4 Successful Design System Stories That Teach Us Something PART 2

How to navigate through the complexities of design system implementation in a business

This article is part of a series where I share knowledge and insights into design system implementation.

In the previous article (complete guide to design system implementation) I’ve introduced the topic, challenges and steps to implement a design system.

Today I’d like to share with you some interesting design system implementations. I like real life case studies because they show challenges and solutions to common problems in implementing design systems.

Especially since a design system isn’t only about a component library, it’s about a mindset change where we decide that on the competitive market we want to be able to be agile and focus on value rather than reinventing UI with every project.

Please look at these examples. I’ve quoted the parts that are the most interesting to me. With the links provided you can continue studying these cases to prepare for a design system implementation in your company:

1. Show The Value

An interesting article on the subject was shared by David De Vince in 2022 where he describes the design system implementation process in the Engie Group. Engine Group had a revenue of 60 billion euro in 2019 mostly from delivering electricity in 48 countries.

I like how David emphasizes that implementing design system is a process and requires people work. He also notices that we can’t force people to use it:

Instead of forcing people to use it, simply offer it alongside evidence of its effectiveness. People should adopt it because they believe in it, not because ENGIE requires it.

2. Unlock Possibilities

Virgin Radio has 1.3 million listeners. It uses NewsKit design system. Nick Dorman in an article from 2022 shares some interesting insights about how the team overcame growing demand for customizations.

In 3 months they build a radio player component, but customers of the design system (developers using it to build web apps) had trouble in adjusting it to their needs.

So instead, they decides to go back to drawing board and work with audio player component.

It was a success but the demand for customizations started to grow again.

Instead of parametrizing the component they broke it down to pieces:

Instead of exporting compositions, we started to outline best practices in our documentation and provide scenarios in our Storybook for all common use cases.

We often tend to think our components should be sealed and that only exposed options should be used.

This example shows we can’t assume it. People will find new ways of using a design system, and we have to provide an aligned way to do it. It can be done by offering guidelines rather than blocking possibilities, breaking down components like in the example above.

We can also make it easier to actually play with components. Web is great for that because with some effort customers can use CSS to modify style of our components and hooks to modify its behavior.

I’m love to encourage that, because that way we can discover where our components need more flexibility. Based on this feedback we can then plan how to align offering new flexibilities without blocking customer teams.

I like to think about a design system as a living organism that provides adjusts to the world around while maintaining its core identity.

3. Choose The Proper Team

Hopefully I don’t have to write what Reddit is. It’s a social media platform that has 73 million users.

In an article published in 2023 Mike Price, the UI Platform Engineering Manager shares insights about implementing a design system in the company.

He focuses on how we speak to people about design system so we can show the value to all stakeholders: designers, developers, managers.

He also nicely puts out why it’s important to find a good first implementing team (a team that will implement a design system into an existing or new project in the company):

The project shouldn’t be too simple and not to complicated, and the team has to be enthusiastic about it.

That’s why it’s great to have chats with implementing team. That way we can gather feedback about team’s needs but also research how easy/hard it will be to actually manage the implementation.

For the first systems to be aligned with a design system it’s crucial to do it right. Because early successes will convince other departments and teams that maybe it’s time to join the movement.

Focus On The Design System Team Goals

The design system team should be part of a bigger organizational structure supporting other teams. However, it doesn’t mean a new structural unit takes work away from other teams.

Contrary, usually teams who can rely on design system have more interesting projects because they can deliver business value in a more reliable way.

Jeff Crossman in an article from 2018 shares deep insights into managing the design system team. He shows what usually happens. Teams who see value in design system start to rely on its team.

With a lot of teams it means that in a short period of time there’s more and more work, where design system team has to allocate a lot of resources to almost join implementer teams.

Jeff Crossman emphasizes how important it is to organize a work, manage priorities and most importantly, focus on the design system work by having a main vision, roadmap and schedule:

Looking back, I feel the lack of a robust and socialized roadmap really allowed me to get derailed.

It’s important to notice because without it, the design team will postpone their work, while the the central effort of it should be to align and streamline the design development work for all teams in an organized way.

Summary

From the success cases provided above we can take a lot of lessons. Providing value, unlocking possibilities, and focus on design system team goals and choosing right implementer team at the beginning are the aspects that mostly resonate with me based on my experience with design systems and component libraries.

If you have questions or observations please share them in the comments or write me an email to [email protected] . I’ll be glad to help!

If you’d like to read more articles from this series, programming and open source articles too, follow me and subscribe. And don’t forget to clap!