Scribd
Upload
143 views2 pages

Build A Perfect Designer

This document discusses key principles for building a perfect design system for an organization. It defines what a design system is, noting that it establishes shared design principles, standards, and reusable components to help product teams collaborate effectively and build products faster. The document advises considering a company's product and maturity level before building a design system, as nascent startups may be better focusing resources on their product instead of a design system. It also outlines common elements that most design systems include, such as design principles, component libraries, design guides, and practices to maintain the system.

Uploaded by

Morpheu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
143 views2 pages

Build A Perfect Designer

This document discusses key principles for building a perfect design system for an organization. It defines what a design system is, noting that it establishes shared design principles, standards, and reusable components to help product teams collaborate effectively and build products faster. The document advises considering a company's product and maturity level before building a design system, as nascent startups may be better focusing resources on their product instead of a design system. It also outlines common elements that most design systems include, such as design principles, component libraries, design guides, and practices to maintain the system.

Uploaded by

Morpheu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Build a perfect design system

Nick Babich shares key principles that will help you


build a perfect design system for your organisation
esign systems help
large industry players to
standardise the design
process and make it
more predictable. A lot
of companies try to take
on the initiative of building their own
design system. But quite often, despite
everyone’s best intentions, all the effort
that a product team puts into making a
thoughtful design system can go straight
down the drain.
Over the course of this article, I will
define what a design system is, what to
consider before building a design system
and how best to introduce a design
system in your organisation.

march 2020 67
FEATURES Build a perfect design system

The name ‘design system’ can create


a false impression of something that
provides value only for designers. But in
reality a design system isn’t something
that just concerns designers; instead it’s
about how an entire organisation builds
its products.
Successful design processes usually
depend on there being a tight cross-
functional collaboration between
all teams involved in the creation of
the product. And a design system is
about building a shared language that
empowers teams to collaborate more
effectively. It’s a complete set of design
principles, rules and standards along
with the toolkit (design patterns, visual
styles and a code library of reusable UI
components) required to achieve those
principles, rules and standards. A design
system enables a product team to create
a product faster – without having to
sacrifice any quality – by making the
design reusable.

These are the common


elements a design system
usually encompasses
The ultimate purpose of going to the
trouble of implementing a design system
is to help the business learn and grow.
That’s why a design system should
always be based on the objectives of a
business. For the very same reason, not
all design systems are built the same but
nevertheless, most design systems share
a few common elements:

O Design principles – values that ensure


the design efforts head in the right
direction. Creating a design system from scratch
O Components and pattern libraries is a time-consuming activity and small,
– these are the building blocks of a fast-moving teams likely don’t need a
design system. Product and company maturity design system because it would slow
O Design guides – specific rules on Before you start building a design them down. A three-to-five–person
how to design a particular part of system, you need a clear understanding startup that is still trying to find a
a product. These can include style of why you need one. Many companies product-market fit would probably spend
guidelines (typography, colours, introduce design systems to reduce their a significant amount of time creating a
spacing, etc) and UX writing technical debt and speed up the product system. When resources are being spent
guidelines (voice and tone, language, development process (by spending on building a design system, they aren’t
writing principles, etc). less time on tedious, monotonous being spent on building the product.
O Design practices – help to keep the activities). But not all companies face Therefore, until a company is in the
system alive and valuable for the such problems because companies have position of having established a clear
product team. different levels of design maturity. direction with its product, investing

68 march 2020

You might also like