From the Tower of Babel to Today’s Design Systems
On February 6, 2019, the 500 square meter Design Thinking space of the AppHaus Heidelberg got a bit crowded. More than fifty designers, user experience experts and other interested colleagues attended the workshop “The Benefits of a Design System” hosted by Andrew Godfrey, Senior Design Specialist InVision, and his colleague Holger Schuler, Strategic Customer Success EMEA.
Orientation needed in a growing UX tool landscape
Digital transformation in business and a growing landscape of user experience design tools require designers to stay up-to-date not only on methods and user-centric design but also on the many tools that are available such as Adobe XD, Sketch, Axure, InVision, to only name a few. That is why it is so important to identify criteria that help make a good choice. With this motivation in mind, I heard about InVision’s way to address design questions in sessions by applying rather unconventional methods; methods that have much in common with the SAP Design Thinking approach: playful, multidisciplinary and open-minded.
Along an interesting workshop agenda, the two moderators Andrew and Holger touched topics such as the fundamentals of design, how to build, manage and support design languages, communicating the benefit and value within organizations and aligning design communities with outreach activities.
Building a Tower of Babel? You better communicate!
It was a day full of design theory and practical experiences of which the following impressed me a lot: a Lego game challenge. The attendees were split into five different teams and received a set of Lego bricks to build a tower. Then, every team member received one card with special instructions. For example, one card said to have the third row of bricks in red, and the other card instructed to build the tower with ten to ten bricks. What’s more, team members and groups were not allowed to talk to each other, nor have any exchange on the respective instructions they had to follow. The results were five nice but completely different towers. The lack of communication had led to the non-fulfillment of some of the card instructions so that the towers could not meet all requirements. No wonder that the room was full of mixed feelings. This experience recalled the building of the Tower of Babel: Without good communication no common goal can be achieved, no compliant tower can be built. This is also true for design.
Personal conclusion
I really appreciate that my work at SAP gives me the opportunity to organize such events to share freshest knowledge on the newest tools and, of course, the human centered AppHaus approach with as many colleagues as possible. What’s more, these events are a perfect time to get to know new colleagues, exchange ideas with experts, and last but not least, extend the personal network.
Useful Link:
An industry-spanning report that redefines design maturity today. InVision surveyed thousands of companies to explore the relationship between design practices and business performance:
Thanks to @ralchevd, Matteo Rogolino, Sebastian Moreno from the SAP Creative Labs Team for the great pictures and the video. Kudos to Imke Vierjahn for the writing support.
