System Ecosystem

I will save you the why-you-need-a-design-system talk. You need it.

I think the question that has been left unanswered is really how do you get people to adopt design systems. A quick inspect and you can tell how many world-class design systems out there don't even have all of their products on the design system yet. Adoption is the heart of an effective design system.

There is an entire world outside of building Figma components. Processes and people to engage in order to ensure the success of your design system. It is not talked about enough. How do I know this? I struggled when I was looking for resources on how I should engage my team.

I am going to talk through my own experience with design system adoption as well as

What makes a Design System Successful?

What you see above is the general workflow of product teams and how they dance around tools such as Figma, vs code and Github. (not that this is definitely a less nuanced version)

The role of this diagram is really to just capture at a high level how it works

So there are 3 critical components to the success of your design system.

1. Adoption

2. Systems Team

3. Change Resilience

Diving Deep: Design System Metrics

Elements	Atoms	Sector	Description
Systems team: Established Processes	Communication Channels	Public	This involves the input and output of your comms. - How is information being disseminated? Is it consolidated? Efficacy of information being presented? Ease of maintenance. - How are you accepting information? They can come from various places therefore having a dedicated channel can help with your management as well as increasing transparency across teams.
Systems team: Established Processes	Cadence	Public	Setting goals and being accountable to the wider team is extremely important for us.
Systems team: Established Processes	Quality Assurance	InternalPublic	This includes how we ensure that a component is developed to it's fullest potential. Reducing the number of bugs that occur due to our diligent breaking down of how components should be structured.
Systems team: Response Time	Responding To	Public	How long the team takes to get back to people who send in the request is extremely important.
Systems team: Response Time	Response Delivery	Public	How are you choosing to deliver the information back to the user who has requested it.
Systems team: Stakeholder Buy-in	Echo	Public	Qualitative Data. However, if during the wider company sync-ups and people are bringing up the design system and talking about it, whether good or bad. It is a good sign that you are making an impact. The question from then on is how to make it better
Systems team: Stakeholder Buy-in	Headcount	InternalPublic	The size of the team and their capacity to work on the design system is very telling of the company's priorities as well as the growth of the team
Adoption: Assets	Figma	Public	How many designers are using your UI Library? What are their behaviors like?
Adoption: Assets	Component Library	Public	How many developers are using the component library to implement their work?
Adoption: Workflow	Inclusivity in Design Process	Public	Are users coming to you and consulting you on new projects and asking your advice on how to tackle the design? This is one great way that signals to you that a design system culture / artefacts that you have built is extremely successful. Not only are they making the effort to include you in their design process but they are also thinking of including you during the build and consulting you because they want to adhere to the design system.
Change Resilience: Update	Change Management	Public	How are you introducing new features as well as deprecating old ones and making sure that everyone is on board with these changes?
Change Resilience: Update	Keeping up to date	Public	Are users keeping up to date with the design system?