Design system challenges...
When I was preparing to write my 30 Days of Design Systems series, I thought a lot about the big challenges in this space. Here are my top three:
Education
There's a huge knowledge gap when it comes to design systems. Most people don't understand what design systems are, let alone how to set them up. When I launched the Practical Design Systems site earlier this year, I shared it with several technical communities I'm a part of to get feedback:
I was extremely confused - I dont know what "design systems" are, but figured I'd get a clue looking at the page, but eventually realized [it is] more or less software process consulting, with no apparent connection to the name.
and:
I don't know how popular design systems are. I've heard of it, but I don't know if it's a big trend?
Teaching people the basics matters. That's why I decided to kick things off with a clear articulation of the fundamentals. Sometimes people just need to see examples of design systems in action to understand why it matters.
Organizational Change
Employee churn and vacillating company priorities makes it difficult to do design systems work that endures. This is one of the reasons I suggest breaking the work down into chunks and establishing a community around the DS work so it becomes more of a unified group effort.
No Single "Right Way"
There's very little consensus around "standard practice" today. Each org has a different tool stack, which means that how these systems get connected can vary quite a lot, even between teams within a single company. This also makes it difficult to translate the "ideal design system experience" between organizations.
It reminds me of the growing pains that sprung up around responsive web design; eventually, designers and engineers found standard approaches to frequent problems and developed common patterns that began to be adopted widely. I suspect the same thing will happen in time with design systems, and as more organizations tackle this kind of work, standards will emerge.
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Cheers,
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