Design Systems are a solution to a human problem.
What is a design system?
if you Google that question you get results that share common phrases like:
- A single source of truth
- A set of standards to manage design at scale
- A collection of reusable components and guidelines
- A systematic approach to product development
Ask ChatGPT the same question and you get a much more detailed response.
That you can ask it to refine to a single sentence.
It’s a question I’ve asked myself over the years, and initially, my answer was very similar to what Google or ChatGPT give you.
A Design System is a product that services other products. It contains shared tokens and components that scale design and development, allowing teams to create consistent experiences for their customers and deliver value across an entire organisation.
While this is true, it’s not as simple or direct as it could be. So I tried to boil it down to a single sentence.
A Design System is the most important product in your organisation.
That’s a pretty bold claim, but considering that a design system helps create the most profitable products in your organisation more efficiently (while potentially saving millions of dollars a year), it’s one I actually believed. However, it still doesn’t get to the heart of what a design system really is.
When you create a design system, you talk to everyone who funds it, consumes it or uses the products it helps create. The more I’ve done this, the more the answer to that question has become clearer.
Design Systems are a solution to a human problem.
When we think about who benefits from a design system, we tend to focus on designers and developers. To better know a its real value, we need to look at how it benefits each individual human that creates, uses or funds your organisations digital products.
We’ll start with who is arguably the most valuable, the customer and work our way backwards.
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Customer
(User, End User, Consumer)
Customers face a variety of problems when using digital products. They experience bugs, interfaces that aren’t intuitive and easy to use, difficulty accessing customer support, accessibility and privacy issues. All of which can effect their ability to accomplish their goals. Your customers will see and feel the difference a design system has made to the products they interact with, like:
- Improved usability
- A cohesive and consistent experience
- Faster completion of tasks
- Better accessibility
- Leading to higher levels of trust, satisfaction and loyalty
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Quality Assurance
(QA, Tester)
The QA is your organisations last line of defence before a product and it’s features make it into a customers hands. They’re responsible for reporting any discrepancies, bugs and operational issues before deployment, and their work is technical, detailed, time-sensitive and understandably stressful. A design system can have a direct impact on their workload, how they feel while they’re at work and will allow them to help their team deliver value to their customers faster, with:
- Less bugs to report
- A focus on testing, not UI defects
- Reduced errors via clear guidelines and standards
- Faster release of products and features to market
- 20–33% increase in efficiency
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Developer
(DEV, Engineer)
Developers face several challenges in the product delivery process, from tight deadlines, technical issues, lack of resources, scope creep and layers of communication. Whether they’re working in Angular, REACT, Swift or Android; a design system can alleviate these issues and help them and their team finish tasks faster, produce better quality work, generate more value and better meet the requirements of their product roadmap. Making them feel supported, giving them confidence and a sense of pride in their work.
- Shared language between design and development
- A library of pre-defined tokens and components that align with design
- Reduced development debt, redundancy and defects in QA
- Better communication, collaboration and contribution
- Also 20–33% increase in efficiency
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Scrum Master
(SM, Delivery Manager)
Scrum masters hold everything together and guide your team, unblocking obstacles that may arise during the development process and ensuring that developers follow agile frameworks and principles to complete tasks quickly and accurately. They setup JIRA boards, run sprint planning, stand-ups and retros. Onboard, coach, facilitate communication and still find time to manage stakeholder expectations. A design system can help them with many of these challenges.
- Better onboarding and education of technical staff
- More confident and accurate sizing and sprint planning
- Faster, more robust completion of tasks
- Increased velocity of the overall product plan
- Less development debt, which is a scrum masters dream
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Designer
(Product, UI, IxD)
In addition to discovering the solution with their team, designers are in meetings, walk-throughs and workshops where they’ll be collaborating with multiple stakeholders as they explore and visualise products and features. They wire-frame, prototype, test, iterate, finalise, document and hand over their designs to developers, then support their team with design QA. A design system makes a lot of decisions for them, allowing them to focus more the experience and less on creating the same UI artefacts over and over again. They’ll feel like they’ve been set up to win and will experience more joy in their work.
- Less time spent looking for the right token or component
- Reduced design time via documentation and templates
- Less defects that increase iteration and development time
- Better collaboration and alignment across different product teams
- 50–80% increase in efficiency. Yes, that is a real world number
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Researcher
(UX, CX, Service, HCD)
Researchers care about your customers and the problems they face that I mentioned earlier. They’ll use different frameworks and methods like service system maps, customer journeys, prototyping, customer interviews and testing to provide insights that will help your team create products and features that will provide better value for your customers. They’ll also be creating wire-frames and can find support from the design team when they need mid to high fidelity prototypes or the visualisation of a customer journey. A design system will help them test and find solutions more efficiently.
- More focus on discovery, testing and finding a solution
- Realistic prototypes that look like your product can be put together faster
- Collaboration and support from designers and other stakeholders is more effective
- User-centric design principles and patterns help them create better experiences
- More intuitive products and services that are built with accessibility in mind
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Product Owner
(PO, Product Manager)
Product owners experience a different type of pressure, as it’s their responsibility to identify business and customer requirements, develop product strategy, create and deliver a roadmap, collaborate with other product and service teams, ensure quality, analyse performance and also manage stakeholder expectations. They play a critical role in ensuring the success of digital products, by bridging the gap between the business goals and the development team. A design system can facilitate a lot of this for them.
- The staring point for their features and requirements is already well-built and robust
- Better alignment across their features and other product teams
- A product that is implemented efficiently and consistently
- Reduced risk of errors that lead to better quality products
- Products that meet performance goals and are easier to analyse for future enhancements
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Chief Product Owner
(CPO)
The CPO has a broader scope of responsibilities that include overseeing the entire product portfolio, setting it’s strategic direction and managing relationships with a wider range of stakeholders. They have greater decision making authority than the product owners that report to them and at this level, the amount of responsibilities and expectations can compound and cause them a lot of stress. Thankfully, all of the benefits that a design system has provided everyone in their team will also compound, taking some of these concerns off their hands.
- Cross functional team collaboration becomes more aligned to a shared organisational strategy
- Better alignment across the work that your teams are producing
- Increased velocity in design and delivery
- Reduced time to market of features and new products
- 33% increase in efficiency across the entire organisation
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Chief Design Officer
(CDO)
A Chief Design Officer leads your organisations design strategy, ensuring that its digital products meet the needs of its customers and provide a seamless user experience. Although their domain is in design, they work closely with other executives and teams, including product management, development, and marketing, to develop a comprehensive digital product design strategy. They’re juggling the creation of design standards, principles and best practices, they lead and mentor designers of all disciplines, helping them identify pain points and conduct research. A design system can ensure that their design capability and the products it helps create are consistent across all platforms, are accessible and usable by all customers.
- Stronger design leadership that helps set the tone for the rest of the organisation
- Refreshed sense of purpose in building their design capability and achieving its vision
- Increased confidence in the design teams ability to produce consistent experiences
- Their centralised design system team provides value to every other human in their team
- Giving them happier staff that stay longer
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Chief Digital Officer
(CDO)
Your Chief Digital Officer is responsible for leading your digital transformation efforts, developing and executing strategies for your products and services. Their primary goal is to leverage design and technology to improve the customer experience, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and drive revenue growth, as well as be as innovative as possible to gain an edge over your organisations competitors. A design system can help them better execute their digital strategy.
- Providing more time for exploration and innovation
- A renewed confidence in design and delivery
- Consistency across every channel, product and feature
- Stakeholder expectations are easier to achieve
- And so are their objectives and key results
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Chief Executive Officer
(CEO)
The CEO of an organisation that creates digital products is responsible for ensuring that the company is successful in a rapidly changing and competitive market. This requires a combination of strategic thinking, leadership, financial acumen, and a deep understanding of the industry and the company’s customers. They’re also the face of the organisation and it’s important that everyone in their company has done the best they can to support them. We’ve seen what a design system does for everyone in their company, and all of those benefits rise to the CEO.
- Increased brand loyalty and customer satisfaction
- Improved performance across the entire organisation
- More efficient business and product models
- The organisation becomes a better place to work
- Increase in organisational pride that is communicated to and by the CEO
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Stakeholders and Shareholders
Although Stakeholders focus on ensuring that the product meets the needs of customers and other stakeholders, and shareholders are more interested in the potential financial returns from the product, they’ll both benefit from what a design system can provide to the organisation they both have an invested interest in.
- Improved financial performance and health
- Longevity and better quality of products and services
- Stronger market position, recognition and trust
- A higher return on investment
- Confidence in the future of the organisation
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Look at everything a design system does for the humans we’ve just met.
Look at all the solutions they provide. It’s beautiful isn’t it?
OK, if a design system is a solution to a human problem… what is the human problem?
Well, it’s up to you.
If you’re one of the humans we’ve just met, then some of the problems we’ve been talking about will resonate with you.
If you’re an organisation, and would like everyone, from your stakeholders to your customers to benefit from what a design system can provide. Then spinning up a dedicated team that creates one for you is a very good investment.
At this point you probably want to know what’s inside a design system, well that’s a question we’ll answer another time.
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If you’re interested in design systems then let me introduce you to my own system called Scale. It’s a Figma design system that’ll get you started, every licence comes with a lifetime of free updates and also helps my wife fight cancer.
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This article was originally written in the beginning of 2022, and I do eventually plan on making it into a video for my channel.
Until then, bye 👋.
My opinions are my own and don’t reflect the views of my employer.
