Design System: Make the case

How to start the conversation with stakeholders and get a design system off the ground.

Transcript

1. HIAMF® Make the case How to start the conversation with stakeholders and get a design system off the ground. BC
2. HIAMF® Design Systems have reached peak popularity. It’s no secret that this has been an outrageously popular topic over the past few years. It seems like every product team has either built one, is building one, or wants to build one. We’ve been through a bittersweet journey of convincing each other that the benefits of a design system outweigh the potential loss of design freedom, and we’ve come out the other side as a united force. Designers & product teams are convinced, and ready to take the next step towards a more consistent & efficient future, if they haven’t already. But it’s not designers who we have to convince when it comes to investing in the build of a design system. Especially if we aren’t lucky enough to be in an organisation where design holds the proverbial, yet elusive, ‘seat at the table’. We’ve gotta convince the ones who’ll be setting the budgets, assigning the resources and understanding the cost vs benefit of the initiative.
3. HIAMF® This advice does not include a necktie. How can we market the benefits of Design Systems
4. HIAMF® The art of convincing business brains Intro 1
5. HIAMF® It’s not always easy to communicate the downsides of not having a design system, along with the possibilities and benefits of executing it. This challenge sits at the core tension of most companies’ two competing needs. There’s the need for functional work, and the need for foundational work.
6. HIAMF® Often, functional work produces tangible, short- term results, like a new onboarding flow that increases conversion rates. But foundational work contributes intangible, long-term results, such as increasing the velocity of feature launches. And yet, both are essential components to running a long- term, sustainable business. Choosing to invest time, energy, and money in one means investing less in the other.
7. HIAMF® The bigger the product portfolio, the more necessary a design system is.
8. HIAMF® A practical way to get it. Sell-in 2
9. HIAMF® 1.DS Intro session Across an enterprise, disparate systems can arise separately by myriad boundaries of teams, organisation units, and platforms. While distinct systems, outsiders assume they share a common visual language inherited from the core brand, inventory reveals massive discrepancies. As design has become part of the foundation of business and organisations, design has become as complex as the organisations themselves. What this means is; design now is full of all the disfunction, problems, wonder and joy of any large organisation and delivering consistent and engaging brand experiences across touch-point and channels can be extremely difficult. DS intro session is a highly interactive workshop where the participants learn what Design Systems are, what the benefits they brings and how to get started by a solid foundation. — If this is something that you think I can help with, connect or visit my website.
10. HIAMF® 2.DS Audit Most products start out with zero design debt. Debt is accrued as teams ship incrementally, building upon the product over many months. Maybe there’s a perfect, debt-free project out there. If so, I’ve never seen it. The first kind of product design debt is the kind that is incurred unintentionally. For example, a design approach just turns out to be error-prone or a programmer just writes bad code. This design debt is the non-strategic result of doing a poor job. The second kind of product design debt is the kind that is incurred intentionally. This commonly occurs when an organisation makes a conscious decision to optimise for the present rather than for the future. “If we don’t get this release done on time, there won’t be a next release” is a common refrain—and often a compelling one. The point is, as a product experience grows deeper, at some point the initial design philosophy just stops scaling. When a Design System has taken on a substantial amount of debt and it needs to be paid down. So, how do we eliminate design debt without halting forward progress? If you already have a Design System it’s a good idea to do a design audit every 6 months to monitor the health of the system itself. Tell us which products, platforms or services we should audit. We then plan the date for your audit together. Either as an independent studio or together with your team. — If this is something that you think I can help with, connect or visit my website.
11. HIAMF® 3.DS Booster The amount of companies that use a Design System keeps growing. And that’s a good thing because Design Systems give users a consistent experience through all platforms and channels. However, we’ve found that most teams don’t focus enough on process and people when setting up the system or they use the wrong Design System- tooling. This often leads to problems with adoption. Perhaps you notice some issues, like… 1. Components without proper documentation 2. Sub-optimal cooperation with team-members 3. Not everybody is on board 4. Brand values are not used consistently. In short, you don’t reap all the benefits of your Design System. DS Booster is a workshop for project- managers, product owners, design-system- leads or scrum-masters where we evaluate the bottlenecks in the your current Design System and propose concrete improvements. We do this together with your team. — If this is something that you think I can help with, connect or visit my website.
12. HIAMF® 3.DS Program At this point the benefits of design systems are well documented. Not only can they dramatically improve an organization’s ability to deliver products faster, more consistently, and more efficiently, they also free up designers and product teams to focus on more important work — Give time back to product teams to focus on quality, experience, and business innovation. More often than not, establishing a design system coincides with developing a new visual language from the ground up and applying that language to UI components that product teams agree to use. Your success depends on getting your organisation on board with the direction you’re headed. Like any product we design and develop, a design system must address the needs of adopting product teams within the current landscape of culture, tools, existing systems, and practices. Within the DS Program: 1. Conducting a UI audit 2. Deciding what platforms to support 3. Determining team structure and a contribution model 4. Planning how tiering might work 5. Establish governance around the system 6. And mapping out workflows — If this is something that you think I can help with, connect or visit my website.
13. HIAMF® I’d love to work with you. design@helloiamfran.com Thanks
14. HIAMF® Special thanks Angi Studio, Laura Van Doore, Abstract, David Politi, and Andrew Chen for sharing their wisdom. — Damn you Matias Duarte, you ruined all our fun.