to understand their needs and what would make the design system a no-brainer for them to adopt.
If you’re looking for more information on design systems, Diana recommended Programing Design Systems by Rune Madson, plus Jina Anne’s articles on Medium.
There are also Design System Coalitions in New York, San Francisco and London. And don’t forget about the Design Systems Handbook, now available for listening as a free audiobook on DesignBetter.com. You can hear the first chapter below.
