Observations made about design systems in my career
- You need seasoned designers to make it work. Design systems are akin to the technical architecture but for UI. Putting a junior on is like asking jr engineer to make decisions on your system architecture. Please don't do this, especially in a large company, it will fail.
- It will never be done - kinda why we have jobs in the first place right?
- Not everything needs to be in a design system. Only the things that repeat consistently. Obvious things are colours, buttons etc but also patterns that are key to your experience. This is dependent on what your company needs.
- It is a cultural & process change not just a tooling adoption. It changes how people work and how they think about building UI.
- Adopting a pre-built design system won't solve your in-ability to make good design decisions or guarantee you use it correctly. Often people who use pre-built systems end up outgrowing or discovering they need to customise the system or implement it without designer input which leads to another set of problems. Out-of-the-box design systems don't tell you how to solve your product experience problems. Designers are still very much needed. You need the right people to wield the tool.
- You need seasoned designers to make it work. Design systems are akin to the technical architecture but for UI. Putting a junior on is like asking jr engineer to make decisions on your system architecture. Please don't do this, especially in a large company, it will fail.
- It will never be done - kinda why we have jobs in the first place right?
- Not everything needs to be in a design system. Only the things that repeat consistently. Obvious things are colours, buttons etc but also patterns that are key to your experience. This is dependent on what your company needs.
- It is a cultural & process change not just a tooling adoption. It changes how people work and how they think about building UI.
- Adopting a pre-built design system won't solve your in-ability to make good design decisions or guarantee you use it correctly. Often people who use pre-built systems end up outgrowing or discovering they need to customise the system or implement it without designer input which leads to another set of problems. Out-of-the-box design systems don't tell you how to solve your product experience problems. Designers are still very much needed. You need the right people to wield the tool.