A Design System is more than a common library of UI elements like buttons, and navigation menus. It’s a common visual and technical language everyone on your team —from marketing to engineering — can use to collaborate with more efficiency and less confusion.
Companies like Airbnb, Uber, & IBM have changed how they design digital products by incorporating their own unique design systems. By utilizing a collection of repeatable components and a set of standards guiding the use of those components, each of these companies has been able to change the pace of creation and innovation within their teams.
Design Systems Help You To Manage Design at Scale
Some companies have seen as much as a 300% return on their investment in the first three years of building a Design System through gains in development speed and efficiency. The idea of saving up to 80% of your time in design and specifications and 75% of the time in development makes it easy to understand why so many companies are jumping to create design systems.
Reduce Design & Technical Debt
The more a company and its products grow, the more features get added to the original design, and old features become outdated. Without a design system, a product can lose its identity and start looking like a soup of various buttons and fonts, creating a disjointed user experience.
Eliminate Inconsistencies
The first task before building a design system is classifying all the visual components within the product. This will highlight where the biggest inconsistencies within the product are and will help the team to pick the most important and most used elements and components of the product. It also serves your customer and makes their lives easier. When you create a consistent experience you reduce the cognitive load that exists when the user switches from a mobile product to its desktop version.
Save Design & Development Time
When a team designs something it is to serve the user. Many designers and teams think the user is only the customer buying the product. But in this case, it’s also the people within the organization. Indeed, you might also work on internal products, that are used by different teams within the company, in order to serve the customer. When you build a design system, you will speed up the design process while also building links amongst teams.
What Exactly Is a Design System?
Design Systems are called many things. From Atomic Design to a Design Language or other names like:
- Pattern library
- Modular design
- Component design
- Design language
- User interface library
Sure, there are nuances to all of these, but they’re basically doing the same thing: creating a series of design components for you and your team to reuse. Sometimes, you’ll even find elements of a design system in a style or brand guide.