It Takes a Village: Building Organizational Buy-In For Your Design System

In working with clients on design system projects (and in our annual Design Systems Survey), we see again and again how building buy-in across an organization is one of the greatest challenges that organizations face with their design systems. In this presentation, Lina shares why building organizational buy-in is critical for a design system, how to go about building that buy-in, and a success story of one of our clients.

Transcript

1. It Takes a Village: Building Organization Buy-In For Your Design System
2. Lina Calin, Project Manager
4. 1. Why building buy-in for your design system is important 2. How to build buy-in for your design system 3. A real world example of building organizational buy-in Agenda
5. Why is Buy-In Important?
7. + +
8. • Buy-in shows us we built the right thing. • Buy-in shows us we built it the right way. • Buy-in leads us towards a better user experience.
9. Steps to Build Investment
10. 1. Document your “why”
11. ‘Why’ ▪ What existing problems will your design system solve? ▪ What future problems can the design system mitigate? ▪ What other benefits can a design system bring?
12. Document your “why” Have an immediate example of a problem a design system will solve
13. 2. Build allies
14. Build allies 1. Pick someone(s) powerful and influential 2. Pick someone(s) who, with access to a design system, will have a lot of impact 3. Pick someone(s) who can explain the technical benefits
15. 3. Identify key stakeholders
17. 4. Understand limitations & requirements ☑
18. Understand the build requirements ➔ Any features need to get to integration quicker? ➔ Any needs of your allies that should be prioritized? • Tech-specific or tech-agnostic? • Budget constraints? • Urgency?
19. 5. Make a support plan
20. Support Plan • Platform & browser support • Regular newsletter with updates • Dedicated Slack channel • “Office hours” with support team • Versioning • Documented process for contribution • Regular user surveys
21. “Your technical approach doesn’t matter as much as creating a living, breathing system that’s flexible, maintainable, stable, scalable, and successful in the long-term.” - Katie Sylor-Miller, Senior Software Engineer – Design Systems at Etsy
22. Case: University of Georgia
24. Document your “why”
25. Build allies & identify key stakeholders
26. “It's helpful to recognize that you don't have to get everyone's buy-in all at once. But you do want to be strategic about who you build your partnerships with and in what order.” - Nancy Byron | Marketing and Communications Manager - UGA Online Learning
27. Understand limitations of the project ⭐
28. Results
29. Buy-In + Growing
31. Thank you