Design System: Involving Key People in the right Construction Process
Whenever I read or hear that a Design System has failed, one of the main reasons is the lack of adherence, especially from the engineering team. But how to mitigate this risk? Well, in the following article I describe a little about how we are doing here at NDD to build the Design System with the involvement of a multidisciplinary team.
One of the first things I was told when I was hired is that the company wanted a Design System. Of course, at first I was afraid after all I was unaware of the products and did not understand the maturity level for applying a Design System.
We started building that system, we took some steps that helped us making and building it more safely. In fact I understand that they are Guiding Pillars of all construction and adherence to the Design System.
# Have a clear goal
The goal couldn’t simply be having a Design System because the Director wants it. Besides being fragile, adopting something by mere imposition would be neither empathic nor correct. So we needed a goal, something that could be used as a metric and even ROI measurement.
The first step was selling the idea in the right way to the board, correctly explaining the concept of using and applying a Design System using numbers, references and lots of benchmarking. And there we were presenting the results to the entire board and stakeholders, consisting of 8 people.
After aligning what is a Design System and especially understanding expectations, we talked about numbers. I even quoted an article by Robert Charett where he mentions the cost of rework when we talk about software and stated that our initial goal is precisely to avoid unnecessary refactoring costs.
..the cost of fixing an error can be 100 times as high as it would have been during the development stage (R. N. Charette — Why Software Fails)
To support the goal, we did some internal research that helped us establish ROI (which we’ll deal with in a later article), understand teams’ needs and define the personas of our new product.
This survey, which was attended by more than 30 people, brought us valuable insights and made us know a little about the daily routine of development and testing teams. From this research we understood that internally we have 3 different audiences and for each one we drew a persona.
# Engaging the right people
In order to make it all cohesive and make it easier to join and understand what a Design System is, together with the board, we decided to form a committee, a kind of curating team that would help us define and design the project as a whole. We choose people from various areas (Marketing, Products, Engineering etc) that best represented the 3 business units we have in the company.
In total we had over 15 people involved, who were gathered for a kick-off and later for 2 co-creation dynamics. In these dynamics we use the CSD Matrix ( (Certainties, Suppositions, and Doubts), the Model Project Canvas and the Design Princple Pyramid(thanks Guilherme Gonzalez).
I found it interesting that the team was very clear about the need for something that would help and facilitate standardized construction, both in interface and experience. This need greatly facilitated decisions.
Involving these key people has already created synergy, leaving the grounds ready for future application and we are clear about who the Users, Builders and Stakeholders are.
Another important point is to emphasize the involvement of the Devs Engineering team since the beginning of the process. Here at NDD our UX team is embedded in the NDD Labs framework. And this is where the guidelines and definitions of Templates and Grids, Programming Language and Components for developers use. Then we will have the NDD Design System (NDS) which gives clear instructions and will provide inputs and a library for Design and Front End and in parallel the NDK (NDD Developtment Kit) with the coded components. Thus we serve Designers, POs, Uxers, Devs and others that are part of the production chain.
# Report progress
It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the project things were still a little cloudy for me, but as we searched, accessed references, watched webinars and read articles, everything became clearer.
We started Design System by doing inventory of components used in current products, a great job done by my teammates Luana De Andrade and Franco Ramos.
From this inventory we identify basic components of any interface, things like color, buttons, form fields, etc.
We also decided from the outset to be clear about the design principles that we want NDD to stick to when building products: Consistency, Collaboration, User First, Trusted Design, Clear, Cohesive Language, and Scalability.
Along with the Design Principles, we started guiding on issues like Accessibility and made a short guide about it.
We make it clear that NDS Tetris, our Design System, is a constantly evolving and growing product.
A Design System is always ready and never ready. It is a living organism in constant growth and progress.
To make it clear, we set an initial delivery roadmap and as we close a cycle, we send an update to the entire Design System team.
Also, we have met a few times to expose what had been done, a kind of Retro, gather feedback and combine the following steps.
# Lots to do
We are just at the beginning! Our Design System grows every day and so Tetris gets new parts. We continue with routine deliveries and are already studying how to facilitate the application.
We also decided to adopt the Storybook platform to document both NDS and NDK.
Also, we have a lot of work to bring the legacy to the current template determined by Labs. We need all products to be in the same language and grid to be able to adopt and use the Design System. And this is a big challenge !!!
I know there are countless cases out there, one cooler than the other. Ours is challenging because it is applying a Design System to a company with more than 15 years of experience, a fair amount of products that serve different markets and individual needs, as well as having the famous legacy. But with good planning, patience and the involvement of the right people, we are confident that it will be possible.
Particularly I want to thank all the NDD Labs team, especially those who are together in this endeavor: Luana De Andrade, Franco Ramos, Hugo Estevam Long, Guilherme Toniello, Lucas Carvalho, Renan Nunes Steinck, William Passig and Lucas Anjos.
Thanks to all who strive to publish and share experiences, this is very valueable. Are you going through a similar process? Please tell how you are doing, your victories, success, defeats, failures or difficulties. 😊
# References for Queries
Design Systems resources, links, references and articles https://uxdesign.cc/resources-links-references-and-articles-on-design-systems-e8ab898e0ab5
Design Systems Repo
https://designsystemsrepo.com/
What it is, and why create a Design System
https://uxdesign.blog.br/design-system-90036c034225
In advance thank you for the claps 👏 and comments 💬 !!
