Design system: when not to build

Design systems are a hot topic right now. Everyone who has a product company to run is insisting on design systems to be in place. These systems allow designers to be consistent across the product line. But let’s see if the design system is what you really need…

The governing principles of a design system helps a company establish the tone of voice, brand recognition and overall design philosophy. The component libraries help designers churn out UI designs faster, without actively worrying about the consistency.

However, building a design system is a time consuming and expensive affair. Designers have to spend additional man hours crafting each and every piece. The research required for the design system and then the efforts needed to increase the adaptation of the system are major contributing factors too. 

Design system is good to have, but there are cases when a design system can do more harm than help. Let's discuss a few of them here

• Nascent company

As tempting as it may sound, when the product company is in a very nascent stage, when the product is just being defined, building a design system is not worth it. When the product definition is still getting established, it would not be a great idea to invest time and money in the design system. Your design team’s efforts should be utilized in research and explorations.

• Small, well knit team

If the design and development team of your organization is very small, then the component library is sufficient to get the benefits of the design system. If the development team is also small and is in perfect sync with the design team, then establishing tokens and definitions are not extremely necessary. When the teams are small, there is generally only one person [his highness, the product owner] who is responsible for approving the features. In that case, creating and maintaining a design system might be just a burden.

However, when the company starts scaling up, the design team should get a system done, so that the consistency and brand are maintained irrespective of who approves the end products.

• Product is in nascent stage

When the product definition is not robust, establishing a design system will be an effort in vain. Yes, the designers should be able to whip out a perfect system by studying different well established systems. But the important point to remember here would be;

The design systems you are studying were built for THAT company’s products!

If a design system is established without a proper persona definition, product definition and market analysis, the designers, in the later stage will be forced to use the patterns that might just not be right for the users. This will eventually remove freedom of experimentation when the actual product definition gets established. In short, unless the product definition is robust, one should invest in creating a design system. 

• In conclusion:

design systems, although they sound really cool, are not always the best idea. Design system requires active involvement from various departments of the company and has to be approved by the stakeholders. The leadership also needs to get involved to approve the product definitions and strategies. Overall, it requires contribution from everyone and is a very time consuming affair.

Hence, only when the product definitions are well established, the persona is set and the brand guidelines are in place, one can think about getting the design system done. Otherwise, the team will be spending time, effort (sometimes tears!) and money in building something that will restrict the designers rather than helping them, resulting in a product with impaired usability!