May 9, 2023

A design system skeptic?

prac·ti·cal adjective 1. of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas.

I’m sure I raised a few eyebrows when I said that I have a healthy skepticism of design systems. I spent years working with orgs that had large teams and multiple digital products who could have genuinely benefitted from design systems… but it never quite worked. Why not? What went wrong?

An article by Robin Rendle I stumbled upon years ago articulated well the disquiet I was feeling with design systems:

The ugly truth is that design systems work is not easy. And what works for one company does not work for another. In most cases, copying the big tech company of the week will not make a design system better at all. And so instead we have to acknowledge how difficult our work is collectively and then we have to do something that seems impossible today—we must publicly admit to our mistakes. To learn from our community we must be honest with one another and talk bluntly about how we’ve screwed things up.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

I do believe that a design system can transform the way teams build digital products. But if it’s going to be useful, it has to solve real-world problems. It needs to accomplish well-defined goals. It needs to be able to adapt organizational change. It can’t be a solo effort, at least not for long. It needs to bring value to everybody, not just one team. Above all, the system — and the team — need to be flexible enough to withstand a little correction.

Design systems need to be more practical and less prescriptive. They are, after all, tools (more on that later) made to help the makers of digital products. Some articles you read about design systems leave the distinct impression: if you haven’t built it The Right Way™, then it’s not worth doing at all.

That, I think, is nonsense.

Every organization is unique, shaped by its own history, structure, and culture. A design system that stands any chance of providing value, will inevitably, need to reflect that diversity in scope, breadth, and levels of interconnectedness. I’m going to advocate here for a practical “actual doing” mindset, one with a heavy emphasis on evolving over time. It’s one of the best ways to ensure a design system you help build will actually get used. And frankly, it’s what helped me overcome a lot of my skepticism toward design systems.

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Yes, I know I haven’t talked about what design systems are. That’s coming tomorrow. 🙃

Here's a taste of other things I’ll be writing about in the coming days:

• The building blocks of a design system
• Figuring out how much “system” is enough
• The role of observation and curiosity
• How (and when) to scale a new design system
• Measuring the value of a design system
• Building a community around a design system
• Some common patterns that might work for yours

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Cheers,

Up Next: To build a digital product...

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