Every company is building its own Design System, to be able to manage design at scale and create consistency for users. Here are a few directions for you to get started.
Design system: a series of components that can be reused in different combinations, allowing companies to manage design at scale.
Every company — big and small — is building or planning on building a design system for its SaaS offerings. It makes sense. Having a design system in place is an important step for scaling your organization.
The benefits of implementing a design system include:
- Efficiency for your team. Design systems save time and money. Instead of creating components from scratch, designers and developers can re-use existing pieces and create new pages with more efficiency and speed.
- Consistency for your users. Design systems enable your team to create familiar experiences for your audience, eliminating inconsistencies and making sure that every time someone interacts with your company, their experience will always look and feel the same.
- Scale for your company. With efficiency comes the ability to scale. Design systems allow for automation in the design process — which means companies have the ability to build more with less resources.
But building a design system isn’t simple at all. So here are a few links, articles, examples, tutorials and talks about design systems that can help you in the process of creating a design system in your company.
Hurry up, though! The cool name options for design systems (Plasma, Fluent, Harmony, Solid, Polaris) are almost all gone.
Design Systems — References
Mailchimp UX: Design System
IBM Design Language: a shared vocabulary for design
Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines
Microsoft’s Fluent Design System
Atlassian’s End-to-End Design Language
Airbnb’s Design Language System
BBC’s Global Experience Language
Intuit’s Harmony Design System
Salesforce’s Lightning Design System
Buzzfeed’s Solid Style Guide
Shopify’s Polaris Design System
Google’s Material Design
Fitbit’s Components Guide
Zendesk’s Garden Design Library
USA Web Design Standards
WeWork’s Plasma Design System
Design Systems — Articles
Selling a Design System at your company
Atomic design: how to design systems of components
Selling a Design System before asking for buy-in
How to get a head start on Design Systems
Designing Design Systems for complex products
Creating a product Design System in Sketch
Setting up a design system
Why Design Systems Fail
The most exciting design systems are boring
On Design Systems: sell the output, not the workflow
Design Systems — Specialists to follow
Magera Moon
