My role as a Design Systems Manager at a growing SaaS Company

In 2016, I joined a small SaaS company as their first UI designer, second designer on the product team, and third designer across the whole company. As we’ve scaled up over the years, I’ve gone much deeper into UI design, building up years of historical context working on the same product along the way. Naturally, my role has evolved. Here’s what it looks like today.

First, let’s define design systems.

Before I breakdown my role, let me describe what design systems means to me. This will help ensure you have the same context when reading further.

In my view and within the context of software design, a design system is a collection of building blocks that make up the user interface, the rules on when and how to use them, the resulting documentation needed to communicate the guidelines and building blocks, the tools we use to manage and implement them, and possibly even the associated processes unique to this work. It not only the style guide and asset libraries, but so much more. When all of these interrelated parts intersect and interact with one other, they form a system. We then use this system to define how we design and how we implement those designs into our digital products.