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…
