Crafting design systems that elevate businesses
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Why would you need a design system?
Do any of these challenges sound familiar? See if you recognize your brand among them and discover why a design system could be the key to turning these issues around.
UI looks messy and unpolished without common design components, leading to user confusion?
This can make your product confusing and weaken its identity.
Is developer time being wasted on basics instead of innovation? When a foundation is in place and components are pre-tested, engineers can focus on creating features that truly make a difference
Lacking clear guidelines, teams may diverge in their approach, resulting in a brand that appears inconsistent and diluted in its messaging and aesthetic.
Design systems enable products to scale rapidly while maintaining consistency
Envision a tool that slashes full day work to merely ten minutes. The efficiency gains are not just substantial, they're transformative.
Dev speed
Costs
Scalability
Consistency
Initial investment
With a common vocabulary, guidelines, and best practices in place, team alignment is ensured. The time saved by eliminating repetitive tasks can be allocated to improving the product's user experience or polishing existing functionalities
Strategy. Roadmap. Execution.
Discovery - a deep dive into where you're at and where you need to be
Review existing brand guidelines, including logos, color palettes, typography, and tone of voice. Understanding the brand's identity is crucial.
Establish design principles
Develop a set of guiding principles that reflect the brand's values and design ethos. These principles will guide design decisions within the system.
Develop a brand new visual language or enhance your existing one
We create design tokens for colors, typography, spacing, shadows and border radius to ensure consistency and ease of updates.
Additionally, we develop new collections of icons, images, and illustrations, or harmonize your existing assets, to further refine and unify your brand's visual narrative.
Build the component library & guidelines for usage
We document each component, including its purpose, usage, and variations. Design Tokens: Use design tokens for styles (colors, fonts, spacings) to ensure consistency and ease of updates.Best Practices: Provide guidelines on how to use components together to create intuitive and consistent interfaces.
Implement and educate
Workshops and Training: Organize workshops to educate designers and developers on how to use the design system.
Continuously evolve
Monitor Usage: Use analytics and feedback to understand how the design system is being used and identify areas for improvement.
Questions? Answers.
While standard UI kits or frameworks can be beneficial, especially for rapid prototyping or small projects, they often lack the flexibility and specificity required for a comprehensive brand experience. A design system is different because it's tailored to your brand's unique needs and includes not only UI components but also guidelines on their usage, design principles, and often, a broader range of design tokens (such as colors, typography, and spacing). It serves as a single source of truth that ensures consistency across all digital products, promotes efficiency in design and development workflows, and can adapt over time to new requirements and technologies.
The timeline for creating a design system from scratch can vary significantly depending on the scale and complexity of the organization's digital products. Generally, it might take anywhere from 3 months to over a year.
Measuring the success of a design system involves both qualitative and quantitative metrics. Key indicators include:
Increased Efficiency: Reduction in design and development time for new features or products, as evidenced by shorter project timelines and faster time to market.
Consistency Across Products: Improved brand consistency across various platforms and devices, which can be measured through user surveys and brand audits.
User Satisfaction: Enhanced user experience and satisfaction, which can be tracked through customer satisfaction surveys, and usability testing results.
Examples of successful design systems in the industry include IBM's transition to Carbon and Airbnb's Design Language System (DLS).
In IBM's case, their adoption of Carbon resulted in significant improvements, including a 5% increase in conversion rates and over 50% of customers successfully completing purchases (Source). This success underscores the importance of a unified design system in driving better product experiences and enhancing conversion rates.
Similarly, Airbnb's implementation of the DLS led to faster development cycles and reduced quality assurance efforts."The DLS empowered engineers and designers to work more cohesively, resulting in streamlined contributions and a shared understanding of visual style."
This success demonstrates how a well-implemented design system can accelerate product development and foster innovation within large organizations.