Building a Design System in a Fast-Paced Environment: GITS Indonesia Experience
GITS Indonesia is known for its dynamic culture that encourages innovation and quick adaptation in a challenging work environment. Consistency and design efficiency are key in developing high-quality digital products, with Design System as an effective solution, especially in situations of time pressure and fast-paced work demands.
The creation of a Design System at GITS Indonesia has successfully addressed key issues such as short project schedules, high work pressure, and inconsistency in design. The implementation of the design system has proven to improve consistency in design, reduce time pressure, and increase efficiency in product development.
Although not yet fully completed, the collaboration between the UI Design Team and Developer Teams has shown a positive impact on design quality and user experience. This success provides a strong foundation for the development of a better design system in the future.
The UI Design team at GITS Indonesia has been developing the Design System since 2021 until now, which is done by Design team members, Gina, Irfan, and ex-GITS Wisnu.
The Design System platform we built covers various aspects such as Websites, Mobile, and CMS.
The main issues that guided the design of this system were as follows:
- Design Challenges and Deadlines: GITS Indonesia, a project-based IT company, faced high pressure due to inconsistent designs and tight deadlines, constraining product development efficiency and creating a gap between management expectations and design deliverables.
- Role of the Design Team in Project Pitches and Tenders: The Design Team is not only involved in projects but also supports project and tender presentations with a short timeframe of 1–3 days, which affects product appeal, user conversion, and company reputation.
- Short Time Loads and Inconsistent Designs:
- UI Designer Team: Feeling overwhelmed with a very short timeline and required to create a good UI Design look quickly.
- Developer Teams: Difficulty in implementing an inconsistent design, resulting in a mismatch between the initial design and the final implementation.
Building a Design System in a fast-paced environment like GITS Indonesia presented some unique challenges, including:
- Time constraints: We had to develop the Design System quickly so that it could be used in ongoing projects.
- Frequent changes: The dynamic nature of the technology industry and evolving business needs demanded a flexible and adaptable Design System.
- Cross-team collaboration: The Design System required the involvement of multiple teams, such as design, development, and product, which required effective coordination and communication.
Enhancing Efficiency and Collaboration in Design and Development Teams through Design System Implementation
During the busy time of running projects, products, and pitches, we use our free time to create a design system that includes a website, mobile, and CMS to facilitate the work of the UI Design team. The implementation of this design system is expected to overcome timeline pressure, improve design quality, and support business goals and user satisfaction:
- Building a Component Library: The team focused on developing the most frequently used design components and then added new components incrementally to speed up the design and development process.
- Create Updated Guidelines and Clear Documentation: By creating more detailed and easy-to-understand guidelines and complete documentation, design and development teams can understand and use the Design System correctly.
- Enhanced Team Collaboration: Implement measures to improve communication and collaboration between design and development teams.
UI Design System Implementation and Coordination with Developers
Due to time constraints and the complexity of the design requirements, we recommend purchasing the Untitled UI Design System Template as a solution to provide the basis for a consistent design system.
We planned to customize the components to fit all projects at PT GITS Indonesia and coordinate closely with developers in each division (android, website, ios) to ensure the implementation went well. Some of the things we did were:
- Weekly with the UI Design Division Team: Research and determine how we incorporate and adjust the new design system to be suitable for implementing all projects at PT GITS Indonesia with only 1 design system.
- Conduct Bi-Weekly with developers: Coordinate the progress of the implementation of the system design.
The implementation of the Design System at GITS Indonesia has brought several impacts, including:
- Increased Efficiency: Teams can save time and resources by using ready-made design components.
- Increased Scalability: The Design System allows teams to develop new products more quickly and easily.
- Improving Product Quality: The Design System helps ensure GITS products have a consistent and professional look and feel.
Conclusion
Building a Design System in a fast-paced environment like GITS Indonesia presents several challenges, but with the right strategic approach, these challenges can be overcome. A well-implemented Design System can bring numerous benefits to the team and help them produce more efficient, scalable, and high-quality products.
- Creating and Managing Design System at Scale: Learn about creating design systems, elements, creating customizable components, distributing libraries, assisting and training people in using design systems.
- Balancing speed and perfection: Especially in a fast-paced project, there was a need to balance speed against deadlines, but also pay attention to important details.
- Navigating through ambiguity requires us to keep going without definitive answers, overcome obstacles, and explore different ideas to keep progress flowing.
- Receiving feedback and iterating: Constantly engaging with the team and stakeholders to receive feedback on the constraints, limitations, or requirements to iterate or revise the components to build the design system.
