Let’s talk about design systems

Picture this: Your app has been around for a while. It started small, but over time you’ve added a bunch of features. Maybe many different designers have worked on it, or maybe even no designers at all. The user interface is getting a little bit messy.

Adopting a design system with a solid set of rules is a good way to stop things from getting out of hand. It gives your product a consistent look and feel on every screen, and helps you deliver a strong brand and a great user experience.

With clear rules for everything from typography to spacing, designers and developers won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time there’s a new feature or some change to an interface.

A library of pre-made, reusable components also makes the process a lot more efficient by freeing teams from having to constantly start from scratch.

Making design decisions can be difficult. Especially when stakeholders come to the conversation with different ideas, priorities, expectations and backgrounds.

Design systems to the rescue! Having a shared language helps designers, developers, business managers and everyone else on the team communicate, understand each other, and find the best way forward.

Building and maintaining a digital product requires a lot of energy and resources. By taking care of the basics, design systems let teams spend less time on how to execute the details of a design, and instead give their attention to more high-level creative and strategic considerations.