Design systems are for the people, by the people.
Design System is the raging new tool in the arsenal of UX design and to be honest, it’s quite potent. Before diving into the importance of a design system let’s understand what it means as a design system could mean different things to different people and organizations may practice it for different reasons.
A design system is the single source of truth that helps to scale the product consistently in alignment with the first version and it also helps you grow the business simultaneously. But that’s not what makes Design Systems a potent tool so then what makes it so empowering?
A Design System brings people from different domains together at one table. It has the power to align people on the shared vision of the company. CEO/founders, managers, engineers, designers, brand custodians and content writers — everyone collaborates in building a Design System.
Design systems are for the people, created by the people to build and augment digital products successfully. Meanwhile, speed, efficiency, consistency and quality control are the byproducts of a good Design System.
The essence of successful Design Systems: People
Building a good design system requires people from different disciplines to collaborate as a team. The success of a design system depends on the equal partnership of designers and engineers — everyone should be equally invested in leading the design system to its success.
Design systems act as the sole reference point to scale the products. It’s not just efficient for designers, but also developers because they don’t need to reinvent the wheel every single time they have to code.
Companies may invest a lot in building a design system, people may put in a lot of effort to align it. But if anything goes wrong organizationally and people don’t adopt the design system, the company will be spending a significant amount of resources with little or no hope of getting returns from the investment.
The most important part isn’t building the design system, it’s managing, governing and evolving it. As much as it is required for scaling the product, people need to collaborate and scale the Design System with the changing circumstances. If the Design System stagnates and stakeholders stop taking the effort to update it, then the gap between product development and the Design System widens.
Let’s take a moment to take a look at the greatest design system and how it evolved to take people’s perspectives into the light.
Google’s Material Design (launched in 2014) with simple technology and beautiful experience is a huge success. It was cherished for a very long time but then Google unveiled Material You. Why?
Designers and developers at Google realised that they need to create something that explores a more humanistic approach to design. They incorporated a more personal style, individualistic experience, accessibility to the design that will evolve all of Google’s products and ecosystems.
Even Google considered the user demand for more expressiveness while creating their new Design System.
What makes a good design system?
A design system is not about UI kit, content guidelines, code, or documentation. It’s a tool for collaboration — it’s for people who create it and people who use it.
A design system does not replace the need for a designer. It does not make everyone on the team a designer. It does not make your application ‘design itself’. It does not replace essential conversations and validation with the people that will use the product.
— Ben Ludwig, Associate Creative Director at FCB
When people from different disciplines work together to build a design system, they are already in the process of understanding each other’s needs and perspectives. It can be a fruitful effort or an equally challenging task depending on how far people go to take ownership in building a design system.
Design systems are socio-technical tools that take into account — the environment, the technology and the people involved. It enables communication and conversations among people involved like — designers, developers, CEO, product managers, and others. This allows people to share a vision, understand the technological feasibility and constraints of each domain.
For example,
a designer could be keen on creating a certain micro-interaction that is highly engaging but only when he/she discusses the feasibility of execution with the developers, can a designer realise whether it’s workable or not. These conversations can save products from unexpected pitfalls, and save time as well as resources.
Number one reason why design systems fail
By failure, we mean that either the design system is not adopted or it never found its way to implementation and now lies dormant in Figma.
Company culture is the root cause why the Design System is usually not adopted in an organization.
Any new product, the process needs acknowledgement and support from the company for its success. A design system is a cross-functional, interdisciplinary tool that needs support from the top to bottom levels of a company.
If the product managers, VPs and CEO of the organization don’t find value in the design system and don’t provide enough resources for its implementation or advocate its use, it will never be adopted by employees. Design systems are collaborative so every stakeholder in the organization should contribute to its success.
Hostile top management with an old school mentality often neglects the ideas presented by designers and developers to improvise the process.
“The success of a good design system depends highly on how far people go to understand each other, bridge the gap and collaborate to create a feasible design system.”
Design systems require equal support from bottom level employees. At the end of the day, it’s most essential to these people. Design systems can replace the scruffy code, inconsistent design and evolve processes but this can only happen if it is adopted by designers and developers alike. It requires equal collaboration from designers and engineers to support this system and to take responsibility for maintaining, governing and evolving it.
How do you create Design Systems for people so that they are used?
1. Start with why
We often talk about design tools, pattern libraries, components, and documentation but in today’s context of Design Systems, it’s important to remember our purpose. Effective design systems focus on purpose and principles.
We determine the success of a design system based on its effectiveness to grow our digital products while the strength of a design system is based on factors like:
- How does it help in improving the quality of our product?
- How much faster does it ship the product?
- How much does it reduce the need for new code in the product?
But as we mentioned earlier, these are the byproducts of using a Design System. Understand the “why” and “who” of the products i.e. the very purpose of your business. Based on that you can easily identify how the Design system will help in scaling the products for the target group.
While building a product and simultaneously building its design system ask yourself the questions:
- Why are we doing this?
- What do we want to get from it?
- How does this help us to scale our product and business?
People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.
And what you do simply proves what you believe— Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action
Disorienting from the purpose of the business is like signing up for the failure of the product and wasting the efforts and resources put in building a Design System for the same.
2. Focus on the people
Why are certain products liked more than others?
The answer is quite simple: Great customer experience.
Think about all the successful products, think about all the great products that you love. The ones you love are most likely to have great customer experience, good customer support or the product itself simplifies your life.
Simply, the product seems approachable and accessible. You feel like making it a part of your life, using it daily or acquiring it. Take the Apple community for example — its growing community rapidly because its users are the brand ambassadors and orators for the brand.
This very feeling and this experience have to be applied to the Design Systems for making it more usable, approachable and for making people own it like it’s their baby.
When building a design system, you are inviting people from different domains on the same table to understand problems from all angles and resolve them together. In short, you’re creating a community. The people building the Design Systems and the people using the Design Systems should feel connected to this community; they should feel empowered to join in the fun of creating something like this for the organization.
They need to see that your organization understands them, empathizes with them and allows them to grow. Everyone in the organization must feel that they are the owner of the Design System and its success will be in jeopardy if they don’t govern and evolve it so they must contribute to it and use it as gospel.
Find a way to communicate effectively to the stakeholders of the organization and find a way in which you can build a design system that is valuable to them.
- Find links to their motivation
- What irks a business owner, founder, director?
- How can design systems solve their problems?
- How can the design system help fasten the processes?
- Why is investing in Design Systems beneficial for the business and to the stakeholders involved?
3. Collaboration between users of the design system
The root cause of the differences between engineers and designers is that they speak different languages. Developers talk in code, designers talk in visual language.
But while creating a Design System, the developers and designers speak the same language through Design Tokens which connects the organization to its users. It could be tools, tactics, methods or processes and — the most important tool that can connect people while keeping customers in mind are the Design Principles.
People can be crappy to each other when they have disagreements on direction, don’t align on goals, and don’t work well together. Design principles can become the foundation on which they build and scale products thus making it the language for communication.
True collaboration isn’t throwing designs over the wall. Its designers, engineers, and the rest of the team share the responsibility to build a quality product. Reduce the barriers, support and empower them, and designers who code will become the norm.
— Diana Mounter
Instead of just mentioning it on the About page of the organization website, the company should inculcate the habit of using the design principles and reference them in critiques to make them relatable and memorable. They can be put up across the organization walls to remind employees to follow them.
The design principles and company values can become actionable tools. Once people get the hang of it, they will try to abide by and imbibe those cultural values even in the collaboration of every little task at hand.
Here’s an example of UX Design Principles by SalesForce —
Most design systems fail because they aren’t transparent and inclusive for all the stakeholders. When you put it all together for the people to see it and use it according to their domain and need, it becomes the guiding light for the organization.
Google’s Material Design has several implementations on different platforms, in different frameworks and languages. It’s used by people across the globe, inside and outside of Google, that’s why they emphasize creating comprehensive documentation and a variety of toolkits.
Systems like these solve real problems by focusing on people. They are consistent and reliable because people from different teams and roles worked together to build them.
The bottom line
Design Systems fail due to a lack of shared vision, shared language, and purpose. To set up your design system for success, you must focus on the why (purpose) and who (target audience).
When you recalibrate the efforts of creating a Design System to focus on the people who will use it — it will be easily adopted and effectively used, and your design system will be set up for success.
Stick to the purpose to create design systems that grow products that serve people!
