The Design Systems have been causing a sensation for some time.
It is a library of graphical and code components designed to be reusable across all of a company's products.
At a time when digital interfaces are becoming more complex and multiplying exponentially, these promise a more virtuous way of making and maintaining company products.
Large companies such as Oracle , Axa , Audi , Atlassian , and even the United States government have already embarked on this path, proving its usefulness.
Their advantages are numerous:
- Consistency in all uses
- Greater fluidity between designers and developers
- Easy maintenance
- Ability for developers to build on it to create new screens
- Unifying place for teams
However, in use these design systems also present risks and can even become a source of additional cost or loss for companies if they are not correctly deployed.
And this deployment, it is not the designers who master it but the developers!
So these are literally them design system users and them that will make it successful. It is therefore imperative to take them into account.
Why ? Because the risks are great if you don't!
The risks
A developer whose work is not facilitated will act like any other individual. He will try by all means to simplify his life. And this therefore includes that he will prefer not to use your work and directly adapt your design.
Risk 1: Low utilization
Adapting your design means that it will be freely inspired by your proposals and will often deliver degraded experiences compared to what you imagined. And this, without you necessarily having control or vision over it.
And offering the css already done directly (as some software now offers) will not change anything. He will copy it more or less happily and overload it according to his present need.
Depending on how the team works, it could quickly turn into a nightmare...
Risk 2: Overload
If the developers only use your design system lightly and they get into the habit of overloading it as soon as a problem arises, it is the absence of feedback on cases that you have not graphically planned for that awaits you. And if there is no return, it is the ability to evolve and adapt to your design system that will take a hit.
Risk 3: Lack of feedback from developers
If your design system is poorly used, it is often overloaded and you are unable to make it evolve since the developers give you little feedback, the very survival of the design system is at stake. Maybe not right away, maybe not entirely, but in any case that will signify the failure of its deployment.
Risk 4: Abandonment of the design system
Benefits for Developers to Consider
It is scary ? Do not panic ! If you involve developers in the design of your design system, success is assured (or almost)! There are indeed many advantages.
You have a graphic eye, it's true, but don't forget that the developer, if he doesn't necessarily have this talent, has the skill to assess the possibility, the difficulty and therefore the cost of achieving what you have in mind.
See it as a bit like a site manager to whom you entrust all your wildest dreams as an architect, sure that he will be able to twist reality to meet them. Do you think this will work?
In addition, he has, like you, an experience of digital interfaces, users and this remains after all the 1st person who will use what you have imagined...
Don't overlook his expertise.
Advantage 1: The expertise it will bring you
A developer who feels listened to is a developer who feels involved. And if he feels involved, he will find it that much easier to use your design system.
Advantage 2: Its greater involvement
Who says involved also says that it will be easier to motivate other developers to do the same, to properly train newcomers to your design system, etc. But also that he will promote it in the other teams. And it will greatly accelerate the deployment of the design system to the whole company if many people express the desire and the need to use it.
Advantage 3: He will be your ambassador
If developers actively and massively use your design system, you'll have a better chance of getting quality feedback. This feedback will then allow you to be able to improve and develop your design system and thus ensure its survival.
Advantage 4: The feedback it will bring you
Creating a design system is good, but involving developers to ensure its success and survival is even better! Companies (such as Ant Financial, which used this method to create one of the most reused design systems by developers from other companies!) that have successfully created a design system understand this well and get their technical and graphic teams working hand in hand on these projects.
In the end, thinking about the user of what we create isn't the very essence of our work as designers?
