June 4, 2023

Some design systems practice…

Design systems work can be complicated by things like organizational structures, business model, and existing tool stack; and some people (like me) tend to understand it better in practice than in theory.

With that in mind, I'm going to spend the next few days sharing some made-up examples (based on real experiences) about how design systems work can fit in different organization structures.

Here’s how this will go:

• I’ll describe an organization
• I’ll ask some questions to get you thinking
• You write down how you might start design systems work
• In the next post, I’ll share my thoughts and we can compare notes

…

Let's start with our first organization — we’ll call it Osmosis.

Osmosis is a huge company, with thousands of employees. The company has many business offerings, but there are two that I’ll focus on here: providing direct-to-consumer support service for people with their at-home tech, and creating and serving white-label tech support content for large tech-focused brands.

These services are supported by three general divisions in the org: a customer support division, an application development division, and a content creation division.

• The customer support division consists of agents handling phone and live chat support. They want to deliver first-class support for customers, but would also like to reduce the number of cases handled by phone, since those tend to take a long time and are the most costly.
• The application development division consists of client-specific teams responsible for building out the org’s digital products: the company’s support applications and the applications serving white-label content for other brands. Each of these client divisions supports several digital products (e.g. an iOS app, an Android app, and a web portal), and each of those digital product has a dedicated team made up of a team lead, a project manager, a designer, and an engineer. They share the same broad goal of getting customers the support they need, but they focus on app performance and content discoverability. They also have to balance the needs/priorities of the end users as well as the priorities of the brands they’re creating this content for.
• The content creation division consists of subject-matter experts grouped in teams by different at-home technology types (mobile phones, networking, appliances, etc.) These teams are supported by writers, editors, illustrators, and photographers, all with a focus on creating content that is interesting, engaging, and helpful for customers.

Some questions for you to consider:

• Where do you think the friction points might be in an organization structure like this?
• What parts of a design system would be most helpful in an organiztion like this? Which teams might stand to benefit the most?
• Which team do you think would be most likely to drive a design system effort at this org?
• What other questions would you ask in order to make an informed decision about design systems work?
• Who would you most want to talk with to understand the needs and challenges of the organization?

Take some time and think about how you'd approach this situation, and we'll compare notes next time.

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Cheers,

Up Next: Design systems in action…

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