8 reasons why a Design System is indispensable?
You must have come across the word design system in case you have ever been a part of a product’s growth journey. This article talks about that why actually is design system indispensable? Before we discuss its importance, let's talk about what is Design System?
What is a Design System?
Have you ever tried your hand at cooking or maybe driving? What is the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it sitting in the car and just driving it anyway? or putting all the ingredients in a vessel and turning on the stove?
The answer here is Obvious, no! It's going to be a disaster. But then the question is where to start? A rulebook or a manual or a guide is your answer.
Just like this design system is your guide for all the design, components, or UI-related questions that you may ponder upon while building a product. It's an ecosystem, it lives.
Some of the best public design systems that we have today are-
- Material Design by Google
- Fluent by Microsoft
- Human Interface Guideline by Apple
- Carbon by IBM
- Atlassian Design System by Atlassian
Having a design system makes the process of development faster, consistent and better. It's a collection of robust design patterns and reusable components that helps us to deliver a scalable and exceptional user interface.
Now that we have a fair idea about what is a design system, let's understand its importance.
Why is it indispensable?
Because “We want to have our house in order before building a castle”
- Acts as a single source of truth: A design system acts as a single source of truth and enhances collaboration between developers and the design team. This is because every design system is made of rules, restrictions & standards due to which both designers and developers share a common idea.
- Enhance the process of development: Having a set of guidelines makes the development process balanced, scalable, and consistent. Unlike visual guidelines and mockups, design systems have reusable components, and therefore integrating them to create a page or an application is easier. Since instances of a single component are propagated, the issue of inconsistency remains out of question.
- Iterations are quick: As the product matures, there can be iterations. Iterations through the design system are quick and easy. Everyone in the organization has access to this shared system so it keeps everyone in sync. We can easily roll back or switch to the latest version.
- Promotes collaboration: A design system helps establish a common ground between team members from different disciplines by creating a visual consistency.
- Drives alignment across the products: Using a design system drives product alignment. No matter you are building an iOS, Android, or Web application, it has your back! For example, your design system has a button component or an icon library, it can be shared and used irrespective of the type of the product.
- Increases accessibility: With the design system, the accessibility increases! Since most design systems are backed by style guides & usage documentation, it helps mitigate confusion. Besides design system comprises the actual visuals rather than scripted documents, so it encourages us to build components in isolation and handle all the use cases.
- Easy Maintainance: Creating and maintaining new components are no longer a nightmare. Since common principles and standards are shared, it is easier for people to collaborate and contribute. Hence its maintenance is no longer a single person’s overhead.
- Makes customer lives easy: Having a design system makes our customer lives easier. Yes, you read it right. One of the pillars of the design system’s philosophy is Empathy. It's a process that emphasizes empathy with user needs and an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer
Every developer, after reading this:
