Member-only story
What I have learned from running a design system at scale
Today design system is a very popular toolkit for companies to unify their user experience of the software ecosystem. Many companies have already started their own journey to develop such a system, or on the way to enhance it for adapting to their situation better.
I am working for a large B2B company and maintaining the design system for 2 years. Here is what I have learned in the journey.
The context
I am in the core team of our design system project. The team is composed of three people: one manager, one frontend developer and me, the designer. We kicked off the project with a top design agency for the MVP stage. After it, we gradually enhance the system with more features and iterate the MVP in versions. So far there are 20+ projects and 200+ users consuming the design system.
What is a design system?
From a business perspective, a design system serves as a strategy of increasing productivity by avoiding redesign and redevelopment. It’s a set of toolkit used for facilitating customer-oriented development to meet business requirements. On the product side, a design system unifies the product experience by providing company-specific visual standards and pixel-perfect patterns in live code. So that during the software development cycle, the design system is a final guide to visualize your product with best user-centered practices.
