System design has been a hot topic in recent years. I recently participated in a project, and today I will share my experience and knowledge with you.
System design is a relatively large topic. Today, I will mainly introduce System design in depth around the following content. I will continue to update other topics about system design:
- Why do we need to design a system
- What is system design
- The difference between system design and Style Guide and Pattern Library
- Our misunderstanding of system design
- Importance of system design
- When to start system design
- Challenges that may be faced in system design projects
1. Why do we need to design a system?
With the development of electronic innovation, people have higher and higher requirements for products or services. They expect a smooth experience even in different products on different platforms developed by the same company. This change in users has made more and more Internet companies aware of the importance of design.
The company began to expand its internal design team to optimize the design process and tools. However, will the expansion of the design team surely bring a good user experience? The answer is not necessarily.
The emphasis on and investment in design will also bring many challenges. For example, how to ensure the smoothness and consistency of user experience? How to manage design debt and technical debt? How can we help the company expand its scale?
To give an example from my work, my last company established an in-house design team last year. But when I really started to design, I discovered that a product has at least three different design languages, and our addition brings new design decisions. Regardless of the design team or the development team, every time a new design decision is introduced, it will result in corresponding design debt or technical debt, which will be limited to the expansion of the design scale.
In a research report entitled “Unlocking Design’s Full Business Potential” published in February this year, Forrester pointed out that one-third of the design team leaders who participated in the survey said that they are still striving to provide users with a consistent and smooth experience.
So no matter how much resources the company invests in the design community, only when all products and services can solve problems for users and bring them a consistent experience, the company’s competitiveness will increase .
The system design is a strategically important part. This is why more and more companies are beginning to build system design. 40% of the 385 companies studied in the Forrester research report have launched their own system designs and are used by other project teams, and 46% are on the way to expand the use of system designs.
Many well-known companies have also launched their system design in recent years, including Adobe, Altassian, Salesforce, Airbnb and so on.
2. What is a system design
The system design is a series of reusable components and their use guide documents, using these components can quickly develop products on different platforms. In the process of making these components, the company’s design theory and branding (colors, copywriting, fonts, etc.) will be considered, so they are usually included in the system design. The system design provides building blocks and guidance for the company’s various products.
A system design is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications
——Design better
Three, the difference between system design and Style Guide and Pattern Library
Style guide and Pattern library are actually two components of the system design, but in addition to them, the system design also includes a series of standards to guide design. These standards record a series of decisions reached by the design team, such as how we choose controls and how to choose among different controls. It is precisely because of these standards that the design plan not only solves one problem, but can be reused. Standards are also the reason why users can get a consistent experience.
4. Our misunderstanding of system design
In the system design project I am currently involved in, most of my time is to “sell” system design with colleagues in different positions, in order to get their support or persuade them to be the first group of projects to use system design.
One of my feelings is that the most challenging part of system design is not the production process, but the support of other colleagues, projects and the company. In the process of “sales”, I also found that people all have misunderstandings about system design, which hindered the promotion of the project.
The following three points are more common biases against system designs:
1) Design System limits the creativity of designers
Surprisingly, this is what many designers think of system design. They feel that the system design will limit their performance, so that they can not explore some new styles and interaction methods. I personally think that as designers, we cannot introduce new styles or interaction methods just for being creative. Our design should solve business or user problems. For companies whose products are not yet mature, the benefits of creativity in the component library are minimal. This is why I think the creativity of designers should be used to enhance the entire experience.
The existence of the system design can reduce a lot of unnecessary work, such as adjusting the spacing, its elements and so on. Designers have more time to focus on more global design strategies.
2) system design is only about design and can be done independently by the designer
Another misunderstanding of system design is that it is just some reusable components in the design software, so it can be done independently by the designer.
system design, as the single source of truth of the company’s design language, requires support and participation from different roles. Including front-end engineers, brand marketing, accessibility experts and dynamic designers, etc.
3) Design System is once and for all
Many people believe that the value of system design lies in that as long as it is completed, it is done.
But in fact, if you want system design to succeed, you need to treat it like a product, and it needs to be maintained and improved. This can include two aspects, one is for project teams and colleagues who use the system design internally, and the other is for users. The system design project team should regularly collect feedback from colleagues who use the system design internally and product users to ensure that their feedback is continuously updated into the system design.
5. The importance of system design
1) Improve design and development efficiency
This is one of the most obvious benefits of system design. Because of the reusability of the component library, designers and developers do not need to design and develop a component from scratch.
The system design also allows us to complete prototyping more efficiently and get user feedback faster. I still remember that in my daily work a few years ago, many times I was doing a lot of repetitive tasks. With system design, any changes only need to be made in the system design, which reduces a lot of unnecessary work.
2) Ensure design consistency and provide users with a consistent user experience
The two components of the system design, component libraries and standard documents, provide the single source of truth for the company’s various products. Therefore, users will not see different styles of buttons or search boxes with different interaction methods in company products. The consistency of the design allows users to shorten the period of learning to use the product, allowing them to foresee the changes brought about by their operations.
3) The system design promotes cooperation and communication within the company
A successful system design requires the participation of cross-functional teams, such as designers, development teams, marketing and branding, copywriting, and accessibility experts. Only in this way can it be ensured that system design can solve the problems encountered in product design and development.
The system design therefore promotes the cooperation and communication of different positions within the company, and the establishment of this culture will also help the company to launch new products or services more effectively.
6. When will the system design be created?
The system design is very valuable, but this does not mean that all companies need a system design. The emergence of the system design is to allow the design to be expanded and to provide a design standard for different designers to refer to.
If the company where the following two characteristics appear, it means that we can start to propose a system design:
- The company has different products, and they all need long-term development and iteration
- More and more designers join the company
But if your company does not have long-term products that need to be developed, or you are the only designer in the company, Pattern libraby and Style guide should be sufficient at this stage.
7. Challenges that may be faced in system design projects
I believe that every designer and front-end engineer can see the value of system design, but in actual projects, they will face various challenges.
1) Design System is a very tedious and time-consuming project
Only when the design department is treated as a project, will it have a greater chance of success. We need to “sell” it strategically, have a roadmap to guide the team, and have corresponding plans to let more projects see its value. After the system design is formed, it is necessary to regularly collect feedback from internal users and product users. These are only at the process level. When designers start to make components, they are also very time-consuming. In order to ensure that the designed controls can solve a series of problems, designers need to consider different usage scenarios to ensure that the controls made in the design software are malleable and can be used by other designers.
2) Design System needs supporters
Many large companies now mature system designs start from side projects. Because the company wants to see what system design can bring to the company before investing a lot of resources. Therefore, the initial stage of the system design project is actually very difficult, because on the one hand, various resources are needed to start the project, and on the other hand, it is necessary to prove the value of the system design to obtain more resources like the company’s senior management.
Therefore, at the beginning of the project, it is important to get support from colleagues in different projects and different positions. Let them see the value of the system design, make them willing to participate in the preliminary production of the system design, and let them become supporters of the system design. Only in this way can the system design be promoted more quickly so that it can be used by other projects and show its value.
