Building a Foundation for your Product

Last week we talked about the importance of a Design System and how it can improve the overall quality of your digital products. Today we are going to look at how we approach creating Design Systems for ourselves and for our clients.

First, we treat the Design System as a product in and of itself. The primary goal being to bring a cohesion between what is good for your users (Product UX) and the design and development process of your product (good for your budget).?

By treating your Design System as a product, it should be versioned and maintained. Start with the smallest possible set of components and guidelines that are needed for the product. Allow it to grow organically as new needs arise. Your development team will help you know what needs to be added as you move throughout the process.

To keep things organized, we break our Design Systems into five segments - Foundations, Components, Patterns, Motion and Tokens.

Foundations are the first step and are heavily influenced by brand values and design principles. It includes a meticulous exploration of elements such as color, typography, iconography, spacing and layout. By laying a robust groundwork, the Design System can ensure that every subsequent step aligns with the core essence of the product.

Let us know how your Design System is coming along. We'll explore in future articles a couple of examples and we welcome and thoughts and comments that you have found to work well in establishing your Design Systems.