Design Systems

16 October 2023

What are Design Systems?

Design Systems are an important part of product development that help to enforce consistency in all aspect of the product development and promotion. They can be a central point of documentation for everything from design components, brand guidelines, language consistency and even development protocols. It is a good way to document tried and tested patterns which can save you having to reinvent the wheel.

Experience

At Giki I led the way to establishing a central source of documentation that was referenced and updated by numerous teams to ensure that consistency was maintained wherever possible. This not only helped maintain an AA level of accessibility conformance when developing the product, but also ensured that content produced for blogs, emails and social media was consistent throughout.

An example of where I have seen Design Patterns come in useful outside of design is when back-end and front-end-developers have been using different terminology to reference the different states of functionality. By updating these to be consistent it was easier for developers and designers to understand what each other were referring to.

Where to start?

To begin creating Design Systems from scratch, it is recommended that you identify and prioritise recurring components (ensure that you are only documenting those that are successful and work well with the product). You will also want to make sure you work alongside the engineering team when creating any documentation and have one person take lead over the documentation to make sure all new updates are in line with those that are already existing.