Imagine this: You’re part of a dynamic design team working on a cutting-edge project.

Each designer pitches in their unique creativity and style, but as the project progresses, inconsistencies start to emerge, and eventually ensues chaos.

Such chaos are avoided with the use of powerful tools such as a design system — a powerful and structured solution that acts as a guiding compass for every UX designer.

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Remember, when you are working as a team, you can’t expect every single member of your team to know what you’re thinking and come up with the exact same solutions as you do. There has got to be a middle ground where all of your ends meet and understand.

A design system becomes the backbone of your team’s design process, enabling seamless collaboration, streamlining workflows, and elevating the overall quality of your work.

What is a design system?

A design system is a collection of reusable components and elements which follows a predetermined set of standards that allow UX designers to creatively design products while maintaining consistency throughout their work process.

Following a design system allows you, as a UX designer, exercise best practices and can drastically improve the quality of your work over time.

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Most design systems may also include visual styles, UI patterns, guidelines on how it can be applied and supporting code for the developers of your team.

Such visual styles may typically be about typography, color palette, iconography, and branding which helps companies express themselves properly.

Benefits of a design system

When UX designers in a team are limited to a set of elements, there are less chances for an inconsistency to occur in the product they are trying to create for the company.

For example, imagine you are trying to create a mobile application which makes use of the color red for it’s buttons with round edges. Additionally, these buttons have text that uses the typeface SF Pro Display. By clearly defining these specific values in a design system, UX designers will be able to create buttons that adhere to given standards.

Failing to specify such values in a design system may result to UX designers to eventually create inconsistencies in the product, such as using a different shade of red instead of the specified color (let’s use #D90429 for this example).

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Remember, as a UX designer, you are typically expected to have a good eye for detail, being unable to maintain a constant use of color can greatly affect the company’s branding. One inconsistency can lead to another, as such, it is important to exercise best practices at all times to secure the benefits of the company from your design.

Such benefits include:

• They reinforce company’s branding and identity.
• Design systems can be scalable.
• They save time and money by increasing work and design efficiency.
• Helps designers and developers work together more effectively.

Before design systems were ever introduced, projects often experience problems whenever UX designers are about to hand off their designs to their developers. Typically it is use to the technical feasibility of the design, these problems costs so much time and the problem is due to UX designers and developers operating independently of each other. Since they work independently, they tend to have different requirements to fulfill.

However, by building a design system, UX designers and developers are able to create an environment wherein collaboration with one another is much easier and requirements will be aligned with each other from the very beginning.

Additionally, a developer will easily receive a design and immediately be able to asses its feasibility and code what needs to be brought to life.

To give you a better view of what a design system looks like, let’s talk more about specific examples.

Example of popular design systems

UX designers and developers from Google are able to create top notch applications due to specific guidelines they follow from a design system that they generously opened to the public — Material Design.

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Material Design is an open source design system created by Google to be used by UX designers and developers alike, to create standardized web and mobile applications.

Google Material Design system specializes in providing a comprehensive set of design guidelines, tools, and resources for creating visually appealing, consistent, and user-friendly digital experiences.

Material Design prioritizes smooth and natural interactions, responsive animations, and a thoughtful use of space and typography to ensure a friendly and cohesive user experience.

Another good design system is Polaris, a design system created by Shopify.

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Polaris is Shopify’s official design system, encompassing a comprehensive collection of guidelines, components, and resources aimed at maintaining a user-friendly experience.

In the realm of design systems, Shopify’s Polaris stands out as a robust and purposeful toolkit, meticulously crafted to cater to the unique needs of any e-commerce platform.

Focusing on e-commerce based design, Polaris is specialized in providing a comprehensive set of guidelines, components, and resources that empower developers and designers to build visually stunning, intuitive, and consistent digital storefronts.

Finally, we have Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

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Apple Human Interface Guidelines is a comprehensive set of design principles and recommendations provided by Apple for developers and designers to create user interfaces that align with the company’s user experience philosophy.

These guidelines outline the fundamental principles and best practices for designing apps and software across Apple’s ecosystem, including iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS platforms.

This design system focuses on creating cohesive and consistent user experiences across different Apple devices and platforms. Aforementioned guidelines cover a wide range of design aspects, including layout, navigation, interactions, typography, color, iconography, and animations, among others.

Any UX designer can also make use of other design systems to use as reference to observe, analyze and learn from. Here are a few more popular design systems to use as reference:

Design systems play a pivotal role in modern-day user experience and interface design. They provide a foundation for consistency, efficiency, and user satisfaction across digital platforms.

By embracing these design systems and their specialized approaches, designers and developers can streamline their workflows, foster collaboration, and deliver products that resonate with users.

By following these guidelines and principles, the future of UX design looks bright, with endless possibilities to create memorable and meaningful interactions with users.

If you want to continue learning more about such ideas, techniques and knowledge, I will continue writing more about them here.

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