Avoid these classic system design fails to boost revenue and improve user experience.

History is never kind to the loser and failures are not something we talk about as much as our successes. However, the world of system and product design are replete with failed examples that can teach the willing student a lot about design systems and how to make it work.

To take a step back, what does a Design System mean?

I came across an interesting article on the topic some time back where the renowned international speaker Una Kravets discussed this in detail. To quote her in brief,

 A design system is a culmination of several individual components, which can include any or all of the following (and more):

A style guide or visual pattern library

Design tooling (e.g. Sketch Library)

Component library (where the components live in code)

Code usage guidelines and documentation

Design usage documentation

Voice and tone guideline

Animation language guideline

After analyzing 2 million pieces of financial data and 100,000 design “actions”–deliberate attempts to make design a more prominent part of business–for 300 public companies over a five-year period, McKinsey found that those with the strongest commitment to design and the most adept execution of design principles had 32% more revenue and 56% more total returns to shareholders. This finding held true across three separate industries: medical technology, consumer goods, and retail banking.

There are several pioneering design systems that have set a high bar on standards including Airbnb, Material- Google Design system, Fluent by Microsoft, Polaris by Shopify, Mailchimp’s extraordinary brand tone and voice guide, Atlassian, Apple, IBM, Uber, Salesforce- Lightning design system to name a few.

Traditionally, style guides were used by companies to define the user experience until now. However, with an increasing dependence on digital media for interaction, it is important to work with an agile design system that is created in collaboration with the designers and developers to ensure ongoing improvements which will save a lot of time and money in the long run.

So why do design systems fail and what you can learn from it

Failure to understand the process can undo all the hard work of establishing a design system. Here are the top 6 reasons why a design system fails and how you can avoid these mistakes.

Treating your System design as a short-term project

A design system is an agile process that needs constant tweaking and updates. Just as you need regular updates to ensure that your software is working to meet changing demands, your team needs to ensure that the designers and developers are constantly working with the design system and evaluating it for updates.

Poor user adoption

In several organizations, the design system is created without evaluating the user’s needs. It is important to discuss the process and expected outcomes with all the stakeholders to understand what they will need to make it work for them. Often, people are used to a particular style/format of working. Ensuring that everyone achieves their comfort zone in working with the new design system will happen only if they are included in the process from day one.

Lack of access

Ensuring that all the designers and developers have access to all the resources created in the process is also critical. Make sure that all your repositories are stored in a central location and everyone who interacts with it, can make use of it as they need it. You also need to set up a process in place to keep these repositories regularly updated with any new changes/elements that are added in.

No Buy-in from the management 

A design system does not affect a single department, but in fact, will affect the working of every employee in the organization. This means that you need to ensure it has support from the top management level right down to all the levels in your organization. Support from the engineers, marketing team members, etc. will ensure that they communicate the same faith to your clients, contractors and all external parties. Along with a monetary investment, the time and effort spent by your team members to learn and understand the design system will reap rich rewards.

Poorly defined naming conventions

Communication is the key to successful collaboration amongst the team members. It is important to have a well-defined naming convention for products that will scale. With an increasing number of patterns, the members should be able to easily find what they are looking for. The key is to use names that would keep the user’s perspective in mind. The main idea is to use names that would easily define the purpose of the element for easier identification.

Failure to define responsibility

Every process needs to have a well-defined structure and owner to ensure that it is maintained. Creating a team made of both designers and engineers will help keep it relevant, up-to-date system that does not break. This team should be responsible for onboarding new users, updating components, ensuring consistency is maintained and define a plan to ensure it stays updated. Using Slack channels or SharePoint teams etc. would be an ideal way to keep everyone updated on new releases or any other announcements.

In conclusion, a well-defined design system is useful for any product’s future lifecycle. In addition, remember to keep the final user at the center of all developments to encourage higher user adoption. And keeping the structure routinely maintained to ensure future success.