How To Build Design System From Scratch? A Definitive Guide From Uaxe
The business of Designing is a long term business only. Anything done with a short term objective will flunk client satisfaction and business performance of the client ultimately. Designing is a complicated process which involves several perspectives and paradigms. UX designing is a team work, which engages many people at different levels, doing different functions together on a single assignment.
A ‘Design System’ could be seen as a library of information, which team members can easily access and use. The primary objectives of creating a ‘Design System’ are standardisation, time and resource saving and ensuring that all team members are on the same page.
What is ‘Design System’?
A ‘Design System’ could be seen as an evolving concept, which does not have a fixed definition and understanding. However, it could be seen as a place which has a collection of things and practices used by an organisation for their projects and different variations related to that. It should include UI components which could be reused and shared. It may also include the principles and practices that are considered as best practice of usage by the organisation. One of the mistakes many people make is understanding a UI UX Design System as a UI library. But, a Design System is far more than just a UI library it is a collection and documentations of rules, specifications, style guides, patterns, design principles and a lot more in addition to the UI library.
Overall it is a collection of building ingredients, information and pieces that would be used to interconnect and build the project as per the requirement of the client.
Challenges
No good things come free in this world. Though creating a ‘Design System’ is a vital task, it consumes lots of resources which the business would have to bear on their shoulders without any client billing. Also, there could be no exact estimate of the time and energy that would be required to build the System, which could at times make business managers irritable.
Apart from the money getting invested in creating a ‘Design System’, tight production schedules is another challenge that is a hurdle for creating it. Companies work overtime in tight production schedules to meet can-do deadlines that are vital for other chronological processes in client business. Creating a ‘Design System’ would require efforts of employees in real time during the production process. This may require tight management to ensure that on-time deliveries are not affected.
Advantages
Standardization
Project development spans across days, weeks or months with different types of talents working in designing, production, coding, management etc. It is vital to maintain uniformity across the entire project development and re-development processes. A ‘Design System’ will ensure that whatever work is being done is consistent and uniform at all stages saving lots of resources to compare and change every time in order to meet standardisation.
Time and Resource Saving
The creation of a ‘Design System’ may consume time and money, but, once it is ready, it will save a lot of time and Resources. A ‘Design System’ would include a library of different components with their codes, which could be used and reused any number of times. It would be easier during the development process to select the selected or matching component and just copy paste it on the project. This will not only make the production process faster, but, in turn save the resources which convert into profits for the production company.
Once, the ‘Design System’ is ready, it will not consume any resources. It will in fact help with readymade error-free code that would be less stressful for the team members. Less stress means more creativity.
Less Complicated
All the team members that may include engineers, creative staff, managers, team lead etc. would be on the same page as far as the ongoing project is concerned. They all know which elements are being used throughout the project and hence can take decisions related to that. One of the confusing things that occur on the production floor is communication glitches. It arises with the way one person describes an element as compared to another. In lieu of any standard names, this may create a lot of misunderstanding and confusions, which might also hurt the project in a longer cycle. However, with ‘Design System’ ready all elements have a standard nomenclature. People are at ease discussing the elements, as they are confident the opposite person is on the same page with the element in focus.
Quality
The ‘Design System’ concept has an overall huge impact on the quality. This is because there is no confusion on choosing the elements to maintain uniformity across a single assignment as well as multiple projects. The System reduces stress on designers, developers as they are clear on the basic guidelines and hence have less decision making. This increases the span for being more creative and experimental. The user also feels familiarity by the uniformity across different web entities under the same umbrella. This increases user recognition and affects their loyalty positively.
Concluding remarks
From the discussions on ‘Design System’ we have tried to come up with a clear lucid definition of what we can actually understand by ‘Design System’.
Also Read: A Step-by-Step Guide To Design A Mobile App
A design system is an organized set of anything and everything related to the design and development of a project like interconnected patterns, shared practices and different elements with codes. This database could be used and reused to create a final digital product.
For all those who do not have time and resources to create a ‘Design System’, there are other quicker options available now. There are some portals who are offering their ‘Design System’ for downloads. The management can review these online systems and select the one that best suits their philosophy and work patterns. In future your organisation’s custom ‘Design System’ could also be created side-by-side.
Even companies could make their new employees, designers learn the working patterns and rules of the company by making them study and understand the ‘Design System’ the company has been using. In this way, you are ensured that the new staff also works on the same methods reducing the impact on clients due to resource mobilisation to almost zero.
Uaxe is one of the most creative UI/UX design agency with a focus on enhancing the value of the brand through visionary intelligence. Uaxe assures through its over one million man-hours of experience in customer service, that the solution provided would be most appropriate in converting visitors into clients and drastically influence repeat business. Hire us for UI UX design service to win new customers and provide a fantabulous visitor interface. Write us and we will take it from there
