5 Key considerations to build the perfect Design system

A design system enables a product team to create a product faster – without having to sacrifice any quality – by making the design reusable. And a design system is about building a shared language that empowers teams to collaborate more effectively.

Successful design processes usually depend on there being a tight cross-functional collaboration between all teams involved in the creation of the product. Design systems help large industry players to standardise the design process and make it more predictable. A lot of companies try to take on the initiative of building their own design system.

1. Consider product & company maturity

Creating a design system from scratch is a time-consuming activity and small, fast-moving teams likely don't need a design system because it would slow them down. A three-to-five–person startup that is still trying to find a product-market fit would probably spend a significant amount of time creating a system.

Before you start building a design system, you need a clear understanding of why you need one. Therefore, until a company is in the position of having established a clear direction with its product, investing time in creating a design system risks producing a lot of waste. Many companies introduce design systems to reduce their technical debt and speed up the product development process

2. Create a vision statement

A design system is about people – how they work together to achieve a shared goal. And people want to know the answers to the following questions:

• Where are we going?
• What do we want to achieve?
• Why do we want to achieve that?

By doing that, you'll define a target condition and it will be much easier to create a strategy that will help you to achieve it. A vision statement defines what your team, product or company is attempting to achieve and, more importantly, why. It unites people involved in product development and guides them to a common destination.

3. Establish guiding design principles

Solid design principles are the foundation of any functioning system. They should capture the essence of what good design means for the company and provide practical recommendations for product teams on how to achieve it. Design principles act as standards for the product team and help them to measure their work.

Following such an approach can introduce a lot of chaos in the product design process because every designer will have subjective ideas.

4. Review the technology stack

It's important to do this before building the actual design system because the procedure will help you to understand two things:

• Maybe you will need to change the process or perhaps you will need to introduce new technology. The reasons for inconsistency and the changes you need to introduce in the design process in order to avoid such problems in the future.
• How much design debt your organisation has and what are the areas that require more attention.

The product likely has some level of inconsistency in design. Inconsistency is usually caused by the duplication of design elements. Imagine that your company has been building a product for a long time without a system.

5. Establish a core team

That's why the core team of people that actually creates a system usually includes engineers, designers, product managers and stakeholders.

Design is a team sport and creating a design system is no exception. The expertise and creative energy provided by cross-functional collaboration are required to build a design system. When you start building a design system, it's crucial to have a small size for the core team because it will help you to create momentum and build something quickly.

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