The value proposition of design systems for a mature enterprise

The value that a design system brings to an early-stage product or a small organization is clear, but what about large enterprises with a long history and a myriad of products?

Can the value of a new design system outweigh the challenges of driving adoption and overcoming the status quo?

Let’s explore five key reasons why a design system is invaluable for mature enterprises:

Design systems drive consistency.

In the world of software, consistency builds trust and enhances usability. A design system fosters cohesion across all products and features, resulting in:

• UI consistency. Consistent buttons, forms, and other elements create a cohesive interface.
• UX consistency. Shared design patterns and flows enable customers to navigate multiple products effortlessly. New products will feel familiar, and cohesive flows across experiences builds trust and avoids the disjointed feeling of multiple features being duct-taped together.
• Future-facing consistency. Updates can be easily propagated across the organization, reducing adoption hurdles and allowing design improvements without disrupting work.

Design systems increase velocity.

Designers and engineers can work more efficiently by leveraging a common set of design elements to compose complex solutions. This accelerates progress by increasing:

• Design velocity. Designers can focus on solving unique problems rather than rethinking standard elements like buttons.
• Engineering velocity. Engineers can leverage existing UI components, saving time and effort.
• Product velocity. Product Managers can concentrate on delivering value instead of tackling common UI/UX challenges.

Design systems enable builders to focus on their product areas.

When announcing the launch of AWS, Jeff Bezos famously said: “Focus on the things that make your beer taste better.” Just as it’s a distraction for a brewery to build its own power plant rather than getting electricity from the grid, any organization should be concerned with the things that impact their core offerings and outsource or abstract out the things that don’t.

To borrow a phrase from the launch of AWS, “Focus on the things that make your beer taste better.”

Just as a brewery shouldn’t be building its own power plant, an organization should concentrate on what impacts its core offerings and abstract out the rest. Design systems facilitate this by:

• Reducing redundant work. Every software product ever shipped has needed an opinion on what a button or a text field looks like. Standard design and engineering elements are handled centrally, freeing teams to address new challenges.
• Unlocking core excellence By delegating routine tasks, teams can excel in their primary domains rather than re-solving solved problems.

Design systems ensure best practices are built in.

Instead of burdening each feature team with ensuring cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, internationalization, and more, a design system can embed best practices in a single library and disseminate them to all users of the system:

• Cross-browser compatibility. Components can be built to align with the organization’s browser support commitments, relieving feature teams from managing this aspect individually.
• Semantics & accessibility. Components can be built to generate semantic HTML, appropriate ARIA tags, WCAG-compliant styles, and other accessibility features.
• Tokens and standard values. Components can include tokens/variables to ensure that feature teams aren’t unintentionally building magic values into the product.
• Internationalization and other cross-team initiatives. Components can include RTL styles, boilerplate code for translation libraries, and other cross-team concerns.

Design systems reduce costs.

The upshot is that design systems reduce costs.

Organizations can do more with fewer people, freeing up designers and engineers to focus on new features and improvements that move the bottom line.

As products become more consistent and usable, user trust and customer satisfaction will increase.

Additionally, the initial investment in a design system will amortize across the saved design and engineering hours across many teams.

Conclusion

Design systems are not just for young companies and new products; they are essential tools for mature enterprises seeking to maintain their competitive edge and drive innovation.

Design systems drive consistency, velocity, and quality, and they reduce costs and build customer trust.