Baking Design Systems Into Your Business for Success
Imagine you have just accepted a new position at a large Hostess bakery. It’s your first day and you are ready to begin training on how to bake their famous pastries, breads, and desserts. Instead of being trained on how they consistently create thousands of deserts every day, all they do is hand you your uniform, the ingredients, and then tell you to start making them the same exact way they do.
This seems ridiculous to you and you’re wondering why they don’t have a detailed process on how to implement their recipes. It would be impossible to consistently pump out thousands of products that all taste the same without a set recipe and a system for making them.
This is the importance of implementing a Design System. Here is an easy-to-remember acronym that shows why having this system in place is important.
What is a Design System?
Whether you call it a Design Language System, A Pattern Library, or Design System, they are all made for a similar purpose and that is to improve efficiency and maintain consistency. According to NNGroup,
“a design system is a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels.”
Other than improving speed and efficiency, having a system in place can have many other benefits.
Benefits of a Design System
The list of benefits for implementing a Design System is vast but here are the most common ones.
Save Time and Money
Design Systems have reusable components, and other elements, allowing teams to use them to design and build without having to reinvent the wheel every time they need to. This saves time and resources for designers and engineers because they don’t have to keep designing something that has already been effectively designed before.
For example, Hostess already spent the time and resources to make the perfect Ding Dong recipe. Now, all they have to do is reuse that perfect recipe every time they make a Ding Dong!
Enables Teams to Focus on Bigger and More Important Problems
When teams aren’t bogged down by having to do the repetitive task of redesigning every element from scratch, it gives them more time to focus on real problems and challenges that can improve workflow. This is very valuable for smaller teams with less time and resources because they can work on those backlogged tasks that could make meaningful improvements for the users and stakeholders.
Create a Consistent Experience
Without some kind of Design System, this can really hurt your brand. Imagine buying a box of Hostess’s Snowballs, you open the box, take them all out, and see that they are all different from one another, and not in a good way. Some have no coconut flakes, others don’t have that creamy filling, and some don’t even have sugar in them.
With a Design System serving as a single source of truth, designers and brands don’t have to worry about their designs not being cohesive between departments or designers. Every element would consistently look, feel and act the same and work the way they were planned to.
Educate New Designers
Junior designers and contributors can use Design Systems as a reference point. It will help onboard those who are new to design or content creation and can also serve as a reminder to others.
Just like what the first day of your new job with Hostess should’ve been like. Rather than being thrown into the fire on your first day, you are trained on their detailed process of how to implement the recipes and systems they’ve created.
Easier Rebranding Process
If your company goes through a visual rebrand or redesign it can be managed at scale. A company might change things that have to do with their brand like their color pallet, tone of voice, or fonts. Now all they have to do is update their Design System for their team to use whenever they need a refresher or reminder of the new designs.
What’s included in a Design System?
The size of a Design System, and what is included, varies by the size and maturity of a company. Below are some examples of what you can include in one.
- Style Guide
According to Launch Marketing,
“A style guide is a document that provides guidelines for the way your brand should be presented from both a graphic and language perspective. The purpose of a style guide is to make sure that multiple contributors create in a clear and cohesive way that reflects the corporate style and ensures brand consistency with everything from design to writing.”
- Component Library
To put it simply, a component library is a set of reusable components. The design system builder, Stencil, puts it nicely:
“A component is a standalone User Interface (UI) element designed to be reusable across many projects. Its goal is to do one thing well while remaining abstract enough to allow for a variety of use cases. Developers can use them as building blocks to build new user experiences. A key benefit quickly becomes clear: not having to worry about the core design and functionality of each component every time they use them. Examples include buttons, links, forms, input fields, and modals.”
- Pattern Library
The tech company, Aiimi, explains,
“a ‘pattern library’, as the name suggests, is a library of user interface (UI) patterns that designers and design teams use to build digital products. They are referred to as ‘patterns’ because they’re recurring solutions that solve design problems.”
Real-world examples of businesses implementing Design Systems
Here are some examples of real-life design systems that are a good jumping-off point for researching how best to utilize them for your business.
McDonald's
As an example of a design system as it relates to workflow, in 1948 McDonald’s invented fast food by creating and implementing “The Speedy Service System”. This greatly impacted the way employers worked, but, most importantly, it improved the speed, prices, and output of their service. If interested, read this article of How McDonald's Beat its Early Competition and Became an Icon of Fast Food and watch The Founder.
Apple
In terms of digital product development, having a Design System is just as important. The most robust industry standard is Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines Design System. Because Apple is a giant company that creates many products and services, a large and robust Design System is needed. These Apple guidelines remain imperative for designers and engineers who create for the Apple app store to understand, but they also would help any business understand how to structure their Design System.
Quickbooks
On a smaller scale, Quickbooks Design System shows how Design Systems can be impactful for businesses of any size. To help your team build their own individual Design System check out Quickbook’s Design System. They’ll show your designers and engineers style guides, component libraries, pattern libraries, and more.
Now it’s your turn to create your own Design System
Every brand’s Design System is different, but if you are interested in creating your own, below are links to other articles and resources that explain in depth how you can create your own Design System. With a Design System in place, every stakeholder on your team will know the recipe for your company’s success.
Creating a Design System Language
Everything You Need to Know About Design Systems
A Comprehensive Guide to Design Systems
Thanks for reading!
If you would like to learn more about me or my work check out my website at isaaccruzdesign.com.
