Pretending perfection in design systems

Prepare for expansion with these often-overlooked processes

The design system is the central resource that contains guidelines for creating consistent products within a company. It is the core muscle that powers all the products across the organization so it is often seen as a reliable and solid resource. Users trust design systems experts’ recommendations, and it’s crucial to demonstrate expertise and knowledge. However, sometimes there is this pressure to pretend that the design system is perfect and covers every single use case, even when it doesn’t.

The design system team spends hours meticulously crafting components, carefully making sure every pixel is in its place, creating a successful distribution strategy, and providing training to users. The design system experts always suggest following the process in the documentation, but here’s the kicker, as the operations become more repetitive and executed by different design system team members, you find that they do it differently than you, and there are discrepancies. Your team hasn’t established internal processes yet.

The processes

One of the most commonly overlooked aspects of design systems is the development of internal processes that standardize the way designers design, developers code, and how content fits into the documentation. In this article, I will talk about some internal processes that you can implement to prepare for the expansion of your design systems.

1. The crafting process The crafting process involves the design and development work. It is essential to establish a workflow for both, regardless of their level of expertise, backgrounds, and methods of execution. This will ensure consistency in the components and guidelines. It may involve collaboration between designers, developers, and other stakeholders to define requirements and best practices.
2. The version control process Version control is essential for managing changes to the design system. It requires maintaining a history of versions and setting up workflows for reviewing, approving, and deploying changes. A standardized approach to managing releases and deployments is necessary for both design and development libraries. Collaboration between stakeholders is key to identifying the right tools for maintaining traceability.
3. The documentation management process Documentation is key to guiding the design system team on how to craft the component content. It includes setting a content model, creating and maintaining guidelines for content principles, and coding standards. It can also offer tutorials, contribution guidelines, and troubleshooting directions to help the team create the design system documentation effectively.
4. The training and onboarding process This is probably the most overlooked of all the processes. Training and onboarding resources help the design system team maintain the design system consistently. Resources include training material and sessions and most importantly, open communication between the team members and willingness to train your teammate.
5. The pre-release QA process QA processes are not a luxury step that only companies with a budget should consider. Developers and designers who crafted a piece can execute quality assurance themselves. It’s recommended to establish a process for rigorously testing components to ensure they meet quality standards and behave as expected across different user scenarios. Ensure the consistency between the design and the implementation.
6. The release process The release process is complex and requires attention to detail to avoid any issues. Breaking 15,000 instances and dealing with unhappy product team members due to breaking changes is not an ideal situation. The release process plays a crucial role in the evolution of the design system. To ensure a successful release, I recommend creating a detailed step-by-step process that involves all parties involved in the release.
7. The contribution process No matter how well a design system is created to meet the needs of a product team, there will always be scenarios where it falls short. This is why it is crucial to have an open contribution process in place, which allows for more flexibility for the design system’s customers. You should establish a process that not only facilitates collaboration between team members and the product team but also educates the product team on the workflow and expectations.

The strategy

Putting the previous processes together is only the first step of the process (ba dum tss). While the design system team focuses on distributing the system and educating the customers on how to use their system, they often overlook training their own team members. It’s crucial for the design system team to have a strategy to educate their members on how to maintain the system and support the product team with consistent information. Each team member should provide consistent quality and support, regardless of individual strengths.

Creating consistent training material and storing it in a specific design system environment is a great way to bring all the processes together in one place. At Indeed, we have a project on Figma named “DS Resources” that holds all the processes we execute. Although it’s not perfect and we don’t have all the processes in place, we have set a space to keep feeding our internal operations.

Designing training materials is crucial, as no one wants to read long blocks of content, even if it’s part of internal training. The key here is to spice it up and present processes in a way that’s not only easy to understand but also easy to follow. This requires a considerate strategy for how the material is presented.

Finally, ensure you choose a resource area accessible to all members of the design system team. Not everyone will have editing access to Figma, but often, sharing the view is enough. This is where collaborative decision-making with your team becomes essential.

If you’re interested in creating attractive training material, I highly recommend watching Jana Choi ’s conference talk “Let Your Design System Take Flight: Building a Design System Simulator” from Config 2023.