What a Design System Means for your Product Organization
Cross-functional product organizations aim to better understand users’ needs in order to unlock value for their organization. Unfortunately, this tends to be the theoretical goal of a product team, but it rarely comes to fruition.
Instead of a team rallying behind complex problems, cross-functional product teams tend to spend the majority of their time creating wireframes, trying to invent new solutions to problems that have already been solved, and discussing the intent behind various aspects of a design. While this may feel busy and productive, the true potential of a team is rarely realized.
We’ve previously covered the value propositions of leveraging a design system in the article, “Why Your Team Needs a Design System.” There are two key takeaways to keep in mind:
- The goal of a design system is to reduce the number of routine design decisions one must make in order to focus on complex problems facing users.
- At a design level, design systems aim to help your team become more efficient, improve your design consistency, empower design at scale, and ensure accessibility metrics are met, among others.
💡 Cross-functional product organizations gain incredible value from implementing and successfully using, a design system — specifically in their ability to focus on complex problem-solving in relation to desired outcomes. We built Orchestra, the most advanced design system ever created for Figma, to provide you with this value. Check out how to get the most out of Orchestra in the video, “Orchestra Design System for Figma Walkthrough.” 💡
Solve Complex Problems
Before starting any work, a cross-functional team should sit down and ask what they are going to build that relates to an important organizational goal and what are the clear priorities. Too frequently do teams sit down and ask two questions: what are the requirements and what is the timeline. Then the team moves straight into white boarding resulting in a picture on a phone with a nice glare spot. If you’re remote your team may have used a tool like Miro or drawn items out and Slacked them to each other.
The joy of an advanced design system lies in the ability to rally around an MVP that is testable in a matter of hours instead of days, weeks, or months. Designers, and members of a cross-functional team, no longer need to spend time worrying about design problems that have already been solved before (e.g. what calendar style to use, form patterns, etc) and they can focus on more complex user experiences (e.g. how do we increase conversion).
Now that the team has production-ready designs in a matter of hours, you’ll be able to run faster prototype experiments gaining critical insights earlier. This enables the team to focus on the true problems facing the users, not the pre-assumed issues.
Shift away from Outputs towards Outcomes
Product teams often fall into the guise of delivering outcomes when in reality they are only delivering outputs.
Spending all your time on outputs means you are creating mock-ups to support a delivery team and don’t have time to tackle real problems facing your organization or users. All of your time is spent supporting the team’s needs as opposed to the user’s needs.
Shifting the focus to outcomes enables the team to relate the design work they are doing (e.g. creating a form) to a business outcome of increasing conversion. While a form is still needed in this example, the team solves the fundamentals of the form through a readily available tool (a design system) and then has the capacity to learn and iterate around the outcomes.
Team Alignment
Remote team structures have raised the need for increased design awareness and better collaboration. A team can no longer rely on a single SME for each and every design task as it creates unnecessary bottlenecks — especially if you’re focused on outcomes.
A thoroughly documented design system enables all members of a cross-functional product team to understand templates and components within the system as well as possibilities for component aspects like hover states. The team’s time is spent discussing the design as it relates to desired outcomes, not the intent behind the designed components.
Broader team alignment is also met by a design system promoting early buy-in and gaining approvals to start. Your stakeholders are able to review master elements of the system (e.g. company brand assets, etc) and share their approval. Once aligned on the broader assets, designs can be created quickly as the team is aligned on not needing to reinvent patterns of UX/UI that have already been solved for. Changes can also be instantly implemented utilizing slot components that won’t break your instance dependencies.
Final Thoughts
Cross-functional product organizations should aim to solve complex problems facing their users and not spend time reinventing the wheel. Adopting a robust design system allows your product organization to take on complex problems, shift towards outcomes instead of outputs, and increase your team alignment both inside and outside your immediate team.
