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When you think about the demand for designing websites, apps, and other digital content, at scale, think about this:
Roughly five billion people use the internet every day, and the average person spends more than six hours a day online.
It’s no wonder we haven’t — as an industry — stopped long enough to come up with better language for what constitutes a useful design system.
No wonder it’s so difficult to implement useful systems in the design space.
Invent the wheel once.
For some reason, preceding the word “system” with “design” creates more than a little bit of confusion, so I like to break apart the term and start with “system.”
The purpose of any system or standardization is a process for something that can be repeated efficiently and consistently.
So a system can be how a business onboards new customers. Standardization is something like how most grocery stores are laid out. To the right, the first section is the produce. And just before you hit the self-checkout, grab the frozen foods and ice cream.
Sticking with the grocery store analogy, why would you redesign the wheels every single time you build a grocery cart? However, somebody should take on that project since most carts have broken wheels.
4 Benefits of a design system
Now we’re ready to reintroduce the word “design” into our definition of design systems because what we want from a design system helps us build out that system.
We get so lost in the weeds as professionals, sometimes we forget the impact a design system has on end users. Consistency means people don’t have to relearn interaction conventions from application to application. A lot like standardization with grocery store layouts.
Using a design system enhances efficiency. When you start from scratch and reinvent the wheel, each time you make a digital product or feature, it leads to a ton of wasted time. So having common solutions ready helps teams address problems way more quickly.
Using a design system generates consistency. Design systems prioritize reusability across digital products, and reusability is one of the main ingredients in consistency.
Using a design system spawns innovation. Instead of having designers and engineers create everything from scratch every single time, using common solutions quickly frees up time to address new problems and invent solutions for them.
Using a design system reduces stress. Our industry is generally overworked. I've met people who have actually had heart attacks from the stress of designing buttons and tables and forms over and over again.
Why design systems go horribly wrong
So why — with all these benefits — is it so difficult to build functional design systems?
We fail too often to understand the relationship between design system initiatives and cultural and organizational transformation. And organizational transformation quickly becomes political.
Once we understand this, we can change our approach accordingly.
Design systems don’t begin with wireframes or buttons. Design systems begin with conversations within your organization.
Speaking the language of your organization
Productive conversations begin with your ability to speak the language of the person that you're talking to, that you're selling to. So if you're selling to your boss who is in charge of managing design, one of the languages that you have to speak is a language of efficiency.
Example: Efficiency can be interpreted in one of three ways:
Saving money.
Doing a lot more with our money.
Generating more revenue from the products we make.
Maybe it's not specifically about money. Perhaps your organization’s mission is innovation or social change.
The key to initiating productive conversations is to talk less about design systems and associated terminology.
And instead, leverage the language of your organization’s purpose. Start the conversation of how design systems can improve that mission.
Next time, I’ll show you how to do more than start these conversations in your organization. We’ll also walk through a process for connecting all the components and their purposes by scheduling product walkthroughs with each area in your organization.
